Review of Stray Planets' debut EP 'Are You Real, Cristobal Leedy?'
- Chris Mullan
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Excellent early singles provided hope for a longer outing from Stray Planets and the debut EP Are You Real, Cristobal Leedy? is here. We asked Chris Mullan to review it.
EP: Are You Real, Cristobal Leedy?
Band: Stray Planets
Release date: November 7 2025
Are You Real, Cristobal Leedy? – the new EP from Dublin’s John Butler under his Stray Planets alias arrives on the crest of a genuine wave of buzz that’s been bubbling through the city’s underground scene for the last three years.
Active under different monikers (you might recognise Tigers of Tin Pan) and prolific since Stray Planets’ inception in 2023 through a steady release of singles, Are You Real, Cristobal Leedy? is Butler’s first truly cohesive offering – an extended play where in just under 19 minutes you are asked to pull down the genre-defining walls in your mind and let him and producer Rian Trench (Solar Bears, Panikatax, RÚN) spill out of your headphones in a sort of cosmic, psychedelic pop soup.
Pop soup. I’m going to keep that one.
It is undoubtedly a human record, a melodic record – but there is a conscious effort to disrupt, confuse and perhaps confront a very real mechanical and electronic future
The EP is not a redefining of the earlier Stray Planets releases; there is indeed a psychedelia that happily traverses through the young catalogue - though perhaps Butler is wielding a little more freedom here. It is undoubtedly a human record, a melodic record – but there is a conscious effort to disrupt, confuse and perhaps confront a very real mechanical and electronic future that seems to be a theme on Are You Real.
Seeking out the weird and at times unsettling, it is a progression of sound from mere fuzzed out guitars and distorted vocals alone. That is where it stands proudly on its own
It is as if Butler is holding a mirror up to the present world of algorithms and AI slop and cutting it with stark lyricism and honesty alongside Trench’s deft and slick utilisation of the control board, not least on the fantastic lead single Hallucinations, which features an arresting vocal from Gilla Band’s Dara Kiely.
The melody that is surely thriving under a deluge of future-age sounds and fuzz across these five tracks confirms an Irishness at the EP’s core; even when they were trying to melt your speakers in the early 1990’s, My Bloody Valentine (and later, Fontaines D.C.) could not escape an inherently Irish melodicism that poured naturally into albums like Isn’t Anything and Loveless.
I’ve written two articles in the last two years on the shoegaze renaissance in Ireland and further afield. And while Stray Planets could certainly fall under the umbrella, AreYou Real, Cristobal Leedy? offers a welcome evolution of those soundscapes.
Seeking out the weird and at times unsettling, it is a progression of sound from mere fuzzed out guitars and distorted vocals alone. That is where it stands proudly on its own.
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