11/4/25 ADDS
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HILARY WOODS
Night CRIÚ(Sacred Bones Records)
Add date: 11.4.2025
Release date: 10.31.2025
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Instagram
Official Website
Sacred Bones
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Following two acclaimed experimental instrumental records in Feral Hymns (2021) and Acts of Light (2023), Hilary Woods returns on her new LP Night CRIÚ, to song form and most notably, to her voice. Crafting songs centred around it, Night CRIÚ’s intimate ecosystem of seven songs uses layers of vocal harmony and lyrics as ways to re-enter the body, and to speak to and uproot old scripts.
A ceremony of light and shade, Night CRIÚ’s unmoored sonic threads recall the cracks, fringes, forgotten agency and dormant personas that surface at night, waiting to be retrieved and integrated come daylight. Despite its economy, each song on Night CRIÚ breathes into an emotive expanse quintessential of Woods’ compositions, and true to her artistry, a search for new direction is ever present, expressed most keenly here in her writing for brass band and children’s choir. A record that riles against bludgeoning monoculture in its reclaiming and mourning a lost innocence all at once, Night CRIÚ reaches to integrate lost and splintered parts of the whole, in making the unconscious conscious.
Whilst her last record was in monochrome, portals of colour burst forth on Night CRIÚ. The intergenerational presence of voices woven through its fabric, hear young and old sing side by side fostering wonder and connection through the heart of the record whilst trombones and cornets commune and rise up triumphantly in unison in brass-band procession outward from its centre.
Lyrically Woods subverts and reconfigures the inter-personal, her words serving as mottled photographic close-ups planted in the dark to bloom upward toward the light.
Inspired and energised by many influences including aspects of Czech and early Italian cinema, the revival of indigenous language, a personal history of attending parades, early music, the joy in dance, the immediacy of sound, and the present collective standing up for what it means to be human in the face of tyranny and oppression, Night CRIÚ was recorded between the West Coast of Ireland, Dublin, London, Latvia and Richmond, Virginia between 2023 and January 2025.
These songs were chosen from many early home recordings that Woods held up as mirrors of juxtaposition to each other. Written and produced by Hilary Woods, Night CRIÚ was mixed by Dean Hurley with additional production by Oliver Turvey and Dean Hurley, mastered by Brian Lucey, featuring work by Hannah Fallon, Gabriel Ferrandini, The Hangleton Brass Band and Ajo Gonsenica.
For Woods “Each record is a life buoy, a raft, a snapshot, a marker in the sand, a date that requires me to meet it. Making records is a way of being”.
About Hilary Woods:
Hilary Woods is an Irish musician, analogue filmmaker and writer. Her evocative music compositions come in many shape-shifting guises utilising song, sound, processed field recordings, words, visuals, texture and electronics. Her pioneering and critically acclaimed work is sensorial, singular, bold and dynamic. Her lyrical sketches tender and personal. 2023 saw the release of Hilary’s 3rd full length experimental record Acts of Light, which was accompanied by her own hand processed 16mm film alongside archive footage that unearthed a record “rooted in intense feeling, nostalgia and desire”. 2025 will see the release of Hilary’s anticipated 4th LP Night CRIÚ via Sacred Bones Records on the 31st of October. Past recent and live performances have all been supported by Culture Ireland and include Pioneer Works at Public Records NYC, Café OTO London, Cave12 Geneva and Roadburn 2024, Le Guess Who?, Zemlika, Southbank, Beyond the Gate, Quarter Block Party and St Pancras Old Church.
“The stuff of Bosch paintings” -Bandcamp
“The Soundtrack of Rituals. Masterful.” -NARC
“Brilliantly unsettling..Beautifully brutal.. Remarkable.” -Boomkat
“Utterly hypnotic….Stark and haunting compositions that stand on the edge of a knife” -Bandcamp
“Woods talent for communicating emotions commands a solemn and sublime respect.” -The Line of Best Fit
“A revelation in terms of the depth of song-writing" -The Sunday Times
“An artist stepping back into the shadows away from the glare and the gloss and shining brighter than ever.” -Clash
“A force of her own” -Brooklyn Vegan
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Official Website
Sacred Bones
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Following two acclaimed experimental instrumental records in Feral Hymns (2021) and Acts of Light (2023), Hilary Woods returns on her new LP Night CRIÚ, to song form and most notably, to her voice. Crafting songs centred around it, Night CRIÚ’s intimate ecosystem of seven songs uses layers of vocal harmony and lyrics as ways to re-enter the body, and to speak to and uproot old scripts.
A ceremony of light and shade, Night CRIÚ’s unmoored sonic threads recall the cracks, fringes, forgotten agency and dormant personas that surface at night, waiting to be retrieved and integrated come daylight. Despite its economy, each song on Night CRIÚ breathes into an emotive expanse quintessential of Woods’ compositions, and true to her artistry, a search for new direction is ever present, expressed most keenly here in her writing for brass band and children’s choir. A record that riles against bludgeoning monoculture in its reclaiming and mourning a lost innocence all at once, Night CRIÚ reaches to integrate lost and splintered parts of the whole, in making the unconscious conscious.
Whilst her last record was in monochrome, portals of colour burst forth on Night CRIÚ. The intergenerational presence of voices woven through its fabric, hear young and old sing side by side fostering wonder and connection through the heart of the record whilst trombones and cornets commune and rise up triumphantly in unison in brass-band procession outward from its centre.
Lyrically Woods subverts and reconfigures the inter-personal, her words serving as mottled photographic close-ups planted in the dark to bloom upward toward the light.
Inspired and energised by many influences including aspects of Czech and early Italian cinema, the revival of indigenous language, a personal history of attending parades, early music, the joy in dance, the immediacy of sound, and the present collective standing up for what it means to be human in the face of tyranny and oppression, Night CRIÚ was recorded between the West Coast of Ireland, Dublin, London, Latvia and Richmond, Virginia between 2023 and January 2025.
These songs were chosen from many early home recordings that Woods held up as mirrors of juxtaposition to each other. Written and produced by Hilary Woods, Night CRIÚ was mixed by Dean Hurley with additional production by Oliver Turvey and Dean Hurley, mastered by Brian Lucey, featuring work by Hannah Fallon, Gabriel Ferrandini, The Hangleton Brass Band and Ajo Gonsenica.
For Woods “Each record is a life buoy, a raft, a snapshot, a marker in the sand, a date that requires me to meet it. Making records is a way of being”.
About Hilary Woods:
Hilary Woods is an Irish musician, analogue filmmaker and writer. Her evocative music compositions come in many shape-shifting guises utilising song, sound, processed field recordings, words, visuals, texture and electronics. Her pioneering and critically acclaimed work is sensorial, singular, bold and dynamic. Her lyrical sketches tender and personal. 2023 saw the release of Hilary’s 3rd full length experimental record Acts of Light, which was accompanied by her own hand processed 16mm film alongside archive footage that unearthed a record “rooted in intense feeling, nostalgia and desire”. 2025 will see the release of Hilary’s anticipated 4th LP Night CRIÚ via Sacred Bones Records on the 31st of October. Past recent and live performances have all been supported by Culture Ireland and include Pioneer Works at Public Records NYC, Café OTO London, Cave12 Geneva and Roadburn 2024, Le Guess Who?, Zemlika, Southbank, Beyond the Gate, Quarter Block Party and St Pancras Old Church.
“The stuff of Bosch paintings” -Bandcamp
“The Soundtrack of Rituals. Masterful.” -NARC
“Brilliantly unsettling..Beautifully brutal.. Remarkable.” -Boomkat
“Utterly hypnotic….Stark and haunting compositions that stand on the edge of a knife” -Bandcamp
“Woods talent for communicating emotions commands a solemn and sublime respect.” -The Line of Best Fit
“A revelation in terms of the depth of song-writing" -The Sunday Times
“An artist stepping back into the shadows away from the glare and the gloss and shining brighter than ever.” -Clash
“A force of her own” -Brooklyn Vegan