THE BURREN MOUNT Hotel in Salthill has long exercised fascination on, and prompted speculation within, the public mind, but also on artists, having been portrayed by painter Jennifer Cunningham, and more recently through a musical interpretation by The Cube Of Unknowing.
Burren Mount is a new ambient/electronic album by The Cube Of Unknowing - aka, County Galway composer Francis Heery, now based in Berlin - and released through the Irish label Fort Evil Fruit.
The album features two tracks, both are suites of music, composed of different elements, many of which take inspirational cues from various parts of Salthill andn Galway city. The track running order is, Side 1: 'Tonabrocky', 'Offshore (Part I )', 'Untitled I', 'Sites and Fibre Network', 'Untitled II', 'Thunder Storm – SM – Pylons', 'Grass Verge', 'Untitled III', 'International Technologies', and '...know that story...'; Side 2: 'Offshore (Part II ), 'Kon – Tiki', 'Untitled IV, 'Seapoint', 'This Must Be The Place', 'Verhoeven', 'A New Mystery', '...white visitation...', 'Untitled V'.
"The album was initially conceived as a genuine contemporary folk album," says Francis, "although it doesn't sound anything like 'folk' obviously! - but rather music that is inspired directly by a specific place, comes from a specific place, is dedicated to a specific place, and is written in a kind of vernacular musical language. It's specifically about Galway."
The album seeks to imagine a kind of alternative Galway, one, as Francis explains, of "late night end-credits, displaced soundtracks, straight-to-video erotica, unidentified radio transmissions and covert experiments in the basement of the local ESB station..."
Burren Mount can be downloaded through www.fortevilfruit.bandcamp.com See also www.francisheery.com
