Folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Callum Orr announces his debut album The Trials of Knowing with his emotionally devastating single ‘Crushing Machine’, out today. The Trials of Knowing, set for release on Friday, 12th July, will be celebrated with an album launch on Saturday, July 20th at The Workman’s Cellar. Tickets are available here for €12.
Orr wrote the bleakly poignant ‘Crushing Machine’ in 2021 after his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
The Dublin musician says of ‘Crushing Machine’: “I had this feeling of hopelessness in the face of this machine of death, envisioning that I and everyone I love are just sitting on this conveyor belt waiting for this final violence of being destroyed and taken from life. I was almost confused as to why everyone wasn’t just running around screaming with terror, how are we all acting like this is OK?”
Waves of driving guitar crash over the listener, just as bracing as the revelation of our inevitable mortality, and an angular synth melody brings a decidedly morbid tone to the track. ‘Crushing Machine’ closes with a poem Orr penned called “Flicker on a Sea,” read by his cousin Ailbhe Keogan. Orr explains: “I wrote the poem in 2021 after having this strange, very abstract dream about the vast sea of the universe and how insignificant we are in it. We’re like a glint of light reflecting on a wave of this infinite, inconceivable darkness that doesn’t care about us or even know we’re here.”
Orr writes blunt and confessional folk songs with a strong sense of melody and intricate guitar arrangement. He played Ireland Music Week in 2019 and released the EP Cathy & Places in 2020 to strong critical reception, as well as a sold out Unitarian Church launch. It’s a sentimental set of folk songs with a shared concept of the relation of place to memory.
The Trials of Knowing, co-produced by Orr and Ailbhe Reddy, was recorded between Asta Kalapa studios in Wexford, Orr’s home in Dublin 7, and various other spaces in Dublin. The album follows Orr’s journey from the darkness of nihilism into the light of love and life’s innumerable joys—however fleeting that life may be.