Tag: album

Wires album liner notes

I’ve been busying myself making the special funders edition version of the cd covers, but also putting together an online version of extended album liner notes here on the website. It’s one thing I’ve always loved about CDs and Vinyl records – being able to pore over the pages of lyrics while listening, or look at the photographs, see who the musicians are on each song, and read the little thank you notes. It’s something that’s less easy to do when you’re buying music digitally.

But with this online version I’ve put together, you can listen to the album in full, investigate songs individually and see the lyrics, musician credits, and read about the recording experience, or what inspired the song in some cases. There’s some photos from behind the scenes in the recording studio, in the printmaking studio, and now in the dancers studio too. Each page will be updated as more of the videos get shot and made available online, and I’m toying with the idea of putting up some music score parts for some of the songs in future as well. So, the liner notes are something that will hopefully continue to grow and develop over the next few months as I keep realising the “Wires” project fully and will then be a wonderful document of the record when it’s time to move on to the next project.

So, why not grab a cuppa, and Check out the liner notes as they are right now.

Album launch nights in Galway and Dublin

I’ve organised two little intimate gigs to launch the album – one here in Galway, which seems only apt, and one in Dublin too. I hope most of the people who helped fund the record over on Fund:it can make it to one of those two nights, and celebrate the end product of a lot of hard work, grit, determination and enjoyment. I’m really so pleased to have been able to do this record and it really has been worth it. I quite like the album itself, and I’m very proud of it. I can only hope at this stage that other people listen to it and that some of those people will like it enough to listen to it some more.

The Galway date is November 30th, upstairs in the Róisín Dubh, and the following day is the date in Dublin on Dec 1st in the Loft space in the Twisted Pepper – which is also home to Elastic Witch record shop, which is one of the retailers here that will be stocking the record. The wonderful Wing Nut record store in the Bell, Book & Candle bookshop will also be stocking it, and I’ll update if any more stores do stock it.

But you will be able to buy it directly from this site too, through my bandcamp page, when the album goes live online. Bandcamp is also the best place to buy the album as a digital download, as quite frankly, more of the money goes to me that way instead of to other middlemen. But the album will be sent to iTunes music store and other digital retailers, which I will post links to when the album is live on those stores.

Mastering, gigging and a free download

Mastering is an interesting art. I was able to attend the mastering session for my record at Wav Mastering in Limerick, and experienced the recordings gaining more definition and going from being a bunch of tracks that I’d recorded to being an album that made sense to listen to. I find it hard to explain exactly what it’s like without resorting to a bread analogy – so imagine you’ve made 12 loaves but baked them just as a round of dough on a tray. Now, imagine all those 12 loaves were baked in the same loaf tin instead. They still will taste the same, but they’ll look more uniform as a result. I guess that’s how I see mastering. I don’t know if that even makes sense – but it works in my head and I hope in yours too.

I was due to play at Song Cycle in Whelan’s last monday, as a sort of prep for myself to road-test some of the really new songs I’ve never played to an audience before. However, the mental floods in Dublin that evening meant that the evening didn’t go ahead at all, so apologies to anyone who may have braved the weather to make it in.

I wanted to play those songs live before playing them at the Jazz Festival gig tomorrow, but alas, they’ll just get their first outing at that gig instead. So, if you’re around Cork for the weekend, drop into the Festival Club on Sunday evening, and I’m playing in the Legends Suite.

I’d been hoping to have the record ready and out there before the Jazz gig, but various things always seem to crop up to add to the delay. But that’s really helped and added to the whole learning process. These last 6 months have been one big learning curve for me, and comparing the demos I was doing at home before going into the studio with the finished album I have now is mindblowing to me at times. But I wanted to be able to start sharing some of it with people, so here’s a track called “Helen” which you can listen to and download for free via Bandcamp. I hope you enjoy it, and spread it around. The full album will be available in November, all things going to my now re-adjusted plan: