Michael O’Shea – Michael O’Shea All Night Flight Records

Label: AllChival – ACMOSLPx1
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered
Country: Ireland
Released: 25 Jan 2019
Genre: Folk, World, & Country
Style: Experimental

There’s not much to say that’s not already been said about this stand alone 1982 debut from Michael O’Shea on Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis’ Dome label – a mythical piece that’s both indispensable and highly coveted for collectors, obscurists and anyone with a penchant for extraordinary music that exists outside of genre confines.  As the story goes, O’Shea lived a colourful life wandering the streets and by his own accounts existed as ‘a joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveller, instrument maker”, he spent time in Europe, before selling all his instruments and moving to Turkey and later to Bangladesh where he worked as an aid worker during the famine crisis.  On his return to the UK, totally broke he dragged an old door from a skip, using the middle part, 17 strings, some phasers and a self-invented ‘space hole echo box’ to create his own unique instrument ‘Mo Chara’ – Irish for ‘My Friend’ – a cross between a sitar, a zelochord and a dulcimer that he’d hammer with chopsticks or paintbrushes.  Fast forward a few years, Wire’s Graham Lewis is in a Convent Garden pub, briefly stepping out for a breather and is met by an incredible noise coming from down the street.  He eventually drags Bruce Gilbert out to confirm the magic he’s hearing and they meet Michael O’Shea sat on the street busking, totally dumbfounded by his music they invite him to their studio to record.  Time goes by, O’shea’s taste for drugs ’n booze prevent him from capitalising on any of the opportunities offered him, until one day he arrives unannounced at Black Wing Studio wanting to record.  Entirely improvised, his self-titled debut is a mystical, transcendent flurry of cyclical overtones and hypnotic dervishes that seem to join the dots between the nodes of traditional Indo-European folk music through a distinctively Celtic core – maybe an autobiographical expression of a man who saw and encountered a lot in his life and find his true calling.  A rare and genuinely authentic artist expression – JAW DROPPING.  (Mint / New)

Tracklist
A1 No Journeys End 15:26
A2 Kerry 2:31
B1 Guitar No.1
3:21
B2 Voices 8:38
B3 Anfa Dásachtach 4:36