Against the crying rattling piano notes and shooting star electric guitar falls of "Dusk" by Winter Aid, the moniker of San Francisco based Irish singer-songwriter Shane Culloty, the melancholia feels drawn from emotional contrasts. While the stridently somber piano that, for me, hits memoric cues of someone like Markéta Irglová, the abstractions run darker, even opaque at times because of Culloty's almost depressive grip...
"we let it be
but i wasted
the ink that flowed from your eyes
i found words
for the wrong things
and it always looks like the same night
it holds you down
beyond the dusk
and the light is fading fast now"
but i wasted
the ink that flowed from your eyes
i found words
for the wrong things
and it always looks like the same night
it holds you down
beyond the dusk
and the light is fading fast now"
... lyrics like an emotionally dark counterweight tethered to Culloty, always pulling at him, always drawing out light out of the lyrical vacuum.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
["Dusk" is featured on the new EP from Shane Culloty, his first new release in 5+ years, after immigrating to the states. Inner Sunset marks this transition with songs that bridges the time between two homes - partly written in both, and completed this year with additional production from Chuck Johnson.]
[The six-song "Inner Sunset" is a largely instrumental affair, with the streets, sounds, and scenery of Culloty’s adopted new home inspiring the four tracks, and filtering into the recordings themselves. Two songs,”Interlude for Shankill” and “Dusk,” date back to life back home in Ireland. Throughout the EP’s six laidback tracks, these landscapes dictate the feel of material, providing both a sense of closure and a new beginning. Inner Sunset was recored by Culloty at his San Francisco apartment, later mixed by Johnson and mastered by Sean Mac Erlaine].
[Winter Aid kicked off his return to music last Autumn with a look back, releasing a 10th anniversary edition of his debut EP, The Wisp Sings via Bluestack Records. Thel title-track single from that record has continued to have a long life, managing to garner well over 300 million streams across all platforms, continually finding a home in daytime television segments, documentaries on BBC and RTE, dramas on HBO and Prime, while soundtracking nearly 3B TikTok posts, a campaign ad for Biden in 2020, and an ad that ran during the 2022 Oscars broadcast.]
[The six-song "Inner Sunset" is a largely instrumental affair, with the streets, sounds, and scenery of Culloty’s adopted new home inspiring the four tracks, and filtering into the recordings themselves. Two songs,”Interlude for Shankill” and “Dusk,” date back to life back home in Ireland. Throughout the EP’s six laidback tracks, these landscapes dictate the feel of material, providing both a sense of closure and a new beginning. Inner Sunset was recored by Culloty at his San Francisco apartment, later mixed by Johnson and mastered by Sean Mac Erlaine].
[Winter Aid kicked off his return to music last Autumn with a look back, releasing a 10th anniversary edition of his debut EP, The Wisp Sings via Bluestack Records. Thel title-track single from that record has continued to have a long life, managing to garner well over 300 million streams across all platforms, continually finding a home in daytime television segments, documentaries on BBC and RTE, dramas on HBO and Prime, while soundtracking nearly 3B TikTok posts, a campaign ad for Biden in 2020, and an ad that ran during the 2022 Oscars broadcast.]
I love dark songs, maybe because they commiserate with feelings that, for whatever reason, feel like they are just moments away at any given time.
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://soundcloud.com/winteraid
https://www.instagram.com/winter.aid
https://www.facebook.com/winteraid
https://twitter.com/winteraid
https://linktr.ee/winteraid
“WINTER AID IS AN IRISH MUSICIAN. HE LIVES IN DUBLIN. HE MOSTLY USES REAL INSTRUMENTS, AND TENDS TO RECORD AND WRITE SPORADICALLY…”
Shane Culloty is the man behind the mask of Winter Aid, a new music project from one of Kerry’s finest sons. Now based in Dublin, Shane started making music when he was a lad and over the last few years has cultivated a delicate and endearing style that is refreshingly un-self-conscious.
Written, recorded, mixed and at home (listen carefully and you can hear the sound of dishes being washed in the background to ‘The Wisp Sings’) his debut EP The Wisp Sings shines a little light on what is to come, featuring three tracks, each containing “a measure of the Irish winter” [State Magazine] underpinned by the sounds of a happy home.
In spring 2017, Winter Aid announced his latest work entitled 'The Murmur of the Land' - a full-length LP "The Murmur of the Land" - a delicate rumination on sadness and solace.
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://soundcloud.com/winteraid
https://www.instagram.com/winter.aid
https://www.facebook.com/winteraid
https://twitter.com/winteraid
https://linktr.ee/winteraid
“WINTER AID IS AN IRISH MUSICIAN. HE LIVES IN DUBLIN. HE MOSTLY USES REAL INSTRUMENTS, AND TENDS TO RECORD AND WRITE SPORADICALLY…”
Shane Culloty is the man behind the mask of Winter Aid, a new music project from one of Kerry’s finest sons. Now based in Dublin, Shane started making music when he was a lad and over the last few years has cultivated a delicate and endearing style that is refreshingly un-self-conscious.
Written, recorded, mixed and at home (listen carefully and you can hear the sound of dishes being washed in the background to ‘The Wisp Sings’) his debut EP The Wisp Sings shines a little light on what is to come, featuring three tracks, each containing “a measure of the Irish winter” [State Magazine] underpinned by the sounds of a happy home.
In spring 2017, Winter Aid announced his latest work entitled 'The Murmur of the Land' - a full-length LP "The Murmur of the Land" - a delicate rumination on sadness and solace.
["Dusk" is featured on the new EP "Inner Sunset" from Shane Culloty, his first new release in 5+ years, after immigrating to the states. Inner Sunset marks this transition with songs that bridges the time between two homes - partly written in both, and completed this year with additional production from Chuck Johnson.]
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