Words: Emer Martin*
Music: The Mighty Avon Jnr.
Voice: Daragh McCarthy
Drums: Peter Maybury
Solo Female Voice: Sadhbh Ni Floinn
Shape Note Voices: Cork Sacred Harp
Sadhbh Ni Floinn, Robert Wedgbury & Lisa O’Grady
Shape Note written by: Sadhbh Ni Floinn
Music Produced by Daragh McCarthy
Spoken word recorded by Mark Ellison: Ellisonik.com
Shape Note Recorded by David Slevin at Mother-Ship Cork
Mixed and Mastered by Les Keye at ARAD Studios Dublin
Filmed by Richard Donnelly
Edited by Daragh McCarthy
“I came across the work of Emer Martin in a copy of Stinging Fly magazine that a friend left in my flat
on a winter evening in 2011.
Leafing through the contents I was struck by the title “going underground” in the novel extracts section,
as I had made a film about the Dublin punk rock scene “The Stars Are Underground”.
Reading the character’s monologue in my kitchen I realised I was speaking it out loud, caught up in the rhythm.
The words felt like an anger cheat sheet and history lesson and I immediately knew I wanted to put it to music.
The words seemed to encapsulate what myself and many of my contemporaries have been trying to
express in terms of our place within history at this time and how we might begin to create a route forward.
While initially they suggested a full throttle approach, in the end a considered and deliberate reading was more appropriate.
I had been planning to combine my love of both film and music and felt that this piece was where I should start.
I wanted the visuals to be abstract for the most part, suggestive of the natural world and an internal world
in equal measure.
I wanted the music to be a combination of midi, analogue and the human voice. I have been exploring Shape Note
singing for some time and felt it’s raw human power would suit the sense of a people’s emotional response to their situation perfectly.”
Daragh McCarthy is a film maker and musician from Dublin
Emer Martin is an Irish novelist and film-maker. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, described the life of a young Irishwoman in the Parisian underworld and won Book of the Year at the 1996 Listowel Writers’ Week. More Bread Or I’ll Appear, her second novel, was published internationally in 1999. Her most recent book is Baby Zero, published in March 2007. Her fourth book The Affection of a Hag is currently with her agent in NY and London.
emermartin.com/