Room Temperature is very proud to announce its first printed publication in the form of a 36 page book of recent drawings, Imaginary Geographies in a limited edition of 50 only. This is a collection of 10 drawings made between 2019 and 2021. The book contains a 4,000 word essay, Metallic Blue Turned Red With Rust (only available in printed form) and 20 archive photos of Dublin in the 90s.
I recently wrote an essay for A Sound Map Of Dunloaghaire, Everybody Hears The Hum At 3am - Sound Marks, Memory Prompts and Possible Futures, reflecting on the sonic landmarks and associated memories of my younger days.
My latest album, Plate Spinning, has just been released. It is available via Bandcamp in digital form, and in a very limited physical edition of 25 only.
It's 5.45pm, so time to reveal the fruits of my recent labours. 5.45 was the time Andy Gill once mentioned the 'red spot in the egg' which confused me (I've never seen any red spot Andy, watcha tawkin' abaht ?). I've done another tribute piece, even though I'd kind of decided I wasn't going to do any more after spending two and a half months on the Bowie one last year. However, this one's not about any band or singers but rather an entire clutch of bands and singers in my attempt to capture the spirit of post-punk and the excitement of first hearing it as a teenager. I've built a plunderphonic pot-pourri of forensically scalpeled song segments, sliced and diced and overlaid in surprising new configurations, moving swiftly via various tempo matches and shifts and uncanny harmonies with disparate melodies. It's post-punk pinball, bouncing manically between multiple points along the '77 - '81 timeline.
Digitized slide film photos of a performance in Dunlaoghaire School of Art & Design (DLSAD, now IADT) courtyard, 12.5.86, with fellow students, Ian Conroy, Sean Kelleghan and Ken Hardy. A somewhat shambolic affair despite a few rehearsals of a sort in the basement of the derelict remains of the yet-to-be-developed 'old building' as we used to call it (a former training centre for Christian Novitiates). Rain came down at one point but didn't didn't stop play. There is a recording but it's not great quality due to wind and rain on the mic, and not particularly great playing as I remember it.
Photos by Sheila Gorman
Rooting around the archive recently and gave this a spin for the first time in a very long time and was pleasantly surprised.. decent quality, and the playing ain't 'alf bad either. Improvised performance for my DLSAD (IADT) graduate show opening in 1987 with local friend and bass player Michael Mullen (who went on to play with Dublin bands Tension and Wheel). I made these contraptions with salvaged metals that were crudely welded together. They use a mixture of hubcaps and other small metals, flat steel, oil drums, car suspension springs and beer barrels which have been sliced in half and hung from a scaffold (heard at end of performance). These were purloined under cover of darkness from a nearby watering hole and set to the next day with an angle grinder. I still have them. I had seen the Bow Gamelan perform with Bob Cobbing at the ICA in London the previous summer and was completely fired up on my return and wanted to explore metals in a similar manner. I was also taking a leaf or two out of the work of Test Dept., Einsturzende Neubauten, Tools You Can Trust and z'ev, whose music I found exciting and inspiring.
Photos by Sheila Gorman
