A Year of Music

Stuck in my head this morning: a vague montage of material from Michael O’Shea’s self-titled solo album on WMO, chopped and reconfigured by my dreaming mind to sound vaguely Chinese. I was dreaming about the NPR affiliate in Portland changing to broadcast all in Chinese, and my mom tuning all the radios in the house to it, you see. Which is weird inasmuch as O’Shea played mostly traditional Celtic folk drones, albeit on an instrument of his own devising (one that sounds like a hammer dulcimer with a built-in flange pedal).

O’Shea’s music sounds like a cross between John Fahey and Roy Montgomery, which is my way of saying it’s great and weird, and I’d like to find more material by him. Too bad for me! The only other record he released is a desperately out of print LP from 1982, all of which is included on the WMO release. Also, the WMO release itself is completely out of print (as are most things on WMO, the private label of Wire’s fan club). I heard this in the first place via Mutant Sounds. You can too, if you like.