01. Hilary Woods has decisively stepped out of her previous body of work as bassist of JJ72, and into her own element.
02. Debut E.P. Night set the scene, moving from Woods’ old band’s jangles and into darker, more shoegazey territory when premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival. This June saw the release of second extended-player Heartbox, which moves things further forward. Among her collaborators this time around are The Jimmy Cake’s Paul G. Smyth, who manned some of a vast array of synths and handled the artwork on the record.
03. Heartbox is streaming and available for download in the widget above.
04. Woods plays Cork this Sunday night, at the Triskel Arts Centre’s Gulpd Cafe. Tickets are €8 from PLUGD Records, with drone/improv man HAMES in on support.
Verdict: Heartbox is a lush, expansive work that packs a lot into three tracks, and it’ll be interesting to see how all the various layers and elements translate to a live show in an intimate venue.
Walking the line between layered, ambient passages and big, alternative-pop hookplay is Cork-born/London-based singer Lyra.
Beginning at the age of six, she spent her childhood performing in church and at family gatherings, learning the bodhrán in the process, which plays a part in her current live show.
Now based in London, and working with management company Tileyard, she’s finished her debut EP. W.I.L.D., available now across all digital platforms.
To mark the occasion, she’s about to play her first ever Irish shows under the Lyra pseudonym.The ‘sheet’s Mike McGrath-Bryan talks with Lyra ahead of the Cork leg of the show tonight.
Mike McGrath-Bryan: “Your story starts at a young age in Mount Oval, in Cork. Your sister picked up on your aptitude for tunes. How would you describe your musical upbringing?”
Lyra: “Me and my sister were inseparable when we were younger. I’ve always looked up to her and wanted to be exactly like her when I grew up. She has an amazing voice and I used to try and copy her! We would spend days on end making tapes in our bedroom and putting on concerts for anyone who would watch.”
Mike: “Provide us with some insight into your writing and recording process on a piece.”
Lyra: “Writing is very personal to me and I find writing about my life and experiences really therapeutic. I don’t really have a particular method of writing that I stick to – it changes from song to song! Some songs I write at home and then take those ideas to the studio and then some ideas just randomly come to in the studio. Recording the vocals takes a long time as I love layering harmonies and would spend forever and a day adding them if I could.”
Mike: “Your debut E.P. released this past July – how has it been received, how do you feel about it?”
Lyra: “I hope people like it! I’ve had some really lovely messages from people about it from all over the world which is amazing. I’m super proud of my E.P., it’s my first music-baby and I’m excited to have many more.”
Mike: “The artwork and aesthetic is fetching – go into it a little with us?”
Lyra: “Well, being from Ireland I have always been by the sea, it’s my favourite place to be. So an underwater photo shoot was an absolute must from the start. It was a lot of work to get it right but so much fun. Lots of holding my breath!”
Mike: “Nialler9 has already gotten well behind you, how is it to have that kind of support at this stage?”
Lyra: “It’s amazing! Nialler has been a dream, it was so nice to have such a great Irish blogger talk about my music, and I will always be grateful to him for backing me from the very start. I’ve always read the blog, so to be in it is wicked.”
Mike: “Based in London and being active there a lot of the time, do you keep in touch with the scene here at all? What do you make of it?”
Lyra: “I love home and being Irish is something I’m very proud of no matter where I am, so I do keep an ear to the ground to stay in touch as much as possible. I love seeing new Irish artists popping up and I know Ireland hasn’t got a shortage of fantastic singers – I was asked by a UK blog recently to write all about my top upcoming Irish acts – so it was nice to be able to intro the UK audience to more Irish acts that they mightn’t have heard of yet.”
Mike: “You have a hometown show in Cyprus Avenue, after playing Whelan’s in Dublin. What are your thoughts leading into it?”
Lyra: “I get weak at the knees when I think of it…. I am dead excited but I’m also nervous as a lot of my family and friends have never seen me perform before.”
Mike: “What next then, after these two dates?”
Lyra: “I have another announcement coming soon for some further shows… and then it’s studio time for me to finish some new tracks and get more music out there!”
Lyra plays Cyprus Avenue tonight. Kickoff at 8.30, €5 at the door. New E.P. W.I.L.D. is available now.
01. We seem to be at that time in a wave of music/artists where people are reorganising or going on to pastures new, and after Enemies and Starters‘ recent disbandings, comes news of the breakup of electronic duo Solar Bears.
02. Rian Trench and John Kowalski formed the duo in 2009, and across three albums explored electronica’s limits via sampling, synth, tape machine and acoustic instrumentation, veering between ambience and psychedelia.
03. Streaming above is the band’s farewell single, Across Yesteryear, available for free download from the band’s Soundcloud.
04. Speaking in Thump on their breakup, the band kept their statement succinct. “We have decided to call it a day after 8 years together… Thank you to everyone that listened and came to see us play. Major love to (labels) Planet Mu, Sunday Best and (agents) Littlebig for believing in us.”
VERDICT: A sombre parting note that perfectly summarises the band’s essence, bidding good tidings to the universe with a long, slow fade.
Last month, TEDx CorkSalon presented #CorkLovesMusic, a two-night stint of talks and performances in Coughlan’s Live on Douglas Street, from musicians, DJs, singers, promoters, record-shop folk, music therapists and others speaking on their relationship with music.
In the playlist above is night one, hosted by your writer.
Dr. Strangely Strange – the return of legendary folk freaks
What you may need to know…
01. Started in 1967, folk experimentalists Dr. Strangely Strange were among the tenants of legendary Dublin rock lodgings The Orphanage, the same circle of people that produced Phil Lynott and Gary Moore among others.
02. Signing with Joe Boyd, producer/manager for the Incredible String Band, the band released debut LP Kip of the Serenes via Island Records in 1969, and the following year, recruited Moore for follow-up record Heavy Petting. The band disbanded in 1971 after a European tour, and have since reunited on a number of occasions inbetween other work in the arts, including for third LP Alternative Medicine in 1997.
03. Streaming above is one of the band’s calling cards, Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal, from the band’s first full-length.
04. The band plays its first gig in Cork city in over four decades this Sunday at the Kino, as part of IndieCork festival. Tickets €12, including a screening of a short documentary on the band filmed in 2007 before the performance.
VERDICT: One of the bands that helped set the scene for all manner of alternative music and experimentation in this country.
The world’s largest mirrorball, awaiting a lift to Dublin
Metropolis Festival goes down from November 3-5 at the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 the second annual installment of the winter-time weekender.
Aside from a world-class line-up of music, art, conversation and performance, it’ll also have a ginormous mirrorball.
Sez Jenny Headen:
The size of a 3 storey building and covered with over 3,000 mirrored tiles, each the size of an A4 page, the Mirror Ball will take 8 days to build and will require 4 cranes to hoist it up so it can spin and cast its disco spell on Metropolis goers.
Certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as THE biggest mirror ball in the world, it is just one of the many art installations that will be onsite for this multi-disciplined and dynamic festival.
So there you have it. And perfect for Grace Jones on the Saturday.
Enemies – announce split and details of final long-player
What you may need to know…
01. Last time we checked in with Wicklow math/pop quartet Enemies, they’d put out single Play Fire and were gearing up for the festivals.
02. Unfortunately, the band announced this week that they’ll be winding up operations at the end of the year, calling it a day after the completion and release of their final album.
03. Streaming above is itsallwaves, the second single from the album, entitled Valuables. Releases on digital, CD, vinyl and cassette on December 9th via Topshelf Records.
04. Their farewell show will be their biggest ever, when they play Vicar St. in Dublin on December 18.
VERDICT: Another sad loss to Irish music in recent times, albeit a band that leaves a rich and varied body of art behind them, and arguably one of the cornerstones on which Ireland’s math/post-rock scene was built.
01. Bobby and the lads are off in Amerikay at present, pressing the flesh and raking up road miles to support their current 7″ record, Where Did You Get That Milkshake?.
02. It’s somehow the Dublin lo-fi lads’ debut 7″ after a rake of releases, but also their first for Stateside label Emotional Response.
03. We would hope that the video above, for single Do the Mess Around, has not been an accurate portrayal of events thus far.
04. Broadsheet readers situated Stateside might be able to show up and give ’em the shlag. The rest of their tour takes them to the Dev in Utica tonight; tomorrow night to Otto’s Shrunken Head in Manhattan; Candy Apple Island in Bloomfield, NJ on the 2nd, and New Funky Jungle in Providence, RI on the 5th.
VERDICT: Another pop gem the likes of which Bobby Aherne and the boys seem to just have in a stockpile somewhere. Grand.
Researchers at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, have restored what is claimed to be the earliest recording of computer-generated music, created by modern computing patriarch Alan Turing.
Sez The Grauniad:
“Alan Turing’s pioneering work in the late 1940s on transforming the computer into a musical instrument has been largely overlooked,” they said.
The recording was made 65 years ago by a BBC outside-broadcast unit at the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester, England.
The machine, which filled much of the lab’s ground floor, was used to generate three melodies; God Save the King, Baa, Baa Black Sheep, and Glenn Miller’s swing classic In the Mood.
But when UC professor Jack Copeland and composer Jason Long [pictured above] examined the 12-inch (30.5cm) acetate disc containing the music, they found the audio was distorted.
“The frequencies in the recording were not accurate. The recording gave at best only a rough impression of how the computer sounded,” they said. They fixed it with electronic detective work, tweaking the speed of the audio, compensating for a “wobble” in the recording and filtering out extraneous noise.
“It was a beautiful moment when we first heard the true sound of Turing’s computer,” Copeland and Long said in a blogpost on the British Library website.
01. Dublin four-piece Yonen ply an exploratory, proggy, and in places jazzy take on post-rock.
02. Formed after those involved were inspired to do so, upon seeing Japanese instrumental trailblazers Toe perform, they quickly set about releasing a performance video for debut single Nuatum.
03. Streaming above is the band’s most recent single, Sanctos, available for free/pay-what-you-want download via Bandcamp. The whole odyssey was recorded live (!) at Volt Studios and mixed by the band’s guitarists.
04. Catch them this Thursday night at the Roisín Dubh in Galway supporting Brighton’s Poly-Math, and this Saturday night at the Spirit Store in Dundalk, headlining the main stage of the venue’s Oktoberfest proceedings.
VERDICT: Taking elements of the post-rock and math-rock oeuvres and repositioning them as suits the moment, like kids with Lego, Yonen are a joyful proposition to take in.
