"If I lean out of the attic window in my house I can see the lights of the Millenium Spire on O' Connell Street and can smell the briney breeze that blows across North Strand. I came to live in Dublin some years ago and found myself working for an eccentric art dealer with a penchant forBonaparte memorabilia. I would paint murals and such to satisfy her whims, adorning the walls and tables of her library and bedroom with golden bees, acrylic Napoleonic portraits , grizzly bears smoking cigars, that sort of thing.
It was around this time I started looking for gigs in local clubs and venues. Music was always there in some form but only gradually asserted itself on me.I wrote my first album A Strange Kind in a Rathmines bedsit and recorded it on a shoestring budget in a Music Resource centre in Dublin and then released it myself in Ireland in 1999 on the tail end of that same shoestring.
Then late in the year 2000 in a rare moment of self assuredness, I picked up the phone and called Steve Albini and asked him if he would be into recording an album with me. After a few minutes, he said 'Yes absolutely'. I couldn't believe it.Then in April 2001, thanks to an Arts Council grant, I boarded a flight to O' Hare Airport with my cello and drum playing pals Kate Ellis and Tom Haugh to commence a 5 day live-in recording session at Electrical Audio in Chicago.The album was recorded and mixed in five days. All the ten songs were recorded live with vocals, electric guitar, drums and cello all going to tape simultaneously. At the end of the week, Mr Albini helped me pack up the 2 " session tapes in cardboard boxes and gaffa tape. I entrusted the boxes to Tom who was heading back to Dublin before me.I took a plane to visit my cousin Patricia in New York and spent a week there wandering around Williamsburg and Manhattan taking photographs and looking up friends who had set up camp there. When I got back to Ireland I developed the rolls of film. Then in one of the pictures I noticed tiny letters scrawled on a Soho wall. I hadn't noticed them there when I had taken the photo.I knew right away I was looking at the title of my new record.
The words resonated with me.
When You Are Here You Are Family my second album came into to being. The following year, 2002,a fine fellow called Ben Goldberg from USA label, 'Ba Da Bing! ' Records contacted me and offered to release 'A Strange Kind' and 'When You Are Here You Are Family' in the same year. Then came A Northern Country in 2004 which I recorded with Tom in my flat and my sister's house. It came out on Ba Da Bing! in the USA and Misplaced Music in the UK. It was that year when I was first invited to play at The Fence Collective's Homegame festival in Fife, Scotland.So much stems , in some roundabout way, from that weekend.
After that I found myself being invited to tour with some wonderful people.. sharing the stage / tour bus with Hood, Silver Jews, James Yorkston, members of Espers, Adem,Jose Gonzalez, various members of The Fence Collective, playing festivals like Greenman in Wales, Electric Picnic, Homefires, a few tours of the USA and radio stints for WFMU with the dear Irene Trudel in New Jersey and New York.
Then in 2007 came Long Distance Swimmer. I made this album while I was house sitting for my sister and taking care of Rosy, her Dalmatian. Stephen Shannon engineered and mixed. We removed most of the furniture from many of the rooms and created a sound proof fortress from mattresses. Most of the recording was done in a week but we spent the best part of a year intermittently mixing. The album was released on the, then fledgling label, Tin Angel Records run by Richard Guy in Coventry and was nominated for The Choice Music Prize (The Irish equivalent of the Mercury) I suppose it was this record that seems to have reached more people and gained somewhat more attention then I had previously been used to.
For the last three years I've been doing a lot of the live shows with Emma Smith and Vince Sipprell. Emma plays violin, Vince plays viola. They both live in London and as a duo they call themselves 'Geese'. I also work a lot with members of the Dublin band, Halfset and Thomas Haugh aka 'Hulk', Finnish baroque string player Marja Tuhkanen and cellist, Kevin Murphy.
I've just finished album number five and it's called 'Season Of The Sparks'.Somebody told me recently that there is a lot of light on this record which is a nice thing to hear. I wrote it in my attic and recorded it with Stephen Shannon at his studio, Experimental Audio in Dublin. Emma and Vince play on many of the tracks (We finally managed to make a record together!). The preliminary release date is April 24th 2009 on Tin Angel Records. "
(Adrian Crowley, March 2009)
Discography
A Strange Kind (Ba Da Bing! 2002)
When You Are Here You Are Family (Ba Da Bing! ,2002)
A Northern Country (Ba Da Bing! / Misplaced Music, 2004)
Long Distance Swimmer (Tin Angel Records, 2007)
Season Of The Sparks (Tin Angel Records, 2009)
www.myspace.com/adriancrowley