2022
On the last night of August ’22, I ventured to the nocturnal life-blood of Madrid to watch an old touring friend of mine play a sold out show. Armed with just his guitar and some heartfelt words he continued to absolutely raise the roof from the rafters as he had the 3000+ capacity crowd screaming his words back to him. The elation was beyond palpable. It was truly inspiring to be a part of that exchange of spirit energy.
So the next day having promised to share some new music with him I considered my options. Do I send a fully produced track, or maybe a half produced demo, or do I try to give back some of that spirit that he gave in the form of a live performance? I chose the latter and set myself up a single mic for my voice and a cable from my guitar in the basement of where I was staying in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama. I pressed play and rambled on.
What emerged, to my ears at least, has a quality that I find almost impossible to capture in any environment other than that of a live arena. I was totally oblivious to the microphone other than considering it to be a vessel for communication. There was no pressure to get a perfect take. All I had to do was to inhabit the songs and put some fearless energy into the work. I had to get out of my own way and not prejudge my true expression.
As someone who often struggles to enjoy over produced music yet finds himself beholden to commit to such a delivery in many working moments; as it is the want of the industry in which I partake to seek such ‘perfection’, I find it so liberating and emboldening to surrender to the release of such a pure moment in time. I am reminded of the possibility that when the lights go out in the external world a light comes on within. One needs few tools save for a guitar and a song to commit truth to such an artistically pure moment. Everything else is just stuff. Now, this is not to state that I do not believe that technology provides amazing tools for musical voyaging; on the contrary, I am a supporter and a practitioner of art via live-looping and experimentation as well. But I do believe that a good song must stand up in unadorned fashion before it can be thrown to the wolves of experimentation.
So, I am very happy to present this 4 track EP in order that you the listener can hopefully enjoy a moment of purity in a world hellbent on obfuscation. A moment that is becoming increasingly rare to find in the music charts and radio stations of the modern age.
You will hear some hard to hear utterances at the end of a couple of tracks as I was speaking between the songs and was taken aback by connecting so deeply with the subject matter of the songs. But that is live music. Full of reality. Full of scars. Full of beauty.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoy these songs please share them.
2013
This mellow e.p. has a charm that would eventually lead toward the sounds to be mined for my full length album ‘Ode’. Again featuring my good friend Gitta de Ridder on guest vocals these 3 tracks are just acoustic, electric, glockenspiel, melodica and foot stomp.
The track ‘Soul Getter’ was written in the basement of a house in the Sierra de Guadarrama just north of Madrid whilst my, at the time, partner was pregnant with our son Oskar.
I love the poetic ambiguity of the songs. And the bounce!
2010
Building on all that came before and elevating it to a previously unchartered place where all of the influences and elements of years of musical adventure are woven together on one animal of an album. I wrote, produced, recorded, mixed and lived and breathed this album in my coffin shaped room on Graham Road in Hackney.
In some moments thew album feels like a fresh mountain breeze, at others you can barely inhale for traffic fumes. Such was the impact of the noise of a big city on a guy who grew up in Co. Kerry, South West Ireland that it could not be prevented from impeding upon my sonic landscape and I embraced it fully.
This album is meant to be imbibed from start to finish in order to draw in the creative scope I was aiming for. I wanted to blend together elements of Jon Martyn, Mike Oldfield, Slayer, Leftfield to create a cinematic voyage. Sure, it has flaws a plenty but I loved the process of making such a mental record. Touring it was epic too!
It was more than a stepping stone. It was a ladder to a new level of musicality for me.
2010
Taken from the forthcoming ‘Weave’ album and featuring LAMB singer Lou Rhodes on BV’s, this song has always been a super hard hitter for me. The lyrics are some of my most treasured creations thus far as they detail the painful journey from being loved and loveable to slowly becoming hurt and hurtful.. oh how the cycle still runs rings around our psyches.
‘Broken Fragile’ was my experimental version, one that preceded the ‘Weave’ version. Created using loop pedals, octave pedals, violin bows on acoustic guitars, tapped guitar body drums and other synthey fx. It is a very dark sister.
2008
Invader’ was a song I begun to write whilst on the road with Passenger in the US. It has such a strange tuning offering a dissonance that brought the lyrics out of the shell. It speaks of an invasion by love, and a resistance to the invasion as if it would always be untrustworthy as something to rely on.
‘Amy’ appears of the Weave album with a modified lyric as it was considered clunky to use the word ‘Institution’. However, this song is about someone who is afraid to speak up as if a prisoner of silence, so I felt compelled to release this version in order to honour the harshness of such a self imposed sentence.
2005
This was to be the last release I created in Ireland before I moved to London in 2005/6. I was reeling from my lack of success with Pillarcats and felt like boating into experimental waters, quite literally as the 3 songs are bookended by a waterfall soundtrack from TORC in Killarney
Rough as the production may be around the edges I love the statement it makes and this stood me well moving forth into the, as yet distant, ‘Weave’ album.
These days ‘Benburb Street’ certainly sounds better as a straight up folk song but I wanted to have fun and lean toward something new.
‘So You Wanna be an Angel’ is a straight up raw live take that I could never repeat. Everything that needed to be said had been said.
Live favourite ‘Test-Drive Sunrise’ was such a joy to play. It was a live looping treadmill that I could play for hours filled with the kind of energetic ‘hope will prevail’ end refrain that I still need so much in life.
Flaws have edges. Edges have flaws. Humans have edges…
2003
In 2003 after a 2 year lay off from a Tuberculosis infection I headed into the studio with producer Ruairi O’Flaherty to make a new record. We spent an initial 4 days tracking live drums and bass with Graven Gallagher and Jason O’Driscoll before finishing my guitar overdubs and vocals over the following months.
‘Pillarcats’ was an album that never got to where it could have done. As is the way with my music, it never really fitted into any specific genre. Was it rock, was in singer-songwriter, was it pop? It was experimental but as always underpinned by guitar parts and heartfelt lyrics. I tried many things with this record to get out out of the water but some things didn’t flow and for many years I switched off from this record.
Nowadays when I hear it I can hear a lot of beautiful things. Solid songwriting and guitar playing and vocalist trying to find his way. Ruairi O’Flaherty added some lovely delicate touches to the production and it is an album that I am very happy to have made.
‘Unbelievable Ways’ is one of my favourite songs to date. The guitar part is such a nimble shapeshifter. This song is where the wordplay ‘Pillarcats’ came up. Long live our freedom to change.
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