From their earliest incarnation as the riotous band of anarchic pranksters known as the “Avant Gardaí”, the renowned sound art collective Grúpat have played on both the artistic and geographical margins of the Irish art scene, creating a body of work which is by turns joking and serious, provocative and engaging, sublime and enigmatic. Their work demonstrates a wide variety of approaches to sound ranging from graphic scores to sound installations, silent musical films to sonic reliquaries, sculpture-instruments to gowns for the sonic flâneur.
The tracks on Songtags include excerpts from The Parks Service’s sci-fi grand opus “The Legend of the Fornar Resistance,” based on the transhumanist role-playing game he developed with his brothers as a teen; Bulletin M’s electro-acoustic survey of Dublin (with a guest appearance from DLR); O’Brien Industries’s sessions with rural Irish fortune tellers and Flor Hartigan’s study of minute fluctuations in the water of the River Dodder and the human voice.
This release is the companion to
jenniferwalshe.bandcamp.com/album/the-wasistas-of-thereswhere. Both CDs were first released in 2009, on the occasion of the Grúpat retrospective at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
released April 30, 2020
Vocals on all pieces by Jennifer Walshe.
Additional vocals on In a 3 by Mrs. O. and Madame X.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Quentin Chiappetta, Media Noise, Brooklyn.
Designed and typeset by Munich Design.
Illustrations by Erin Wilson.
Grúpat was commissioned under South Dublin County Council’s INCONTEXT3 Per Cent for Art Programme which is funded by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the National Roads Authority.
Tetbind Records/Jennifer Walshe 2009/2020
milker.org/tetbind
TET 010