ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Ryan Vail - For Every Silence
An album inspired by a 89-year-old restored but unloved piano? Sounds like the plot of children's story Sparky's Magic Piano. The Derry musician Vail's fascination with the instrument in question does more than concern itself with the sound that is possible with it. For one, there's history behind the piano that connects the player to his wife's family back to its origins in England in 1927 and forms the basis of a loose narrative throughout For Every Silence. It features as a sample recording of a speech by the original owner.
Vail doesn't overindulge. There are plenty of piano chords and notes ringing out but as is his custom, there's also much ambient and electronic textures at play. Not only that but violinist Rachael Boyd adds to the nostalgia, Seattle poet Hexxr frames the work and Ryan's wife Katie contributes. Highlights include the soaring choral vocal of Eoin O’Callaghan (Best Boy Grip) on
Under The White Wash
, the spiked synthesizer of
Wounds
and the contemporary electronica of
Never
.
SONGS OF THE WEEK
Kygo featuring James Vincent McMorrow - I'm In Love
While James Vincent McMorrow is on relative downtime from his own project (but still playing shows worldwide), the singer features on the new single from reforming tropical house producer Kygo. McMorrow's soulful falsetto anchors the Norwegian's euphoric string production some genuine emotion.
The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock - The Bullet in the Brick
One of the most interesting music commemoration projects active this year has come from Dublin's The Spook Of The Thirteenth Lock, via a guitar orchestra playing songs in movements about the 1913 Lockout. For their latest piece, the band addressed the Easter Rising directly, taking inspiration from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, the bombing of Dublin by the British gunship
The Helga
and the murder and botched cover-up of Francis Sheehy Skeffington.
The Bullet in the Brick
is the middle movement of a triptych.
Romeo - See Me Before
The 20-year-old Nigerian and Irish singer and rapper Romeo takes his cues from dancehall, African dance and hip-hop.
See Me Before
is a mesh of those styles from his musical make up.
Daithí - April ft Sinead White
After their skyscraping electro-pop banger of a collaboration, Daithí and Sinead White return to the scene of the crime for more fiddle-assisted dance pop from the recent
Tribes
EP.
NEW ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Pine The Pilcrow
Having formed less than a year ago, Pine The Pilcrow are a band who have made a decent name for themselves with quiet and considered music. The trio of Hannah Ryan on fiddle, Kevin Murray on piano and Robert Campbell on cello released their debut EP last month and it's a promising collection of gentle, cinematic and melancholic music, that just shies away from the brink of anthemic balladry.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Sisterix - The Foggy Dew
Sisters Síomha and Ornait Hennessy along with cousin Natalie Ní Chasaide. Ornait Hennessy shared their melancholy-heightened version of
The Foggy Dew
in the same week as the 1916 rising. The band suggested the female rendition of the battle song, “is apt considering all the women who were involved in the Rising, and subsequently written out of the history books.”
