Brigid Mae Power: 'I Left Myself For A While' video

I directed and edited this video for Brigid's beautiful 'I Left Myself For A While', a single (backed with a lovely rendition of My Lagan Love, my favourite trad cover she does - here's an old off-the-cuff version from the car park) that's out today on Tomkins Square Records - get it here (and her gorgeous album on that label is here). One of my favourite things I've worked on.

Stats

Inis Weird Episode 35: (take over)

Galvia, 1984

Le Ton Mité in Éire

I'm playing my first gig for a while next week (two actually, I'll be playing in Athlone a couple of days after) supporting Le Ton Mité, which is McCloud Zicmuse's band. I haven't met McCloud yet, but he's a good friend of Takashi's so I'm looking forward to meeting him, and building instruments with him at the workshops! Playing after me will be Clang Sayne, which should pretty flipping great. I've pretty much nailed down what I'm gonna do for my set; it'll revolve around banjo and walkie talkies, which go together like peas and pods.
Here's McCloud/Le Ton Mité in action:





And Clang Sayne:
And myself:

Temporary Field

Another collection of recordings. This time it's a series of short instrumental improvisations on a beautiful Bontempi chord organ (looks a little like this one, and of the distant sort Daniel Johnston uses on 'Yip/Jump Music'). The fan/motor on this thing is so noisy, and I think when I first got it I never thought I would record with it because of this failing, but after a while I grew to love it and of course there is no reason in the world not to record with it. If anything, there's more reason. That background hum of the fan fundamentally shapes the sound (as well as, y'know actually producing the sound), and is an irrevocable part of the object's character. It's like its heartbeat. Or its lungs, if we're being anatomically accurate with our analogies. I love the sound of it starting up, the clunky switch and the slow build-up as the fan does its thing. Keeping the keys held down while starting up leads to a lovely fade-in effect, and the reverse effect when shutting it down. 

I bought  it in the SVP a few years ago, and have since passed it on to Dave, who I'm sure will get much use out of it. In fact, this particular chord organ has already made appearances in some of his Raising Holy Sparks albums. 

These recordings were very straightforward; a matter of just deciding to sit down and do something for an hour. The only editing was for the sake of cutting out the clicking sounds of switching on and off the recorder. 

The prints that can be bought along with the music are experiments I made with a macro lens, out of date film and some nicely coloured objects; plastics and the like. They're pretty much blatant attempts to ape Wynn Bullock's beautiful 'colour light abstractions'. I made a post with these and more photos at the time, viewable here and here. 

 'Temporary Field' occurred to me as a name in the same way the decision to sit down and record, and take photographs occurred to me. Which is I don't know what. I suppose it refers to the moment of having an idea or an urge and then following through on it immediately. Ideas like this feel temporary; 'motivation' and 'inspiration' are blurred together sometimes; often it's hard to tell which came first. I see ideas as something like the worlds found at the top of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree; the ideas are there all the time, constantly shifting and rotating above the door into the creative mind, or whatever it is. Each time you open the door there's a different idea, and then it's just a matter of stepping through and seeing what's in there. You inhabit it for a time and then come back out in time for tea. Or maybe you don't and you never leave it. No more tea for you then.

Abandon Reason, Episode 1

The first episode of a radio sort-of-show I've put together from recordings made in the car park with various amazing people is now streaming over on Curious Broadcast (the player is about halfway down that page, just after the list of contributors). There'll be 7 more episodes after that, airing fortnightly, with the odd bits of debris washing up on this Soundcloud.

After sitting on so much incredible material it feels good to get it out into the world and have friends and strangers alike hear it. When visiting the space by myself or showing it to other people there was never really any plan for the recordings, it just seemed right that everything be recorded (well, almost everything). After two years this amounted to 80+ gigabytes of sound, photographs and videos. The idea to present it in the form of a radio show only came a few months ago when talking to Ray Wingnut (after a Sideshow play) about Curious Broadcast, a new internet radio station based in Tallaght on the lookout for something from the more experimental end. It was semi-impulsive, putting together a first episode and sending off a proposal to John, the guy in charge there, but it felt like the right way of going about it, of bringing these dark burrowings up into the light. And I'm happy with how it turned out. As much as possible each recording is given its own space, with very little overlap. This was important to me as otherwise it could turn into one long forcibly textured piece. I wanted each recording to be about itself, to hopefully communicate what it was like at that moment to be there experiencing it (which is an impossible aim but trying is its own goal), rather than impose a form of my own on them by mixing them with other recordings.

The first episode features Aaron Coyne, Brigid Power Ryce, Vicky Langan, Gavin Prior, Dave Colohan and Alice McDowell. Episode 2 will air on the 19th of September.

Cork, 17 / 18-8-12

'Whispered Sun' video

Jimmy Monaghan came up with an ace concept for a video for Yawning Chasm and it was executed quickly and easily yesterday evening in Jimmy's front room, ably assisted by Jason Kane.

Get the Whispered Sun EP for naught here.

And now for the very special "Behind the Scene Is" bit:

Phalanx Glove

I finally got around to making a video for this.  I hit upon the idea by accident this evening and here we are well,  here I am anyways.

"Yzz" is here anyway.

Blank Jack Davy and Peter Delaney in the sitting room

Burrows in St.Patrick's Church Waterford supporting Katie Kim + Miscellany

 

 

Burrows' In Winter - go geddit

Car park video #2: Gavin Prior

Brigid Power Ryce Underground 23-10-11

Driftwood Manor tour, July 2011 - with Yawning Chasm, At Last an Atlas, Music for Dead Birds

Athlone, The Passionfruit Theatre 16-7-11

The Driftwood Manor

Dublin, Hefty Horse at Anseo 17-7

At Last an Atlas

Belmullet Civic Centre, Mayo 19/7

Music for Dead Birds

Wireless Folk at the Raggle Taggle Consortium, Limerick 21/7

Quinn's Rustic Vaults, Tuam 23-7

 Thanks to Sarah Mixtapes for taking a lovely photo, in shaky conditions, of Yawning Chasm:

Weirdly enough, I made a plan and followed through on it. Only a mild one, mind, but still - take photos of the gigs on the tour with black and white film, and the inbetweeny bits with colour digital.  Unweirdly enough, it took me months to get the film developed.