HILARY WOODS
Announces new album ‘Acts of Light’ due Nov 3rd via Sacred Bones
Shares first single/ video “Where The Bough Has Broken”
Tour dates announced incl. two Dublin shows
Irish artist Hilary Woods returns with her deeply sonic self-produced new album ‘Acts of Light‘, set for release Nov 3rd via Sacred Bones. To coincide with its announcement, the dynamic and evocative first single “Where The Bough Has Broken” is now online alongside a video created by Woods that exhibits her singular music and filmic aesthetic. Of the track and video Woods says the following:
“Made from old newsreels of archive footage, this video muses on the beauty of community and resilience, made to a piece of music that celebrates connection and the specificity and transience of time, space, and human expression. This music video is a visual love letter to the Dublin City I grew up in, to the spirit of familial roots and the extraordinary moments in ordinary life that leave their lasting impression.”
Woods also announces two new Dublin shows added to her upcoming tour dates in Portugal, the UK and Europe throughout September, October, November and December.
Hilary Woods creates this atmospherical arrangement with a distinct brutalist/drone influence. This gripping force emerges from the destructive tone, gently moving into the ambience before the sustained and more powerful notes of that tone bring this enforcement of low-end and brooding effect into the landscape.
The intensity slowly and sinisterly evolves and with the careful introduction to some harsher elements, and piercing but controlled textures, this soundscape shapes up to its crucial score status. It’s a haunting orchestration with minimalist but moving synth sounds. When the gentle harmonies touch the complex structure, this personal air breathes through the sonically consuming world and further moves the chilling enhancement with this emotive shift. This is a deep and stirring voyage, and when the track slowly fades out and silence rejoins the listener, a moment can be felt to truly embrace the experience and weight of this release.
Acts of Light is a fugue comprised of nine slow hypnotic dirges. Here on her third full length record, Woods’ experimentalism and sonic excavations lean into the intimacy and tenderness of this intuitive compositional work.
Following her explorations in feeling and physicality through sound which culminated in her 2021 EP Feral Hymns, Acts of Light is a disquiet personal offering to wilderness, loss, absence, mystery and love supreme. Vulnerability, majesty and candour, elicited with drone, noise, synth, double bass, field recordings and sacred choral chant, compose its private ritual.
Acts of Light is a resonant, rich and weighted lament that is both subterranean and chasmal whilst simultaneously its detailed tendrils awaken hidden forms that emerge from the shadows with each listen. Textural dust and speckled light move slowly and expansively here, through a sonic and sensory rite of passage where Woods’ moving compositions confide in us feeling to be received with the entire body.
Written, recorded, mixed and produced over a span of two years between the west coast of Ireland and Dublin, Woods recorded the choristers of the Palestrina choir in the Pro Cathedral Dublin, together with the voices of Galway City Chamber Choir. Strings were recorded by Jo Berger Myhre in Oslo, whilst field recordings were recorded nomadically throughout her time spent travelling through the north west of Spain.
Tour dates:
24/09/2023 PT Porto Amplifest
25/10/2023 IRL Dublin The Gallery space at The Complex
26/10/2023 IRL Dublin The Gallery space at The Complex
30/10/2023 UK Liverpool Kazimier Stockroom
31/10/2023 UK Brighton Rose Hill Arts
01/11/2023 UK London Cafe OTO
02/11/2023 UK Bristol Cube Cinema
03/11/2023 UK Newcastle Cobalt Studios
04/11/2023 UK Manchester The White Hotel
05/11/2023 UK Leeds Headrow House
05/12/2023 FR Lyon Le Sonic
06/12/2023 CH Geneva Cave12 *
07/12/2023 IT Ravenna Bronson *
08/12/2023 IT Busto Arsizio Circolo Gagarin *
09/12/2023 IT Cornuda Tipoteca Italiana *
10/12/2023 IT Bologna Circolo Dev *
12/12/2023 DE Munich Rote Sonne *
13/12/2023 DE Berlin Arkaoda *
14/12/2023 DE JenaTRAFO *
15/12/2023 DE Dresden Schauburg *
16/12/2023 PL Warsaw Jassmine *
17/12/2023 LI Vilnius St. Catherine Church *
18/12/2023 LV Riga Vagonu Hall *
19/12/2023 EE Tallinn Kino Sõprus *
* – with Jozef Van Wissem
Acts of Light tracklist:
1. Burial Rites
2. Wife Mother Lover Crow
3. Where The Bough Has Broken
4. Acts of Light
5. Ochre
6. Awakening
7. Blood Orange
8. The Foot of Love
9. Vigil
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