Caretaker (Requiem)

A few weeks back on my social media I shared the last song on my album ‘The Rest’, called ‘Caretaker (Requiem)’ and I just wanted to record it here, on my website as well. The song was a tribute to a friend of mine, Mícheál Gormley who I worked with. Mícheál came to lots of our gigs at Sligo Live, we played lots of music together and had great, (extensive!) music chats. He also played the bass and for this reason I have a little bassline running through the song. Although I put the album out in October 2020, I didn’t get to deliver the record to his family until recently and that was quite a touching moment.

The song was a tribute to Mícheál but also seemed fitting as I had some other loss in my family leading up to the release of the album and of course the pandemic brought its own existential weight to bear on everything. The title for the album ‘The Rest’ comes from Hamlet’s last words ‘the rest is silence’ and I managed to fit those beautiful words into the song too.

Kudos are due to Enda Reilly who I asked for a second opinion on the song, as I wanted to do it justice and sometimes you need someone objective.

‘the ocean takes back its islands’

Focus

Hi friend, I wanted to pass on this new song. I wrote it after Electric Picnic a few years ago, in what seems like another world. But it's not another world. It's the same world. Awful things are happening but alongside them beautiful things are happening too. My daughter is learning to cycle with a determined  little heart. My students are showing up for class online and trying to make sense of huge change. And I want to make new music.

The song's called 'Focus' and comes from an album called 'The Rest'. I had some shows lined up to support its release which won't go ahead just now, of course, but I will share new work over the next while which I look forward to.

Focus

Song by Pearse McGloughlin. Music by Pearse, Billy and Enda.

Production by Darragh Nolan. 

Beautiful artwork by my uncle Eoin MacLochlainn 

FOCUS

Strange summer evening

Autumn wind blowing

Lurching from coast to coast

Blowing hot, blowing cold

And you drew everything 

You knew everything

You gave focus

Red eyed morning

New light dawning

Coasting from pole to pole

Bowing low

For your glowing soul

And you drew everything

You knew everything

You drew focus

Where do your horses run?

When the seasons over

Do you tell them to gallop on

By bullets by boulders 

All horses fall up on 

The thorns of winter

May all horses overcome

Their bruises and splinters

And you swing with the tides and the moon

Fear can take over

When you’re burned and you’re spurned and you’re shunned

But your spirit’s stronger

So you speak with a seeing tongue

Though you shake

Though you shiver

All that  blossoms is not born in the black of winter.

'Twine' at Workman's Club, Dublin

Pearse McGloughlin & Nocturnes perform 'Twine' from the album In Movement at The Workman's Club in Dublin, on April 25th 2019. www.pearsemcgloughlin.com www.pearsemcgloughlin.bandcamp.com www.facebook.com/sweetnocturnes Shot and Edited by Emil Damyanov (Limereel) Music: Intro on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/pearsemcgloughlin/playlist/4LTwltMG2Hslz0ACq0rUx1?si=tWES918zQxGpoB0sfz5HgQ

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

Rehearsal video of 'Humans' by Nocturnes from forthcoming EP by the band. Camera by Eoin McGloughlin and Kevin McGloughlin Video edited by Kevin McGloughlin Live audio recorded by Nocturnes Music by Nocturnes Nocturnes have featured on BBC Radio Ulster, RTE, Today FM as well as on Jason Kramer's show on KCRW.

Visual Piece for 'Dear Infant'

Visual Piece by Fionn MacArthur, Lakeside Productions 'Dear Infant' is taken from 'The Soft Animal' by Nocturnes "subtle elements of the fantastical" - The Irish Times 'The time has come for Pearse McGloughlin's ever-evolving cosmic groove merchants. Their recent album The Soft Animal is our favourite Irish record of the year - do yourself a favour and get it immediately'....

Hi folks, 

Here's a sweet new video for 'Dear Infant' shot by Fionn MacArthur of Lakeside Productions. 

Stream the track here on Spotify.

Playlists

Remember blogs? I used to post blogs on MySpace quite frequently but the instant-hit of posts on social media seems to have replaced such missives. 

So, I'm going to write about playlists which, with the growth of streaming services like Spotify, seem to be on the increase. There are downsides to this. Recording artists love to produce albums. Every year the Choice Music Prize in Ireland highlights the great number of albums produced in Ireland alone. The album occupies a similar mileu to the feature length movie from a filmmaker or to the exhibition from the visual artist. And similarly to these mediums the album allows its creator room and space to explore a particular mood, theme or notion. It's a spacious form and in its best incarnation, carefully constructed. So is it sacrilege to pull these works apart, to cherrypick the best tracks? I don't think that it is. I like playlists.

Playlisting, to me, allows tracks to exist within a new context which can breathe fresh life into a  song. I used to work on Raidió na Life in Dublin where I had a show called 'An Uair Dhraiochta'. I produced the programme for years in a voluntary capacity. As the show aired on a Sunday evening, I tended to play mellow, atmospheric tracks and I grew a bit of a knack for playlisting. I enjoyed finding new music and meeting new bands who, like myself, wanted to connect with people who loved music, and who hopefully appreciated their music too. So, putting together a playlist for my Spotify profile, which I entitled 'Nocturnal Listening: Ambience & Atmosphere'. I started off with artists like Massive Attack, Max Richter, Lisa Hannigan and Chihei Hatakeyma, artists who in some way touched off or inspired my own work. And when I placed my own songs from Idiot Songs & Nocturnes in the playlist I was really pleased to find that they sat alongside these pieces really nicely, it was a playlist I myself would enjoy! So, I felt pretty proud about that, proud of the songs me and Enda Roche in Nocturnes and my collaborator Justin Grounds in Idiot Songs have produced over the last number of years.

You can keep an eye on the playlist below. I'll keep changing it and adding to it. 

P

The Soft Animal - Nocturnes - Album Trailer

Architect

Architect (Online Version) Video created by Kevin McGloughlin. Technical Details. 50.8 x 50.8 cm (1920 x 1920 ) This video is made entirely from photographs and video footage. Various techniques in time-lapse photography and long exposure photography are incorporated with real time footage. The variety of images were later digitally manipulated and stacked in a 3d environment. Music, 'Fireweight', composed by Pearse McGloughlin Please watch in HD and fullscreen. This piece is an entry to the Hennessy Portrait Prize 2015. Head over to The Creators Project where Beckett Mufson says nice things about the clip :) http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/artist-creates-an-extradimensional-portrait-of-his-dad

This amazing video is a portrait of my father Páraic and was created by my brother Kevin. I composed the music for it, a piece called 'Fireweight'.