Collaborators
Conor campbell
One of Limerick’s finest, Conor Campbell, and I first met sum 5 years ago through mutual friends and instantly bonded over our shared love of ambient music. What really sealed the deal was his knowledge of Satoshi Ashikawa’s work. It wasn’t long before we began work on an E.P. called Monachopsis, which comprised compositions inspired by a selection of Conor’s paintings. A year or two later we both became fascinated by the story of Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad. One of the more well-known stories of Irish mythology.
We began work on the project in late 2020. It was probably the hardest album I’ve ever worked on for multiple reasons. While I was writing and recording the music, Conor was working on a triptych that would be a visual accompaniment to my music. As I saw the beauty of Conor’s work take form I felt the pressure to write something to match it.
Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad's battle and final moment
On a more technical level, the mixing process for Umcheol was quite dramatic as I nearly lost all the album’s files at one stage. When I eventually recovered them and started anew, my laptop was struggling to process all the files at the same time. This resulted in Side B of the record being split into two project files, which saw me having to overlap each layer of the music once it had been rendered. It was as awkward and frustrating as it sounds.
Thankfully, this creative journey had a happy ending and we’re both incredibly proud of Umcheol. One day we hope to begin work on a follow-up record to Umcheol but I still need to get over the trauma of mixing the first one.
Barry Gibbons
One of my chief collaborators and sources of inspiration, Barry has been with me every step of the way since the 2018 digital release of Laistigh den Ghleo. We grew artistically together and have continued to work with one another on a multitude of my releases including An Fhuaim is Caoine, Oscailte, The Exquisite Corpse Shall Drink the New Wine, Umcheol and Ar Ais Arís.
The influence Barry’s art has had on my own creative process is profound and has informed the shape of my own sound. His presence and the inspiration I draw from his work have resulted in some of my finest work and I’ll forever be thankful to consider him first and foremost a friend.
ALBERT KARCH
Albert and I first became aware of each other’s work after a piece from Laistigh den Ghleo was featured on a Polish radio show discussing Japanese ambient music. Albert had at this point released his album Celestially Light, which was also inspired by the work of Satoshi Ashikawa. Although we didn’t see eye to eye on a few matters concerning Ashikawa’s concept we bonded over nearly everything else and became fast friends. We finally met in the Autumn of 2021 after only messaging and speaking over the phone. Since, we have only grown closer as friends and collaborators.
In January of 2023, I flew to Warsaw where Albert and I were to spend a week working on a collection of pieces we had written the year prior during a residency in Ghent. In actual fact, we ended up writing and recorded a brand new album in his apartment. This album in particular felt like the culmination of a decade’s worth of artistic and personal growth for both of us. Albert and I occupied each other’s creative space quite profoundly during this time and we both agreed it to be a considerable milestone for both our friendship and creative development. I don’t think either of us were prepared for the depth of understanding we had for each other’s creative process.
A few months later, I returned to a sunnier Warsaw where we recorded the pieces written in Ghent. Engineering the project with Albert was Piotr Zabrodski, who so kindly let us use his home recording studio. Across two days, we recorded three pieces of ambient music for Piano, Vibraphone and Synthesis. Joining us in the studio was Vibraphonist, Miłosz Pękala, who’s considered ear and touch shaped the album so beautifully. At the time of writing, neither of these albums have been released as Albert and I are trying to find a record label to call our home. Let’s see where the rest of the year takes us….
C.R Gillespie
I first came across Colin’s album Concentration Patterns mid 2020 and was immediately captivated. I don’t tend to like ambient music that is dense in nature but Colin’s approach was somehow so open and concerned with space. I reached out to Colin to thank him for his music and we quickly became friends. We continued to chat with one another and over time a collaboration was on the cards, we just didn’t know how to go about it. The initial spark was a recording of Colin bowing a guzheng and from then on we were playing musical tennis with one another. The ideas were flowing fast and it got to the stage where we were finishing each other’s musical thoughts. One day, when Colin was walking home to his apartment in Toronto, he came across an abandoned Zither in a skip. Colin quickly nabbed it and took it home with him. Once the Zither came into the fray this accelerated the creative process tenfold and within no time we were finished The Exquisite Corpse.
We began work on the album in late July of 2021 and within 2 and a half weeks we had the album written, recorded and mixed. One week on from that we had Hidden Harmony Recordings on board for a vinyl release and a few weeks after that Ben Rawlin’s had mastered the album. Colin and I are still shocked at how smooth the whole process was especially considering that we have never met each other before. Two months later while we were on a zoom call with Barry Gibbons we spoke to one another for the first time via video call. We would have to wait another two years before we finally met in person when I flew to Lisbon in June of 2023 to join Colin’s family and friends who were on holiday. It was such a lovely weekend and I got to meet Colin’s daughter who was born a month and a half before we began work on our album. In fact, you can hear Frankie gurgling towards the end of The Exquisite Corpse’s Side A. Colin and I are planning on working together in the future but I guess we’ll just have to wait until he finds another instrument left in a skip.
Noah Buffini Higgs
When I’m writing music, I usually have an understanding of the mood or character of a sound that informs a working title, whether it be in Irish or English. The odd time, I’ll have a title such as Ar Ais Arís from the beginning, but more often than not, Noah will shape an idea into a more natural and poetic form in the Irish language. Noah is one of my oldest friends. We met as teenagers in school and haven’t stopped making each other laugh and supporting each other’s creative process.
Noah has helped title most if not all of my albums and songs since Laistigh den Ghleo. My favourite example of Noah’s creative significance to my music comes during the creation of Umcheol. At the time we were desperately trying to come up with a new word for ambient music in Irish. And, rather than me describing it any further, I believe it more apt to include an expanded version of Noah’s Liner notes for Umcheol;
Umcheol is a term in Irish for ‘ambient music’, and was given as a name to this album to represent its mixing of Gaelic storytelling and the ambient musical tradition. The word was first said on a very special sunny afternoon when Gareth, Conor and I were together. There was no word for ‘ambient music’ in the Irish dictionaries at the time, and there wasn’t even a great translation for ‘ambient.’ So, we were coming up with something fresh for the Irish ambient tradition, but we wanted it to sound less academic than the direct translation ceol timpeallach. Umcheol is meant to mean ‘something that pervades and melts into its surroundings.’
Um is a preposition with no equivalent in English. I describe it as ‘about, near, surrounding, throughout’ when talking about a space or period of time. You could think of it as in the vicinity of. From what I understand of ambient music, that describes its function. The idea is that umcheol can be a soundscape that is about, near and throughout its space, pervading it and melting into it; fitting in.
More importantly, ceol means music. It’s familiar to most Irish people. I hope that makes umcheol easier to think about and that people might connect with it. I love the term, and I’m grateful that Gareth (dlúthchara liom) decided to leverage our language to enhance his artistic statement
I always enjoy the stage of a song or album’s creative journey when I get to pay Noah a visit. Usually, we will sit and listen to the new material while we have long back and forths considering possible song titles and album names. It’s always a healthy moment in the new music’s journey when I get to step out of writing/mixing the music and get to be creative in a different way with one of my dearest friends.