Written in the first few weeks of March 2020 against the backdrop of chaos and confusion, Flow, In The Year Of Wu Wei is the seminal new single from the Flook and Kan frontman, Brian Finnegan.
Drawing on more than a decade of a formidable collaboration with the Russian singer and ‘Poet Laureate’ Boris Grebenshikov, and anchored in the turf of Ballybrolly, Co Armagh, it is a remarkable vision from a musician and composer at the height of his creative powers. Embracing the ancient Taoist philosophy of Wu Wei, of being ‘in alignment with the flow of the elemental cycles of the natural world’ it is all the more extraordinary in that it was entirely recorded remotely when musicians the world over were cocooning and isolated.
Flow, In The Year Of Wu Wei, is the fermentation of more than a decade of rich life experience. The formation and subsequent break up of the hard-hitting Kan, the reformation of the brilliant Flook after a 4-year hiatus, becoming the father of two sons, and then the extraordinary journey undertaken throughout Russia and Asia next to Grebenshikov.
‘I’ve come to realise that it is in times of personal peril or crisis that I’m best able to articulate the invisible through music, perhaps in moments of emergency, I’m a more interesting place for a tune to land. The way of Wu Wei is one of actionless action, of living in harmony with the natural order of things. I marvel at that, for it best describes in words the state beyond thinking where music is born’
‘Flow, In The Year Of Wu Wei’ is the first single in a new Brian Finnegan album, due out early autumn.
Flow, In The Year Of Wu Wei is Released on the Singing Tree Music label through Bandcamp. Out Now: https://brianfinnegan.bandcamp.com/releases
Brian Finnegan- Low whistles/flutes
Sean Og Graham – Guitar,
Liam Bradley- Drums/Percussion/Loops
Anton Boiarskikh- Trombone
Boris Grebenshikov- Voice
Ollin Finnegan – cameo