VARIOUS ARTISTS - Speak Wreck Speak!
‘Speak Wreck Speak!’ is an EP of brand new material that features contributions from Adrian Crowley, Simon Fisher Turner, Stephen Murray, Sean O’Hagan and Mike Smalle. Part of an ongoing series of titles issued by Bring Your Own Hammer in association with Dimple Discs whereby composers, singers and musicians are tasked with creating work inspired by histories of shipwrecks and storms in the 19th century, its three tracks capture the stories of some of those shipwrecks and storms and explore their connections to Ireland.
The EP opens with ‘The Sound Of Light’ by Stephen Murray and Mike Smalle, offering a haunting meditation on the ‘graves of the yellow men’ situated on the coast of Co. Clare in the west of Ireland. Little is known about them other than they were foreign-born sailors who were shipwrecked. It is followed by ‘The Wreck Of The Julia’ by Adrian Crowley and Sean O’Hagan, which explores the story of The Julia, a ship that was dashed against Golam Head in Co. Galway on 2nd January 1873, and the havoc that ensued in the surrounding area in the weeks thereafter. The final track, ‘Exile’, by Simon Fisher Turner and Mike Smalle, is based on a letter written to John Kelly and his wife in Ireland by Thomas Reilly in 1848. Reilly was living in New York, ‘very sad, very lonely, very poor’, regarding himself as a ‘slave in the land of liberty’. He describes his treacherous journey across the Atlantic and a storm that had ‘the force and noise of a thousand sledgehammers upon so many anvils’.
Adrian Crowley is an award-winning songwriter, singer and composer based in Dublin. Noted for his uniquely dark poetic sensibility and an arrestingly resonant voice, his just released new album ‘Measure Of Joy’ has been compared to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and Bill Callahan, but the potency of his rich baritone voice and haunting lyrical narratives, amid settings that alternate sweeping sonic majesty with ghostly starkness, is uniquely his own.
Simon Fisher Turner is a well-known musician, composer and actor who is currently working with film makers Kamal Aljafari and Daisy Dickinson. He is also preparing new Live setups. Always eating too many sweets. Living in NYC by the Hudson River. Constantly on the move. Children have grown up. It’s raining. Thinking of new songs to sing. Always not writing down ideas. Always making new sounds from life. Always ready. Just ask. May peace prevail on earth.
Stephen Murray is a poet, educator, surfer, songwriter, history junky and adventurer from the west of Ireland. His third poetry collection, 'The Sleep Thief', is due for imminent publication via Salmon Poetry. He is also working on a collection of video poems, 'The Little Book of Nightmares', under the non de plume HeadLit.
Sean O’Hagan is an Irish singer and songwriter who has led the avant-pop act The High Llamas since founding the band in 1992. He is also known for being half of the songwriting duo (with Cathal Coughlan) in Microdisney and for his work during the early 1990s with Stereolab.
Mike Smalle is a musician, songwriter and producer from the west of Ireland. He has issued music as cane141, Augustus & John and B-Movie Lightning, but has been releasing under his own name since 2021. He is currently working on a series of collaborations for the music and history project Bring Your Own Hammer.
Bring Your Own Hammer (BYOH) brings historians and composers together to create new song cycles based on historical sources and to reinterpret song material rooted in the history of 19th century Ireland and of the Irish diaspora. It is not a band, a group, an ensemble or even a collective. If anything, it is a faction, but unlike 19th century Irish factions, who met, armed with sticks and two-handed wattles in fairs and markets, it is armed with voices and instruments and dedicated, as no faction before, to the reinterpretation of historical material in song form.
