Embedded Files
A multimedia project exploring the parallel histories of Ireland and Ukraine. Two nations shaped by occupation, revolution, famine and political martyrdom.
Written and recorded in Kyiv between 2018 and 2022, the project developed as I reconsidered my place within the Irish diaspora following the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Though Ukraine was culturally unfamiliar, my relationship to place felt more immediate than my inherited Irish identity.
The work emerges from the tension between ancestry and lived experience, memory and presence, and seeks to redefine how I situate myself within both cultures.
Musically, the album reconstructs the stereotypical oppressive sound of the Eastern Bloc using Soviet-made synthesizers and drum machines almost exclusively.
BILOXATA ENCYCLOPEDIA MMXXII
A video collage parodying the format and aesthetic of the Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM series,
the piece sardonically frames the album’s deeply personal narrative as though presented in an objective educational context.
WHITE MALE AGGRESSION
Rotten sermon
Of a baptou,
Righteously
Defined
By their crime.
I learn
Cruelty and—
To smoke hash
In that solemn
Hostage
Kingdom.
Strike out
In vain,
In a bad mood,
Breaking
Mirrors
In the bathroom.
Burning—
White male aggression,
The slender
Spectre
That dogs
My heel.
A reflection on political advertising by right-wing media outlets, with a particular focus on the British Conservative Party’s failed 1997 “New Labour, New Danger” campaign.
SUKHUMI
(THEME FOR GEORGIY GONGADZE)
A mausoleum,
Two siblings lame,
A body in ruin
By smouldering flame.
A monstera grows
On my windowsill,
Subtle and ornate,
Like a monument
To Giorgi Gongadze,
In neighbouring tomb,
In sombre procession,
Like the boats of Sukhum.
A cursed womb,
Passed over,
A cabinet
Locked in Donetsk.
A severed head
By searing knife,
Matured, statuesque,
Like the sea breathes at night.
A black and white cat
Purrs in my lap,
Bold and confident,
Like a monument
To Giorgi Gongadze,
In neighbouring tomb,
In sombre procession,
Like the boats of Sukhum.
A desktop reenactment of the immediate news coverage surrounding the disappearance of Georgiy Gongadze, the founder of Ukraine's first online news agency in 2000.
ON THE HORSE
The Kobzar’s
Mute duma,
Cracking in
Leaves as they burn.
Cleansing in,
A petrol
River through
Black mountain’s slopes.
To shake the pack
Of black dogs,
Half cut and
Gutted like fish.
From our Danish
Mattress, to
Cross with ease
Like our cats do.
On the horse,
On the horse,
If you part,
Leave on the horse.
Monument to Taras Shevchenko, Kharkiv, 2019.
The song is inspired by the 1978 self-immolation of Oleksa Hirnyk at the tomb of Taras Shevchenko, in protest against Soviet suppression of Ukrainian language and culture.
Dnepropetrovsk, 2019.
Kyiv, 2020.
Truskavets, 2021.
Designs for the release were inspired by the aesthetics of Perestroika-era campaign posters, 1985–1989.
Асортиментна Кімната, Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine. 2021.
Mezzanine, Kyiv, Ukraine. 2020.
via Beats Per Minute
Under the alias of Eugene the Oceanographer, musician Matthew O’Toole has long been an advocate of cross-genre embellishment, finding different ways to connect discordant sounds in an attempt to reveal the common roots between these disparate musical lineages. Blending ambient, plunderphonics, cold wave, experimental, and punk, he’s developed an aesthetic as unusual as it is revelatory. On his latest release, The Maze, he turns his eye and ear toward the shared histories of Ireland and Ukraine, two seemingly unrelated countries, and focuses in on themes of occupation, revolution, and famine. From the opening bells and plinking synths of “You are Now Entering Free Derry” to the chaotic electronics of closer “Перм-36”, the album revels in its ability to lift elements from practically anywhere and to compile them in such a way as to reveal hidden nuance and relevance where none existed before.
Recorded in Kyiv, the album features guest appearances from Maja Nikolic, Gentils Floquets, and Cult Party, showing that O’Toole is just as happy to have collaborators as he is to concentrate on his own unique musical perspective. There’s an underlying tension to these songs, a feeling of unresolved hostility and hints that some things can’t be fixed, just remembered. Between grimy dancefloor arrythmia and lo-fi punk clangor, The Maze, never loses its own drive toward genre deconstruction and adaptation. Even with all of its shifting musical influences, the record never feels disjointed, only anxious to draw in more sound sand pull them apart at the seams. It’s eager to see what can be made from the detritus of noise and a desire to use these various sounds as connective tissue between two geographies so different in many ways and yet so similar in others. The end result is an album of contrasts and resemblance, an ode to human relationships and the ways in which he can destroy those personal networks and how we might also repair them.
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