Tuesday, December 17, 2013

DIVINE CIRCLES: USX String Contortionist Releases Solo Debut; Teaser Video Posted


DIVINE CIRCLES is the solo venture of Meghan Mulhearn. A songwriter and violinist who composes and performs with a number of eclectic musical projects, including USX, The Judas Horse, Lunar Creature, Meghanz, and Critics, Mulhearn is known for pushing the boundaries of traditional string playing in an effort to explore the violin's potential as an instrument beyond composition. In her pieces, she uses effects and electronics, creates multiple loops, makes beats on the body of the instrument, employs novel techniques in plucking and strumming and uses the violin body as a vocal resonator. Her unique approach invokes haunting, visceral and textural elements, often unrecognizable as originating from a violin. Her work has been compared to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Warren Ellis of Dirty Three/Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and more experimental artists such as Aidan Baker and Steve Reich.


Recently, Mulhearn completed a long-form piece, "26 Minutes," for a cassette split with the drone artist Villages, which was released by the experimental boutique tape label Hooker Vision in Spring of 2013. Describes Aquarius Records, "DIVINE CIRCLES keeps their sounds intimate and calm, slowly building the track in the round, with the violinist taking up the bow later on with gorgeous swells of arboreal melodies along with those slow dirgy guitars and some haunted female vocalizations."

Mulhearn's follow-up solo LP carries on the hauntingly entrancing tradition. Fittingly titled Oblivion Songs, the absorbing five-track sound collage was recorded at at Fahrenheit Studio with Travis Kammeyer (A Storm of Light, USX, Generation of Vipers, This Mountain, Ocoai), mastered by James Plotkin (OLD, Scorn, Khanate, Khlyst) and is defined most succinctly as a beautiful collection of intimate and experimental songcraft filtered through the Appalachian dusk.

Oblivion Songs Track Listing:
1. Leave
2. Midwest
3. The Prayer
4. Ingenue 
5. Hymn

Oblivion Songs is out now on limited edition vinyl via Paradigms Recordings. Check out the teaser video at THIS LOCATION.


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