Declared by the Irish Times as “one of Ireland’s most underrated artists”, Eileen Gogan (The Would Be’s, The Revenants, Acton Bell, The Drays) teamed up with Sean O’Hagan (Microdisney, The High Llamas) for her latest four-track EP Another Golden Day (via Dimple Discs). The songs that make up this perfectly formed offering focus on the moment, magnifying the smaller things in life that often make the more significant differences. A case in point is ‘Wheels (Happy Cycling)’…in which, through childhood eyes, she contemplates the freedom of the open road and pedal power, looking back on mesmerising moments – the freedom of escape on her brother’s stolen bike.
Throughout this EP, Eileen and Sean give the impression of keeping things simple and spare, but there is plenty of inventiveness and colour. More importantly, Sean’s arrangements have allowed Eileen’s songs to breathe; they are given a life of their own – beautifully parcelled moments of time.
Watch the accompanying video for Wheels (Happy Cycling) below, on which Eileen Gogan shared the following:
“Myself and Sean agreed we would like a simple animation for the video. During a zoom chat we bounced ideas around and came up with the vision of a character cycling over the title of the song. Sean sent on a GIF file that he worked up with the text of the song title. I sketched a character and made up a very simple story board and got in touch with the animators Shaun Kelly and Mark Gallagher. They basically took my sketches and brought them to life, they were wonderful to work with”
On the song itself, she continues…
“Cycling has always been a huge part of my life since I can remember. I’m also a big Boards of Canada fan and one time I had been out on the town for a night and ended up at a party in a penthouse apartment with very affluent people, it was the wee small hours and I was kind of bored so I started looking through the CDs and found a BOC album and played my favourite track “Happy Cycling”. The guy whose apartment it was suddenly jumped up and started talking to me and offering me drinks, he was so impressed by my choice of song he tried to talk me into leaving my boyfriend and going out with him, it was so funny because before I put on the record I was basically being ignored! The power of a good tune! By the way, I didn’t leave my boyfriend”.
Order Another Golden Day: https://orcd.co/eileengogangoldenday