Cork band Boa Morte take the space for a fourth album
Boa Morte: fourth album sees the Cork band continue to shift shapes
Proving that slowcore is more than a sound, Cork quartet Boa Morte took eight years to follow up their 2002 debut, Soon it Will Come Time to Face the World Outside, and a further nine for Before There Was Air to accompany 2010’s The Dial Waltz. So, the arrival of the band’s fourth album, The Total Space, in less than a mere four years would suggest that Covid-19 gave them the total space to concentrate on writing and recording.
But in a surprising twist, the recent wave of lockdowns delayed their latest offering by six months as they sought to schedule time with a producer.
“Within a year of recording the last album we probably had a lot of these songs,” Cormac Gahan points out. “And then others were added because of the delay.”
In the end they turned to a familiar figure, Daniel Presley, who produced their first two albums and is admired for his engineering work and string arrangements on Spain’s 1995 album The Blue Moods of Spain, a major early touchstone for Boa Morte.
With its long ambient passages and layered sonic textures, The Total Space saw a significant evolution in the band’s sound. Where their first two albums were recorded on 2-inch magnetic tape, digital recording methods have pushed the band into more experimental territory.
“I think it’s no harm to change it up,” guitarist Bill Twomey offers. “We always felt we wanted to change with every album, just to maybe broaden the soundscape a little bit. And when we worked with Daniel in the past it was in a very stripped-down format, and we wanted to try something more expansive with him. The guy’s a genius in the studio but maybe we weren’t getting the best out of him in some ways.”
Modern recording methods have benefitted Boa Morte greatly, allowing them to preserve the inspired moments that can arise in the rehearsal room, which can often be lost to posterity.
“Mark Hollis was a big advocate of your first take,” says Gahan, citing the late Talk Talk frontman. “So the beauty is that you can record your first couple of rehearsals to a song and something might actually happen. And you can either just lift it completely and put it on the album or you can recreate it. But in the old days something magical would happen and we would have lost it forever. Whereas now with our home studio set up we can capture that and it can actually end up being on the album. So there’s a few moments like that are in there.”
Taking its cue from its predecessor, The Total Space is replete with moments of quiet magic and hushed beauty. The band is happy to be supported by London DIY label Gare Du Nord and have found fans like BBC 6 DJ Gideon Coe.
“I’d love to get it to more people who like that kind of music,” wonders Gahan aloud. “How do you do that?”
Unexpectedly, ‘Stone by Stone’, from their previous release, found itself on a Spotify editorial alternative folk playlist with the likes of Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes.
“It’s not an immediate track. It doesn’t hit you, because there’s a big long kinda rambling intro before the song kicks off. But they picked up on it anyway for some reason,” Twomey reflects.
“We got tens of thousands of streams out of that and that was really helpful. But that’s kind of what you’re looking for. That is the new model, but it’s very opaque in terms of how you even get that access.”
Unfortunately, all those listeners doesn't make for much of a financial return. “You don’t get any money out of it,” Twomey chuckles, “but at least they hear it.”
Gahan nods sagely: “They hear it, and that’s the objective, I guess.”
- Boa Morte’s The Total Space is out now on Gare Du Nord and available on Bandcamp
