RÚN
event promoted by Radioclube Agramonte and Music & Riots
An experimental Irish trio that blends folk, synth, drone, noise, and heavy grooves into a dark, ethereal, and transcendent mix of long-form explorations and vignettes that can be heard on their forthcoming, Rocket Recordings released self-titled debut.
After three years of improvised live performances across Ireland, the eight tracks found on Rún’s album captures their most intense dives into psychedelic despair, punctuated by moments of ecstatic, luminous yearning.
Vocalist and instrumentalist Tara Baoth Mooney (who is also known as The Clumsy Giantess) has a diverse background that spans musical performance, visual art, and textile design. TV audiences may recognize her voice from Jim Henson’s Bear in the Big Blue House, where she performed as Shadow after being discovered at a New York gig in the late ’90s. More recently, she co-directed and composed the score for Mammary Mountain, a VR experience that premiered at the Venice Film Festival and toured Europe and the USA.
“We are looking for what you cannot hear as much as the things you can hear. Our sonic world is spacious and without limitations - so inhabiting immersive soundscapes is a really easy place for us to converge. There’s ancient stuff in there – I have been singing Irish and folk music for years and have a background in choral music as well. There’s contemporary stuff – we go in through dark spaces as a response to imbalance in the world. We use field recordings from around our respective worlds – and that’s mirroring the weight of our individual and convergent imaginary spaces. Rún feels like is a ‘place to arrive at’ – with your pouch of possibilities, and that place both transcends and enables open experimentation.”
Multi-instrumentalist Diarmuid MacDiarmada (brother to Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum and Nurse With Wound collaborator) has spent over 30 years navigating Ireland’s avant-garde music scene while touring and recording with various artists. His studies in theology and composition have deepened his understanding of ritual and channelling in music – recurring themes that shape Rún’s work.
On the band’s process, MacDiarmada writes: “Our process is extremely open and informed by the broad range of skills and ideas each of us brings. Beyond the larger themes we consciously explore, the work is often inspired by dreams, synchronicities, and other uncanny influences found in everyday life. We frequently, quite consciously, channel inspirational artists and cultural references into our process. The artists who influenced this album include Om, Pearls Before Swine, Abul Mogard, Coil, William Basinski, Pauline Oliveros, Subhadra Sharma, Mary Margaret O’Hara, The Necks, among many others. All these influences in the ether help us intuitively distill a coherent set of statements from sprawling, joyful, sometimes frightening chaos. We are frequently surprised by the results.”
Rún’s drummer, sound designer, and recordist, Rian Trench, is the owner of The Meadow studio on Ireland’s east coast – where Rún’s album was recorded. Rian has spent 15 years as a producer, engineer, and orchestral arranger. Known for crafting electronic textures and enigmatic melodies, his work spans from Solar Bears (Planet Mu, Warp) to auto-generative experiments as Glen of the Downs and the acid braindance project Crispy Jason.
Rian reflects on the making of the album: “When rehearsing and writing – usually in living rooms – we’d record ideas with a phone placed at the back of the room. That distant, incoherent quality became something we wanted to retain. So, when tracking the album, we found that a particular 8-track 1⁄4-inch tape machine preserved that feeling. The sense that the sound has to travel through a layer of damage before reaching your ear – or the sensation of incoherently recalling past events – is integral to the record. We recorded live takes together straight onto tape, after which we layered found sounds and applied various degradation processes to the recordings.”
An experimental Irish trio that blends folk, synth, drone, noise, and heavy grooves into a dark, ethereal, and transcendent mix of long-form explorations and vignettes that can be heard on their forthcoming, Rocket Recordings released self-titled debut.
After three years of improvised live performances across Ireland, the eight tracks found on Rún’s album captures their most intense dives into psychedelic despair, punctuated by moments of ecstatic, luminous yearning.
Vocalist and instrumentalist Tara Baoth Mooney (who is also known as The Clumsy Giantess) has a diverse background that spans musical performance, visual art, and textile design. TV audiences may recognize her voice from Jim Henson’s Bear in the Big Blue House, where she performed as Shadow after being discovered at a New York gig in the late ’90s. More recently, she co-directed and composed the score for Mammary Mountain, a VR experience that premiered at the Venice Film Festival and toured Europe and the USA.
“We are looking for what you cannot hear as much as the things you can hear. Our sonic world is spacious and without limitations - so inhabiting immersive soundscapes is a really easy place for us to converge. There’s ancient stuff in there – I have been singing Irish and folk music for years and have a background in choral music as well. There’s contemporary stuff – we go in through dark spaces as a response to imbalance in the world. We use field recordings from around our respective worlds – and that’s mirroring the weight of our individual and convergent imaginary spaces. Rún feels like is a ‘place to arrive at’ – with your pouch of possibilities, and that place both transcends and enables open experimentation.”
Multi-instrumentalist Diarmuid MacDiarmada (brother to Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum and Nurse With Wound collaborator) has spent over 30 years navigating Ireland’s avant-garde music scene while touring and recording with various artists. His studies in theology and composition have deepened his understanding of ritual and channelling in music – recurring themes that shape Rún’s work.
On the band’s process, MacDiarmada writes: “Our process is extremely open and informed by the broad range of skills and ideas each of us brings. Beyond the larger themes we consciously explore, the work is often inspired by dreams, synchronicities, and other uncanny influences found in everyday life. We frequently, quite consciously, channel inspirational artists and cultural references into our process. The artists who influenced this album include Om, Pearls Before Swine, Abul Mogard, Coil, William Basinski, Pauline Oliveros, Subhadra Sharma, Mary Margaret O’Hara, The Necks, among many others. All these influences in the ether help us intuitively distill a coherent set of statements from sprawling, joyful, sometimes frightening chaos. We are frequently surprised by the results.”
Rún’s drummer, sound designer, and recordist, Rian Trench, is the owner of The Meadow studio on Ireland’s east coast – where Rún’s album was recorded. Rian has spent 15 years as a producer, engineer, and orchestral arranger. Known for crafting electronic textures and enigmatic melodies, his work spans from Solar Bears (Planet Mu, Warp) to auto-generative experiments as Glen of the Downs and the acid braindance project Crispy Jason.
Rian reflects on the making of the album: “When rehearsing and writing – usually in living rooms – we’d record ideas with a phone placed at the back of the room. That distant, incoherent quality became something we wanted to retain. So, when tracking the album, we found that a particular 8-track 1⁄4-inch tape machine preserved that feeling. The sense that the sound has to travel through a layer of damage before reaching your ear – or the sensation of incoherently recalling past events – is integral to the record. We recorded live takes together straight onto tape, after which we layered found sounds and applied various degradation processes to the recordings.”