Unknown Songs by Katie Gerardine O'Neill

"The songs are unfinished, unpolished and meant to be kind of lost to the ether. They were played in old book shops in Eastern Europe and in dusty churches in London. They're not for here." Said O'Neill. The woman who wrote these songs doesn't exist; not in our reality. Written in a 100-year-old house; the black mold on the walls seeped into the songs. There is a gentle vulnerability to the tracks laced with a palpable confusion. Explosions of cello meet hand played drums and whispering tape hiss. Songs like 'Talking Wall' capture the grief and chaos of abandonment and displacement. Despite this often heavy atmosphere, hope reigns, as in songs like the 'You and I'. 'Ode to Electricity' sees the artist blend with pure sound, an exercise in transcendence. The track was made when O'Neill heard electrical interference on a Tascam recording device and decided to make it a part of the album - "it was as if the walls started talking to me, expressing their own history, pain, and secrets papered over behind years of cheap floral wallpaper."

Songs recorded at home on an 8-track tape recorder.
Mastered by Richard Thompson.
Released on Little L records in very limited numbers.
Photograph by Ciara J Burke.

Katie Gerardine O’Neill is an artist from Dublin, Ireland. O'Neill's experimental sound combines voice, field recordings, analogue recorders, and electronics.

katie-oneill.com
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