aaamusic | On 01, Nov 2011

It’s a one-off collaboration between Sacred Animals & Owensie.

The release date is 14th Novmber & all relevant links are below. The Video is by Brendan Canty of Feel Good Lost – http://www.feelgoodlost.me/ (vid credits incl. Sun Glitters, Slow Magic, Clams Casino, Wintercoats, Jape & Moths) & all footage was shot/edited by Brendan, including the Cheetah…

”Cat And Mouse‘ was written about a Russian family who fell to their death in a housing estate in Glasgow last year. An apparent suicide from high in an old tower block used to house asylum seekers, it is thought they may have jumped for fear of deportation by immigration authorities. The father was also known to have suffered from mental problems. After the family were removed, a vigil was held by other local asylum seekers & many came forward with similar accounts of jumping from buildings in fear of deportation.” – Owensie

Full report on the incident here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/12/red-road-deaths-russian-asylum-seekers

Sacred Animals‘ native Wexford to Dublin along the coast is a straight road, but veer a few miles off it and you find yourself up in the mountains. From the Sally Gap you can look out across Lough Tay hundreds of metres below and see the wind carving its way through the hills. “The energy is incredible – so primal. You realise life is pretty fleeting. But that’s kind of precious in a weird way.”

And the music’s precious too. It draws on the rich tapestry of styles and sounds that make this such a compelling time to make music but also draws from those hidden places – Darragh’s is not a completely clear vision of what the music is and might become. “It’s about everything that makes artists we love, people like Thom Yorke, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Ed Droste (Grizzly Bear) create and then go back and explore. I’ve written songs for years and have always loved doing it. But when the songs start coming out like this, from somewhere I couldn’t always reach, that’s something really exciting.”

Sacred Animals is about just that. Letting the music speak and breath, respecting its nature.

It’s an unusual light across the Wicklow mountains in the May dusk, purple and orange, and it’s got Darragh thinking. “I’m not so sure we have things figured out at all. That’s what happens when you stop and stare out across a place like this.” Sacred Animals look ahead and the road winds off through the hills and into the distance.