Irish artist Hilary Woods returns with her deeply sonic self-produced new album Acts of Light, set for release Nov 3 via Sacred Bones. To coincide with its announcement, the dynamic and evocative first single ‘Where The Bough Has Broken’ is now online alongside a video created by Woods that exhibits her singular music and filmic aesthetic. Of the track and video Woods says the following:
“Made from old newsreels of archive footage, this video muses on the beauty of community and resilience, made to a piece of music that celebrates connection and the specificity and transience of time, space, and human expression. This music video is a visual love letter to the Dublin City I grew up in, to the spirit of familial roots and the extraordinary moments in ordinary life that leave their lasting impression.”
Acts of Light is a fugue comprised of nine slow hypnotic dirges. Here on her third full length record, Woods’ experimentalism and sonic excavations lean into the intimacy and tenderness of this intuitive compositional work.
Following her explorations in feeling and physicality through sound which culminated in her 2021 EP Feral Hymns, Acts of Light is a disquiet personal offering to wilderness, loss, absence, mystery and love supreme. Vulnerability, majesty and candour, elicited with drone, noise, synth, double bass, field recordings and sacred choral chant, compose its private ritual.
Acts of Light is a resonant, rich and weighted lament that is both subterranean and chasmal whilst simultaneously its detailed tendrils awaken hidden forms that emerge from the shadows with each listen. Textural dust and speckled light move slowly and expansively here, through a sonic and sensory rite of passage where Woods’ moving compositions confide in us feeling to be received with the entire body.
Written, recorded, mixed and produced over a span of two years between the west coast of Ireland and Dublin, Woods recorded the choristers of the Palestrina choir in the Pro Cathedral Dublin, together with the voices of Galway City Chamber Choir. Strings were recorded by Jo Berger Myhre in Oslo, whilst field recordings were recorded nomadically throughout her time spent travelling through the north west of Spain.
Acts of Light:
- Burial Rites
- Wife Mother Lover Crow
- Where The Bough Has Broken
- Acts of Light
- Ochre
- Awakening
- Blood Orange
- The Foot of Love
- Vigil
