Composing for Haiku Sequence by Stephen James Smith

I’ve really enjoyed working on a series of haiku for poet Stephen James Smith alongside my brothers Kevin and Páraic who were working on the videos. I recorded Stephen in my house and composed the music alongside Billy Donohue from my band Nocturnes. We had a lot of fun recording the poems - some of them are particularly moving and some of them are funny, some of them are thoughtful and earnest.

Stephen is an inspiring guy to work with. I’ve known him since he started the Glór sessions, a music and poetry night which used to run in Dublin a few years back. We always said we would worked together at some point so it’s been a treat to make these videos and also to collaborate with my brothers, all in the same project. Here’s Stephen delivering a brilliant performance on The Late Late in London last weekend.

We’ll have a full video shortly of all the pieces together.

P

Arena with Páraic McGloughlin

Hi folks,

My brother Páraic made a stunning visual piece which is gaining a daycent amount of traction on Vimeo at the moment. I worked with Páraic on the sound design and music. Check it out below and buy the track here. 

Pretty amazing stuff.

Also, I put out a new track a few weeks back, quietly releasing it digitally. It's called 'Rapture'. You can find it and follow it on this playlist which is a complete collection of recent years' work. There's also an Irish language version called 'Lúcháir'.

P

Tracks from Pearse McGloughlin's albums, projects and collaborations: 'Busy Whisper' (2009) 'In Movement' (2012) 'Idiot Songs' with Justin Grounds (2013), 'The Soft Animal' by Nocturnes (2016) as well as two Irish language songs, 'Scagadh' and 'Ag Ól, ag ól ag an Garbhóg' and 'Jongmyo Shrine'.

Humans / Duine De Chruach

I recorded English & Irish versions of this song because when we were recording it we were asked to do a set at Puball Gaeilge at Electric Picnic.
The track is a hopeful one; it sees that challenges and setbacks are
a part of life and admires the effort we make to overcome such moments.

Listen to both versions of ‘Humans’ on this playlist. Please follow, add and save your favourites on Spotify.

“a subtly-affecting midpoint between balmy electronica and somnambulant ambience" The Thin Air

"powerful vocals" - Nialler9

“conducting lush wisps of electronic synths and beats through the air like a multi-coloured potion of neon cloud" Remy’s Blog

 

Tracks from Pearse McGloughlin's albums, projects and collaborations: 'Busy Whisper' (2009) 'In Movement' (2012) 'Idiot Songs' with Justin Grounds (2013), 'The Soft Animal' by Nocturnes (2016) as well as two Irish language songs, 'Scagadh' and 'Ag Ól, ag ól ag an Garbhóg' and 'Jongmyo Shrine'.

Workman's Gig to launch 'Humans'

Thanks a million to everyone who came out to our launch show for our new single 'Humans'. Laura Rai and Arch Motors did beautiful opening sets and Nocturnes were graced with the presence of my good friend Justin Grounds (Idiot Songs) as well as Billy Donohue, Enda Roche, Christophe Capewell and Sweeney Lee. It was a great night of sharing music. Also big thanks to Colin McKeown and Mark Willis for their excellent visual work.

We've put out the track 'Humans' as a bilingual release. There is both an Irish language and an English language version.  My father Páraic helped me with the translations. If you like the track here you can help us by adding it by saving it and adding it to your playlists. 

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Also we have some nice new t-shirts printed by Pulled with the design by Kevin. Pick up one here. 

Thanks!

P

HUMANS { new live video }

Last week there was an open call for the Other Voices IMRO Other Room. I thought it would be fun to turn our rehearsal into a live recording of a new song as a submission. So, my brothers Kevin and Eoin came up from Sligo to shoot us in Billy's place. We set up quickly and did a couple of takes. One mic, two cameras. I'm very happy with it as we don't have many live recordings of Nocturnes and there was a lovely natural energy and momentum in the evening. 

Big thanks to Billy, Niamh and Séamus for allowing us to turn their house into a makeshift studio and to Kevin and Eoin for doing the visuals so well.

We will release the studio recording of the song before the year is out. 

In the meantime, our next stop is Nighthawks at Cobalt Café on October 7th.

Be sure to see the flowers,

Pearse

Green Sleeves | In Movement

Recently I was at an exhibition of Irish records in The National Print Museum as the sleeve for In Movement was being exhibited there alongside lots of  albums ranging from the 1950s up to the present day. It's safe to say there've been many dodgy album covers. Also, there've been lots of quite strange looking people on album covers. I was honoured to be included. 

In Movement is an album design I'm proud of and kudos must be given to Stephen Kiernan (a talented drummer and graphic designer) for bringing it to life. We did a creative shoot for the cover with Kieran O'Donoghue, whom I'd met via the Life's No Picnic On the Streets project I had worked on with Depaul Ireland. Kieran also allowed us to use some of his very fine photography from an exhibition he had based around Chernobyl and the vacated areas there. Truly powerful work.

As we wandered around the exhibition I felt the whispering of Yeatsian ghosts; 'What then.?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?' I know how much labour and effort can go into a record. And here was but a small portion of releases. Phantoms of yesterday. Forgotten, mostly. 'Look upon my works ye mighty and despair'. Bit of that. But how could it be any other way? 

I often get people asking about this cover. There's a trick there. Can you work it out?  

 

Notes from the Mississippi

Hi! So earlier this week we put out the new video for 'On The Mississippi'. When we've played this live we've often invited a poet up to see out the end of the song with a spoken word piece. Amongst our glittering alumni have been: Stephen Murphy, Stephen James Smith, Sweeney Lee, Erin Fornoff, Catherine Anne Cullen, VJ Jackson and Patrick Curley. This has been a highlight of the set in recent months and a great opportunity to share the stage with the sparkling talent of our poet folk. There's a short clip of Patrick Curley performing with us below for the Beneath The Air series in The Model, Sligo last October.

Enda Roche and myself recorded the song with Darragh Nolan, and we were lucky to have harmonica player supreme Christian Volkmann track some lovely playing a few weeks later. Here's a short clip of Christian recording at my place in July 2015. 

Originally, the song was a little lullaby. I liked the melody and for me it conjured up a story of adventure and redemption. 

If you like it you can support us by:

Buying from Bandcamp

Buying from iTunes

or by adding and saving to your playlists on Spotify 

Many thanks,

Pearse

New Video for 'On The Mississippi'

 Hi there,

Thanks for dropping by. Here is a video I made for 'On The Mississippi' taken from our recent album 'The Soft Animal'. The track was originally a sort of lullaby I sang with my daughter. Then I started thinking about the lyrics a little and it became a song about beginning afresh, a song about redemption. I shot the video in Louisiana. 

If you like it you can support us by buying the track directly from:

Bandcamp

iTunes

Alternatively, if you are a Spotify user, you can help us out by saving 'On The Mississippi' and adding it to your playlists. 

Thanks a million,

Pearse