[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ndrew Hozier Byrne has been recording and performing music for years, but his latest EP has seen him arrive at the foreground of Irish music. His Take me to Church EP has been earning well deserved plaudits from musicians, journalists and music fans alike. His debut single, Take Me to Church, is a raw, uncompromising look at the problems of homophobia, its political undertones echoing the recent LGBT violence in Russia.

Hozier, an extremely modest individual, was taken aback by the soaring popularity of his debut single; “I didn’t see it taking off in the way that it did, but I’m thrilled that people are impressed by it. It’s the fact that the message is there for people to think about that makes me proud to be apart of such a project.”

His music has been lauded by musical institutions such as Billboard, who penned his musical maturity as the “birth of a buzz,” a term Hozier doesn’t read much into: “I just want to concentrate on the next stuff. There’s definitely a bit of pressure added on and it is easy to lose the run of yourself I guess but I just want to keep the head down. The reaction has been good in my eyes and that’s great.”

Perhaps what is most interesting about Hozier’s music is the fact that he has never been particularly happy with it. Raised on an eclectic mix of rhythm, roots and blues, he had never been entirely satisfied with anything coming out of the studio in the past. This time around, he recorded the whole arrangement at home and sent it to the label asking them to “stop everything else we were working on. They liked it so we went from there.”

At this point in time, Hozier is enjoying making music individually, a fact largely represented by his newest EP which he produced almost entirely by himself. When asked about the decision to record his music individually, Hozier divulged, “it’s just because I’ve had difficulty being fully happy with collaborations and things like that. Individually it’s a slow process but it’s a process that’s entirely your own and you hash it out yourself, that way you can stand over it and say I did it and I made that decision.”

Many people will recognize Hozier and his soul-infused voice from his days with the Trinity Orchestra, a time he described as a break from his own work, “almost like a little holiday where I didn’t have to critique my own music, I got to get up there and sing songs by incredible artists. If you’re going to do covers, do it with an orchestra!”

Like countless others, Hozier is hugely impressed and optimistic about the recent Irish music scene. His politically tinged lyrics reflect the upsurge in new Irish talent, a movement he believes to be a backlash against the X-Factor culture combined with our unemployment-blighted economy and people having more time on their hands to be creative.

What now for Hozier? He told tn2 that he plans to start working on a new EP within the coming months: “I’ll be writing as much as possible and recording and arranging the stuff, then I’ll be going into the studio in mid-November to lash out the next couple of tracks and hopefully have an EP in the new year. We’ve a few gigs in December too but apart from that I want to take some quiet time and think about the next EP, the bar has been set high which is good!”