Folklore by GavinDaVinci: EP Review

by admin September 24, 2025

September 24, 2025

With Folklore, Irish rapper and producer GavinDaVinci reclaims one of Ireland’s oldest traditions, oral storytelling, and reframes it through the hard-edged reality of the 2000s and 2010s drug trade. Structured around the seven Catholic sacraments, the EP maps a cycle of entry, commitment, temptation, and reckoning, each track standing as a ritual in its own right. The project has the cadence of the seanchaithe, those myth-spinners who once blurred legend and lived history, but here the myths are replaced with memories of fractured families, street violence, and the toll of addiction.

The opening track, “Let Lying Dogs Sleep,” comes with shimmering melodies and quick percussion carrying Gavin’s cool, measured delivery. Yet beneath that restraint lies a world bristling with danger. He goes like, “Spent my whole life looking over my shoulders, sleeping with one eye open,” conveying how his exhaustion has been hardened by constant vigilance. The verse swings between bravado and vulnerability, his voice both survivor’s armor and storyteller’s confession, echoing the sacrament of Baptism, an initiation not into grace, but into the underworld.

Midway through, “6 Foot Under” comes with an eerie, echoing intro, as if a ghost were singing from behind stone walls. When Gavin enters, his pace slows to a dirge, as he contemplates forgiveness and mortality. The line, “Death to a man is nothing but living in silence,” captures the way despair numbs more than it kills, with reconciliation framed as a struggle with God and self.

The closer, “Run2Water,” featuring Hazey Haze and Strange Boy, bursts forward with biting urgency and suspenseful music. They go sharp and relentless, while competing for air. The track embodies inevitability, as the sacrament of Holy Orders is warped into a binding oath sealed in violence.

Listen to the mystique of GavinDaVinci’s Folklore on Spotify.