Skully - Without A Voice

Irish Musician and Producer Skully Releases His First Solo Album!!!


Article for The Echo by Mark McAvoy.


SKULLY STEPS OUT OF METISSE SHADOW AND GOES DIGITAL ON HIS NEW ALBUM.

Stepping out of the shadow of his popular and extremely successful duo Metisse, acclaimed Irish musician and producer Skully is blazing a trail to chart success with the release of his eagerly awaited solo album.

The culmination of two years' work, WITHOUT A VOICE (2007) has just been released worldwide and sees the Irish man explore new musical and technological territory.

The Cork-based producer, together with his management, has decided to break new ground with the distribution of his debut album.

Skully reveals : 'This is my first totally digital release. We felt that there was still a demand for CD's but the people that are still looking for them as a group is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, So we decided, lets be brave and just give it a digital release. So this is our first one."

Given the huge success that Metisse have enjoyed in various online Myspace Charts, Its not surprising that Skully would see the obvious merits of a digital online release. The talented Irish music veteran points out : " I'm number two to Metisse at number one. Metisse have been number one for seven months and I have been number two for nearly four months. Metisse are so far ahead that i'll never catch up with them." But it is striking the gap between America and Europe when it comes to using digital music as the famed producer discovered.

He recalls: "America seems to have decided that CD's are a thing of the past. We are using a digital system where we can provide radio stations in America with broadcast quality MP3s, "What we found was that we sent the same player out to radio stations in Ireland and their response was to ask us to send out hard copies. We did the same thing with America but when we sent them out to America we asked them if they required hard copies and none of them did."

WITHOUT A VOICE features 12 instrumental tracks. Asked how he would describe the album, the former REAL MAYONNAIZE front man responds ; " I won't describe it! the wonderful thing about MYSPACE is fans can come back and tell me. The feeling I'm getting back from everybody is that they love the emotion in it. There is a lot of emotion in the songs. There are two very personal piano tracks on the album. "With an instrumental album it is very difficult to vary it, but I'm very happy with the mix of tracks. It jumps from being very electronic to very acoustic to a kind of a strong jazz feel to it and yet it hasn't strayed too far from the Metisse sound."

Released on BLINDFAITH DIGITAL, WITHOUT A VOICE is now available on iTunes.

Fans can hear tracks from the album by visiting Skully's Myspace : www.myspace.com/skullymusic

WITHOUT A VOICE Tracklist:

1. Nomah's Land (for 3 pianos)

2. Arduity Sails By

3. Important Staff Announcement

4. Crime Of Honesty

5. Self Fulfilling Prophecy

6. Trouble

7. The Arcadia Ballroom

8. The Seaport Fudge Factory

9. Gare De Montrabe

10. Release The Balloons

11. It rained That Morning

12. My Waltz With Matilda

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Review of IRISH Makeover!

What you say? Who? Well, there is a reason for this, trust me. My Space friend Skully has just released a very nice CD of Irish classics done up with a very modern twist. He is a master at the keyboards which is where most of the music is generated. His gift with the electronics makes this a very fun album to listen to. He is based in Cork, Ireland, and as it would happen, so is Mairead's younger brother Karl. In fact, Karl has two tracks on this CD. I received my copy, autographed by Skully, as a prize after winning a writing contest of his with a poem. So, here is the run down of the 11 tracks. You can visit the IRISH Makeover site on My Space and order a copy for yourself. You'll want to!

1) Molly Malone- Sung by Myles O'Reilly with instrumentation by Skully. This somewhat somber traditional piece is made very lively. It has a bit of a Mediterranean feel to it. It is the best arrangement I've heard.

2) The Lark- A wonderful instrumental by Skully. It is a gentle piece, and you can visualize a lark flying over the lush Irish countryside and over ancient ruins. It is as free as the bird itself. Lovely indeed.

3) The Lakes Of Pontchartrain- Sung by Mick Flannery with instrumentation by Skully. The voice almost reminds me of Leon Redbone from back in the 70's. It is a slow piece and sort of a lament.

4) Mardyke- Karl Nebitt on Bazouki with Skully in electronic percussion. This again has a bit of a Mediterranean feel to it, and almost nautical. It has a nice beat and is a very catchy tune. Quite the toe tapper. I can easily hear some great possibilities for Mairead fiddle parts in this air. It is obvious that Karl is as gifted as his sister at bringing a tune alive.

5) She Moved Through The Fair- Sung by Myles O'Reilly with instrumentation by Skully. This is a different setting and key than what we know from Meav. It is a soft piece with a nice keyboard break. There even are parts that sound like crickets/birds chirping.

6) Blackbird- Sung by Kate Murphy with Skully doing instrumentation. She has a very distinct Irish accent while singing this. It is a gentle piece that is very reminiscent of 1960's folk songs.

7) King Of The Fairies- Karl is back this time on the low whistle along with some lively instrumentation by Skully. It is a familiar tune that you can hear on LoTD/Feet Of Flames. However, this arrangement has a sort of urban funk about it. Another toe tapper. Is there an instrument that Karl doesn't play well?

8)Scarborough Fair- Sung by Annette Buckley with instrumentation by Skully. Very upbeat arrangement with lively electronic energy to it. This has a great beat and very happy feel about it. Not at all the usual. I like it.

9) Red Is The Rose- An instrumental version by Skully of one of the most well known tunes from Ireland. This is a funky urban rose that is full of life. Fun air that will stick with you.

10) All Around My Hat- Sung by Kate Murphy. I've never heard this song before. It is a very happy song that you could dance to. It almost has a Latin feel at times. A very catchy toe tapper. My favorite of the vocals on this CD.

11) Shirin- An instrumental by Skully. It is very lyrical and almost like a modern waltz. I could see myself waltzing with my love in various parts of the Irish countryside. Lovely.

What People are Saying about IRISH Makeover

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT IRISH MAKEOVER!
Irish Makeover*****Irish Makeover is an enchanting album, full of character, soul and magnificent re-workings of timeless ballads. Cork studio wizard Skully reveals a whole new dimension to his musical talent by teaming up with rising stars to breath new life into classic Irish folk songs. Standout tracks include She Moved Through The Fair featuring Myles O'Reilly of Juno Falls. Myles's dark, eerie vocals fuse perfectly with Skully's instrumentation to capture a mystical, Celtic yet modern sound. The Lakes of Pontchartrain features acclaimed Cork singer songwriter Mick Flannery, who adds his husky Dylanesk vocals to great effect. Other talented musical luminaries who feature on this eleven track record include Cork chanteuse Annette Buckley, talented newcomer Kate Murphy and multi-instrumentalist Karl Nesbitt. Irish Makeover was released nationwide on October 20.*****************************

From the Fans:

Hello and good evening Skully!! My cd arrived today :)))) And I was even more thrilled when I opened it and discovered that you had signed it!!!!!Listening to it now and loving it!!All the best from Turku Finland.love, Eva xx*****************************

It sounds Brilliant!Pete Briquette (Boomtown rats)*****************************

God bless itunes!!! Love your work Skully, it's on the ipod ready to go to work with me tomorrow.Jo*****************************

Congrats on CD release. it really is a fun one to listen toCelticcow*****************************

All around my hat, Maddy Pryor with status quo.You did a wonderful job with it....ed****************************

I have really enjoyed your music and look forward to more. Keep up the good work. HomeAgainKathleen****************************

Thank you,such beautiful music.Robin***************************

wow! love your tracks & especially Blackbird! Who is that awesome singer? Very beautiful voice & awesome instrumentals & arrangements!Qristina & Quinn***************************

you have great songs. i have really gotteninto themTifany***************************

today your MUSIC is like the sunshine after a hurricane Love and PeaceClaudia**************************

Each time I listen to Molly Malone, I get swept away!Julianna**************************

Hi SkullyGreat music - I'm really enjoying listening to your tracks!RegardsPhil*************************

Mardyke! So love the guitar...can't stop listening. Also have to compliment you on your sketch of Molly Malone--she's a favorite character of mine. You've truly captured her indomitable spirit (the one that transcends even death) it's all there ;-) made my day!danni************************

"Mardyke" wow really good music.John************************

Hi Skully.....Love the music. I look forward to the CD. By the way, my family is from Cork County. Have a GREAT DAY!!Lori************************

Enjoying all the music very much!!Hope you have a great week.Blue Moon.L.************************

Thank you, Skully - Love your music! It is fantastic!Rhonda***********************

Thanks for introducing me to you fine music. I really do like your makeovers!Mexicajun***********************

I am LOVING the music that I hear on your MySpace page, and looking forward to getting a CD! Thanks for the add!Jean***********************

nice to have you as mine :) but you can call me tori if you want :) i really like the irish songs... they're pretty fun to dance to... even though that probably sounds odd lolTori***********************

Hello,Thanks for adding me.I really like Style of your Music.Sounds Super Awesome.Greetings from Idaho USA and have a super Week,Ron***********************

Thanks for the add! I'm digging the remixes!Maddie***********************

Thanks for the add. Had a listen to Blackbird. Nice sound... I liked both the voice and the arrangement!Best wishes,AyJay***********************

hi hope your weekend going well. Just jumped in to listen to your music...love red is the rose, although my fav is the blackbird ....will be buying CD for sure...Anne***********************

my god i loved molly mallone, lovely song Cian***********************

THANK YOU so much for adding this song back!!! Scarborough Fair rocks!!Mammajuggz***********************

The feeing is mutual Skully, I have been listening to your music and can say I have another favorite artist to add to my list.thank you Willow :-)***********************

I absolutely love your music, got a chance to sit and really listen. I am totally hooked! :0)BarbaraS***********************

Skully, You've got some brilliant music boyo! Keep on wit it!Cheers mate, Charlie***********************

I enjoy "She moved through the fair" Beautiful voice!!!Kari***********************

Thanks for wanting to befriend me your music is great and the irish folk song are electric and INTENSE i LOVE IT...Kanti***********************And many many many more :-)

Songs from IRISH Makeover!

I cannot take credit for the concept here, that accolade must go to Charlie Pinder Sony/V2/Burlywood. One rainy winter's night in Cork, he came up with the idea of doing Old Irish folk songs, a la Skully! And so two years ago I set to work creating Skully versions of these beautiful old Irish songs. Although very electronic (after all that is what I do!) I strove to maintain the powerful emotion that these timeless master pieces possess. The album was recorded at the beautiful Rushbrook Hotel in Cobh, where I was spoiled rotten! and at my little cottage. I would like to sincerely thank all the artists who gave me their time and talent, each adding his or her own color and style to the songs. We had great fun making it!

IRISH MAKEOVER songs.
1/ Molly Malone
2/ The Lark in the clear air
3/ The Lakes of Pontchartrain
4/ Mardyke
5/ She moved through the fair
6/ Blackbird
7/ King of the Fairies
8/ Scarborough fair
9/ Red is the Rose
10/ All around my hat
11/ Shirin

BLACKBIRD
Kate Murphy and I recorded this into the small hours of the night at this little cottage. At one end of the room, my racks of hi tech recording equipment, samplers and computers, the other Kate's beautiful black dog Jake, asleep in front of the open fire, with an oil lamp burning and just one microphone.And that sums up what this version of the Song is about, BLACKBIRD is an old folk song with old world feelings and beauty, and here it meets the 21st century. Beautifully sung by Kate, Its a wonderful example of how timeless these old IRISH songs can be.

MARDYKE
I wrote Mardyke for another prominent place in my life! It is a beautiful leafy area in Cork, lines of colored doors, beautiful old bridges, close to the river Lee. Blindfaith had their second recording studio there, ELM TREE, it is where my career started, and is the place where I became addicted to Coffee, and where music became my mistress....We would finish at 5 am and I would walk home alone, thankful of the cold crisp air after the heat of the studio, and the silence, just the birds singing. Karl and I recorded this at my own recording studio at the beautiful Rushbrook hotel, just a little way down the same river from the MARDYKE.

OVER 70,000 HITS ON THE IRISH MAKEOVER PLAYER! Check it out at www.myspace.com/irishskully

Release of IRISH Makeover cd!!!

October 20th, 2008 saw the release of the long awaited cd IRISH Makeover, a compilation of old Irish folksongs given a new twist by Irish electro musician and music producer Skully, of Cork, Ireland. Skully is well known as one half of the duo Metisse, and has worked with many well known musicians. Below is an article about the new cd, IRISH Makeover.

How IRISH Makeover was produced!

Mark McAvoy's (DOWNTOWN) article.

Having firmly established himself, both nationally and internationally, with acts such as Chapterhouse, Métisse and more recently as a solo artist, Cork producer and musician Skully embarked on an ambitious and bold new project. Working on his new album Irish Makeover (2008) saw Skully recruit and collaborate with emerging talent in an effort to bravely reinterpret and revamp classic Irish folk songs. The fruits of this labour are a triumph: a record which should achieve both longevity and critical acclaim.Skully, who is based in Ireland, reflects on how the album was conceived. He reveals: "It was on a winter's night in Cork about two years ago. Métisse had kind off wound down. We had stopped recording together. I was working on my solo album and I met Charlie Pinder from V2 and Sony Publishing in Cork. I remember the brutal rain pouring out of the sky. We were running back to his hotel and he turned around to me and said: 'I have a great idea! Why don't you do Skullyized folk songs?' None of us took it very seriously. I had never thought of it before. Even the thought of Irish folk songs would have put my barriers up. After a couple of weeks of living with the idea, I kind of thought: "Let's give it a crack!" I started at the Rushbrooke Hotel in a little garage looking out over the river and it was just a stunning backdrop. It represented the turning over of a page for me musically and the beginning of a new era. I was now going to work with lots of different people on a very exciting project."Skully enlisted an impressive array of talented musicians to aid him on this new musical departure. He enthuses: "I didn't want to go for the old favourites. I wanted to use what I thought were the up and coming vocalists. So everybody is very young on the album. It is a Cork project and this album was made on the shores of Cork harbour, although it is very colloquial and very local with very local ideas, it is still a worldwide project."One musician enlisted by Skully was Cork troubadour Mick Flannery, who recently entered the Irish top ten album charts with his second long-player White Lies (2008). Skully is delighted with Flannery's performance on the track The Lakes of Pontchartrain. He explains: "What I was trying to do here was take these songs into the 21st century. What is The Lakes of Pontchartrain? It is one of the most beautiful folk songs that we have. Everyone is used to listening to this, sitting at a fireplace in a pub down in West Cork or in Kerry or somewhere like that. Mick Flannery has this incredible raw voice. Although he is very young, he sounds weathered. My brief to Mick was to sing this like he was in a pub, which he did sitting on a chair with his head in his hands. Then I just twisted this piece of music so far away from what you would be expecting. It has suddenly become a very electronic sound, very far away from its origins, which were the pub. Mick's voice was the only voice that could have done that."Another well-established Cork vocalist who appears on Irish Makeover is songstress Annette Buckley. "Annette did Scarborough Fair. Although it isn't really an Irish song, it is on every single Irish compilation album. It's a beautiful folk song. Again, I wanted to break down all the preconceived ideas of what Scarborough Fair is about. We all know the song and the Simon and Garfunkel version. Nothing of that is in this song. In fact, there is a quality to Annette's voice which is like a 1920s voice. There is a gorgeous quality to it. Here you have an Irish version of an English folk song sung by an Irish Girl that sounds like it comes from the 1920s, yet it is electronic. It's very odd! But it works."During the process of recruiting vocalists for this project, Skully discovered a newCork vocal talent - Kate Murphy. Skully recalls: "Kate Murphy is from Douglas. She is a friend of my sisters. That is how I recruited her. I was at a party one night and I heard Kate singing and she blew me away. She is a folk singer and a very talented songwriter. She sang Blackbird and All Around My Hat, which I still think is an Irish song, but some people say it's English. Kate was a stunning vocalist to work with!"Juno Falls main-man, Myles O'Reilly, was given the unenviable task of singing on the interpretation of the classic The Ballad of Molly Malone, which for this release has been simply renamed Molly Malone, presumably to distinguish the new dark version from the original. Skully confesses: "Miles and I go back a long time and he is an awesome, awesome vocalist. Miles did two tracks; She Moved Through The Fair and probably the most recognisable, yet weirdest track on the album, Molly Malone. This is a really sinister, twisted version of the song that we all know and Miles's voice cuts through it."Thanks to the Internet, Skully sought input from his fans across the world while working on this album. This was also a factor in terms of creating the album's quirky artwork. Skully admits: "Sean O'Leary who designed the cover wanted a dog with a pair of headphones. So we decided to ask everybody online from our My Space page if they could send us in photographs of their dogs wearing headphones. We got llamas, rabbits, pigs and dozens of dogs. We even had people complaining that their dogs ate the headphones. Eventually we got our dog and headphones for the album cover

To listen to and purchase the cd, please visit the website www.myspace.com/irishskully.