Photo Credit: Allen Kiely.
Dublin-based indie-pop artist Cat Dowling will release her new album‘Animals’ via Forever In Financial Arrears Records (FIFA Records) on November 12.
The new 11-track long-player was produced by Gerry Horanwith Dowling as co-producer, and mixed by Ger Mcdonnell (The Cure, U2, Van Morrison, Martha Wainwright, Shane McGowan, Sinead O'Connor), Dowling's latest output was partially recorded at Crossroads Studio in her native Kilkenny with support from Ireland's Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media.
Lauded as one of the most wonderful and evocative vocalists in Irish contemporary music, Dowling's beautifully dark pop songs and husky, achingly intimate vocals will grip you from the outset. The former Babelfish and Alphastates frontwoman creates well-crafted songs that inspire.
Ahead of this album she presents the title track ‘Animals’ - a song of movement, sensuality, wildness, love and freedom. This is about that beautiful part inside the human make-up that can't ever and should never be tamed.
The stunning video was created by Marc Corrigan, an Irish artist, illustrator and animator. Telling stories through animation and music videos for the past decade, his fans include Billy Bragg and Coldplay, having released innovative unorthodox works for such artists as Lil Kim, The Futureheads, I’m from Barcelona, Dr. Octagon, The Academic and Ham Sandwich.
"Animals’ is a wild song. It never stops moving. When I first heard it I could picture the ending straight away – a constant flow of wild animals morphing and twisting into each other. Once I knew that, I just had to build up to it, set up a surreal morphing world. The imagery had to move constantly to keep pace with the music. It had to suggest animal instincts in a beautiful way. It had to be a constant high energy piece that never let up and built to a crescendo. So I just kept drawing,” says Marc Corrigan.
Dowling recently released the single 'Freedom', a lush slice of soulful pop perfection with video by Alba Lahoz, featuring her three free-spirited children doing their thing on the beach. The video for the preceding single, ‘Trouble’, was created by BAFTA award-winning director Fergal Costello, recalling a dark, comedic and violent tale set outside of 1981 Belfast.
"I wrote Animals during a busy period of my life when to find those rare moments to write music meant I had to be a thief elsewhere. But it was these stolen moments that gave me oxygen and a beautiful almost supernatural energy. 'Animals' was written when everyone was sleeping. It started with the driving repetitive rhythm which had to be restrained so as not to wake a soul. It thus became hypnotic. It starts as minor and ends up major. It's about the major and minor of life and of love and the constant pull in everything between major and minor and the light and the dark. It's a song ultimately of passion, wildness, sensuality and love," says Cat Dowling.
In 2013, Dowling debuted with ‘The Believer’ LP, ranked in numerous ‘Best of Year’ music polls, including The Sunday Times. The title track featured in the second series of ‘Banshee’, produced by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty, True Blood) and the ‘Witches of East End’ TV series, featuring Julia Ormond. The song ‘Somebody Else’ was also used in ‘My name is Emily’. Cat has also lent vocals on many collaborative projects, including for ABC’s ‘How ToGet Away With Murder’ with Emmy-winning actress Viola Davis.
FIFA Records is a steadily expanding label, who have continuously worked with exciting new Irish talent (Fight Like Apes, One Morning in August, Klubber Lang, Hope is Noise, Dae Kim, Lorraine Nash), as well as releasing material from more established names on the Irish indie scene, such as The Frank & Walters, Emperor of Ice Cream, August Wells, Power of Dreams and Whipping Boy.
Website: www.catdowlingmusic.com
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