Michael O'Shea
Michael O'Shea
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
View more
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
In Stock (Ready To Ship)
Back in stock.
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
Back in stock. CD edition with 12 page booklet
Out of Stock
Boomkat Product Review:
Where to begin with this one. Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - produced by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it’s an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears. First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we’ve developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies to the extent that we spent a good couple of years trying to find out how to license it for reissue. Luckily for us, in 2019, we got this indispensable new edition - the first time the material has been available on vinyl since 1982 and a total ear-opener to a whole new generation of listeners. It’s one of those rare records that anyone we’ve played it to - from diehard music collectors and obscurists to those with no interest in the weird recesses of the music world we often inhabit - demanded to know what it was and where they could buy it.
A busker among other trades, O’Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for ‘My Friend’) - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott’s, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The’s Matt and Tom Johnson.
Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, ‘Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft’ (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O’Shea’s first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist. Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channelled thru a Celtic body, Michael O’Shea’s improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works. Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the ‘Black Hole Space Box’, O’Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.
The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener ‘No Journey’s End’ catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his ’Kerry’ vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from. The plasmic swirl and phasing of ‘Guitar No. 1’ is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist’s underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of ‘Voices’, and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of ‘Anfa Dásachtach’.
Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as; “…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker,” Michael O’Shea’s life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London’s rave scene before he was taken.
Honestly few records have cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush ‘cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O’Shea’s beautifully transcendent music.
More from Allchival:
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLSunshine Give It To Me Allchival Disco / Boogie / Funk- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLRoger Doyle Babel Allchival Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLOperating Theatre Spring is Coming With A Strawberry in the Mouth / Rapid Eye Movements Allchival Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
-
The Threat Live In Limerick (1981) Allchival Industrial / Wave / Electro
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Cassette
-
The Threat Lullaby In C / High Cost Of Living Allchival Industrial / Wave / Electro
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 7"
People who bought this also bought:
-
Carcascara Carcascara II Hegoa Diskak Modern Classical / Ambient
- LP (Black Vinyl)
-
Various Artists As-Shams Archive Vol. 1: South African Jazz, Funk & Soul 1975-1982 AS SHAMS Folk / Roots
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
-
Umm Kulthum Chansons Inédites Elmir Records Folk / Roots
- Colour LP
-
Various Artists I'm Glad About It: The Legacy of Gospel Music in Louisville Louisville Story Program Folk / Roots
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
- 4CD + Book Boxset
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLBOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE Bohren for Beginners Play It Again Sam / [PIAS] Recordings Germany Jazz / Fusion
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 3LP
-
Various Artists Lost Transmissions From the Off-World Territories Invisible Inc Modern Classical / Ambient
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- 2LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLJon Collin & Demdike Stare Fragments Of Nothing DDS Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Colour LP
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLJonnine Blue Hills (Vinyl Edition) Boomkat Editions | Documenting Sound Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- Colour LP
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLPataphysical Hapticality Good Morning Tapes Electronic
- LP (Black Vinyl)
-
FREE MP3 WITH VINYLGav & Jord (Equiknoxx) Writings Ov Tomato MAL Electronic
- MP3
- FLAC
- WAV
- LP (Black Vinyl)