I recently came back from a week long stay in the Isle of Man. One of the highlights was spending time at the Mann Cat Sanctuary. If you're feeling generous, Paypal them a donation here!
Some more holiday photos here.
Photo by Bríd O'Donovan
The Wire's Global Ear visits Cork in their August 2011 issue. Daniel Spicer takes a look at the Quiet Club, Strange Attractor, Black Sun (Cork), Wölflinge, SAFE, Vomit Nest, The Guesthouse, National Sculpture Factory, Sonic Vigil and the Crawford Art Gallery.
Meitheal (Irish pronunciation: [ˈmɛhəl]) is the trio of Vicky Langan from Galway, David Colohan of Longford and Mike Gangloff of Virginia. All are deeply involved in esoteric musical forms of various kinds (Wölflinge, Raising Holy Sparks and Pelt respectively) but each succumbs to the irresistible pull of some kind of folk music, both through influences weighing on their aforementioned identities and via, for example, Langan’s deep involvement in the Irish Sacred Harp community and Gangloff’s fiddle and voice in old-time trio the Black Twig Pickers.
Meitheal was born earlier this year when Colohan arranged a series of solo Irish dates for Gangloff, leading to an inevitable three-way throwdown that drew from their collective well of ancient music lore and their skills as improvisors. Meitheal is still very much an embryonic entity, we fully admit – no releases, one gig under their belts, no one’s ever heard of them – but knowing them individually, combined with being blown away by the 8 minutes that appeared on Youtube means we had to have them here.
We don’t doubt that when you hear them, you’ll know why.
Hullo all!
This will be the final Black Sun music-event in Cork, for the foreseeable future at least. Those keeping an eye on us last week will have seen the news that we're teaming up with the Triskel Arts Centreto continue our programming of experimental cinema. If you live in Ireland, please take a minute to check out our first programme! We're as proud as anything to be presenting day-long events devoted exclusively to experimental cinema at Triskel Christchurch.
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Photo by Declan Q KellyOn March 8th 2012, a solar storm was passing over the Earth. Three friends sat down to play together for the first time. A new trio, Meitheal, was borne out of charged particles and warm conversation.
Presented in association with Triskel Christchurch, Black Sun, Cork’s weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On a Sunday afternoon this August (date will be confirmed next week), adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present:
- American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color, Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen everything...
- Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way again. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
- And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain, will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal.
Although best known as an experimental music event, Black Sun is also Cork’s only year-round platform for screening experimental film. For over two years, Black Sun’s film programmes have given Cork an all-too-rare taste of the more far-out side of cinema. It has established an impressive track record of world-class film programming, introducing Irish audiences to the work of several major underground filmmakers for the first time. This is the first of what will become regular Black Sun events devoted exclusively to film.
Today on Facebook, I posted a link to an interview that Bill Kouligas did with Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records. Something Eric said (in response to Bill asking him about the religious or spiritual lean of much of the labels output) sparked off memories of the feeling of pure joy, ecstasy and love I've gotten from singing Sacred Harp music with friends over the years, an otherworldly sensation that lifts you up out of yourself into something very, awake and raw.
"I definitely think a lot of artists, Christian or not, on our label are channeled into a heavy, unexplainable frequency that I yearn to get closer to. I don’t believe in Christianity by any means—I’m a lifelong Buddhist—but I gotta respect the light that comes out of some of that faith’s music. Spiritual music from any culture is always the best music."
I'd been meaning to share the news for a while now that the 2011 Irish Sacred Harp Convention recordings are now available to stream download on the Cork Sacred Harp Bandcamp page. It's quite extraordinary listening back to these recordings. I'm especially grateful to have a way of reliving one of the most profoundly moving musical experiences of my life. In the tradition of the convention, halfway through the day's singing, we break for 'dinner on the grounds', a huge pot-luck feast we all share together. After the break, it's somebody's responsibility (decided well in advance) to lead the call-back, the song that will get everybody back to their seats and back into action again.
For this, our first convention, it was my responsibility to do the call-back, and I was so incredibly nervous of doing something wrong that I could barely eat. In the usual run of things, there is a keyer who chooses the pitch of every song (or most songs), everybody gets their notes together, holds them, and then the song takes off. In this instance, I was bent over with butterflies made of stone inside me, wondering how I was going to start singing in a room of over a hundred people still eating, drinking and in conversation. So, not knowing that I was supposed to call out the number of the song I wanted to lead, (so that everybody could scramble for their books and take their places) I stood in the middle of the hollow square and began to belt it out, not knowing what was going to happen next. Everyone was caught a little off guard but within seconds, the wave of voices that swept over me was like nothing I've ever experienced.
I love so many things about this recording. I can hear the nervous waver in my voice, I smile at the the uneven pause between verses, and melt into the recognisable timbres of so many friends voices. I remember relaxing into the moment, being carried by so many people who were all singing for their lives during that song. The strength of it was something else. Sacred Harp is a music that makes me feel the total weight of despair, as well as the utter joy of being alive and I hope to stay tuned into the unexplainable frequency for as long as I live.
The following is a repost from the http://corksacredharp.com/ website.
Complete First Ireland Convention Recordings Online
Our own 4-track audio recordings of the first Ireland Sacred Harp convention (March 5th & 6th, 2011) have finally been mixed, edited and sent out into world.
The results can be found on our brand-new Bandcamp page. There, virtually every single unique song that was sung over the weekend can be heard. The tracks have been compiled such that each day of the convention is presented in album form, with the songs listed in the same order in which they were called.
Both “albums” can be downloaded in their entirety, for free, and in an array of high-quality file formats. Alternatively, individual songs can be streamed directly from the page itself.
It goes without saying that this first Ireland convention was very special for us and the recordings help rouse some truly fond memories. It means a lot to be able to share them with wider community. All going well, the videos will follow before long.
Now… Go! Listen!
http://corksacredharp.bandcamp.com/
When I was a kid, my three friends and I split a newspaper round. We delivered the Galway Advertiser, all around St Marys Road, Henry Street, 'the West', Palmyra Avenue, Palmyra Park, The Crescent, all the way up to the very top of Taylors Hill. We'd come home from school on a Thursday and there'd be a big stack of them bound up for us, reeking of newspaper. You'd get a scissors and snap open the ties and *thacckk*, they'd all seem to breathe at once.
We each had our own way of loading them into our bags, our own preference of how to fold them just so, our favourite type of letter box, our favourite gardens on the route and we all had our own house that we dreamed of owning when we grew up.
We won 'deliverers of the month' when I was nine, and I remember being so proud, getting to visit the Galway Advertiser office to get our photo taken. Anyway, today felt a little strange remembering how 'everywhere' the Galway Advertiser is. I've been getting loads of nice messages and hullos from lots of people from my past who've happened upon the piece today in all sorts of places.
Click on the image to be brought to the online version. Thanks to Charlie for the great chat. He had some job editing my blather down I'd say. x
Thanks to Stu/Luxury Mollusc for the photo of Paul and myself at the Zbigniew Karkowski gig in the Pavilion last Sunday. We haven't played together as Des Amis in a year so it was interesting seeing where we'd pick up from. Surreal & domestic, as ever.
Well, my evening has been made tonight! Some strong words here from Bernard Clarke of Nova - RTÉ lyric fm recommending my upcoming show at the Galway Arts Centre on Sat May 19th. Thanks so much to Bernard for his support.
" There are some musicians who entertain us, fine; some who stimulate us, better; and then some who immerse us in something so powerful that, almost, primal emotions surface instantly; making us ultra-defensive, or, finally open to illumination. One of the latter is Vicky Langan. So if you're in the West this coming Saturday evening and you feel like really stirring up a storm in yourself, check her out at the Galway Arts Centre at 8pm. You may love her, hate her, be astonished, be repelled-but you will not be unmoved. Promise. In a world of bland s**te we need to treasure artists like this -even if they burn... "
Bernard Clarke reading "Themes and Variations" as part of Child of Tree: A Celebration Of John Cage, Triskel Christchurch, Cork, 28 January 2012. Photograph by Robin Parmar.
As part of Judas Steer -Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) at the Galway Arts Centre, on Saturday May 19th, myself and Max Le Cain will be screening our newly finished film DIRT for the first time.
Below are some stills...
Photo by softblackstar
Judas Steer
Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) at the Galway Arts Centre, May 19th.
€5 / BYOB / 8PM
http://www.galwayartscentre.ie/events/view-event/192.html
Vicky Langan is a Galway-born, Cork-based performer and curator whose “vulnerable, emotionally charged performances” (The Wire) have marked her out as one of the most challenging and unsettling presences on the Irish scene today. Her work is multifaceted, embracing not only various types of performance but also filmmaking and organising experimental music events. In this event, she will be bringing these three strands of her practice back home, giving Galway audiences a rare, concentrated one-night blast of the intensity that has made her a force to be reckoned with in Cork.
Judas Steer will feature Langan as performer, filmmaker and curator. Her solo performance project, Wölflinge, uses flesh, fluid and self-built instruments to envelop audiences in an aura of dark intimacy. In opening herself emotionally, she creates warm yet discomforting rituals that at once embrace the viewers and remain resolutely private. Not only will Langan be performing, but she will also present an exhibition of recreations, relics and leavings of past performances. In partnership with experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain, Langan has created a series of films that expand the scope of her performance activities. Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms have proved a strikingly fitting match to her troubling sensibility. Four Langan/Le Cain films will be screened, including the premiere of a brand new work.
No account of Langan’s accomplishments is complete without mention of Black Sun, Cork’s legendary weirdo/outer limits music event which she founded in 2009 and has curated ever since. Her DJ set, which closes the evening, will give a powerful taste of the sort of strange sounds that have earned Black Sun its international reputation.
