Twelve of Ireland’s finest have got together to release a new compilation of new music this Friday, with all proceeds going towards the Irish Regugee Council. Named European Endless: 12, the release includes contributions from Arvo Party, The Bonk, This Ship Argo, Blank Screen TVs and supergroup Kopfkino formed for the release, featuring members of Junk Drawer, Electric Octopus, Space Shepherds and Nomadic Rituals, plus a few more.
The compilation was sparked by Will Cagney Murphy of Blank Screen TVs, reflecting on a year of lockdown and the effects on people’s experiences, all different but all centred around the same ‘existential threat’. Following a line of many artists who have used their art and their platform for charity during this time, all proceeds from the release will go towards the Irish Refugee Council.“If there is any group that fully understands the psychological toll of a life which bears a shocking resemblance to Waiting For Godot but with an added existential threat, it is refugees, particularly in this country’s system of enforced-purgatory.”
The brief given to the collected twelve artists was based upon a simple, but creatively rich idea, a twelve minute piece driven by a ‘motorik beat’. The genre, form and structure did not matter. What followed is a stunning set of musically diverse long form originals from a wide variety of Irish musicians. Kopfkino sounds like a seventies jam in the vein of a Pink Floyd live set, Julia McConway’s ‘Four Walls’ is all lo-fi beats and scattered spoken word while This Ship Argo imagines a synthed out train journey on ‘East To The North Coast’, to mention just a few of the release’s tracks.
“The beat represents the fact that while we’ve all decided to go different routes musically, we’re all chained to the same rhythm. All of our stories are unique, but they’re all structurally the same.“
- Arvo Party – Kraftfahrzeug
- The Bonk – Ten Thousand Steps
- Whozyerman? – Months On End
- L.C.F. – Pat McDonagh t/a Supermacs vs McDonald’s International
- Roly – Holy Motorik
- Homoterribilis. – all theft is art
- Julia McConway – Four Walls
- Cynthia Access Point – February
- Blank Screen TVs – Apple Tree
- Kopfkino – Kopfkino
- Fixity – Ask Yourself
- This Ship Argo – East to the North Coast
The compilation is available now to pre-order on Bandcamp ahead of its release on Friday 30th April, and will appear on streaming services in the near future as well. A fantastically original collection of new music that continues the tradition of artists creating for a good cause.
