ADRIAN CROWLEY

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. 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.

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 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. Stephen Shannon engineered and mixed. 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 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)