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.