Under a Bruised Parisian Sky

There are song catchers

This is my first full length album, after my first original EP, Beauty in the Park.

There are eight songs on the album, which were whittled down from many more to fit into just one full day of recording at Aeronef studios in Paris.

I started writing this collection immediately after Beauty in the Park with Dead Lady's Cigarettes coming into fruition before its release. While Passion Fruit Moons was written and finalised about four weeks before we went into the studio this summer.

I began playing music at the age of 5, but I only started working professionally when I moved to Paris. For a little more info on that, I invite you to check out this documentary piece made of me and my life in Paris by an Irish documentary series that explored the Irish abroad.

My first original collection on Beauty in the Park included the songs Ocean Blues and Horses and tended more towards an experimental sound without the support of a harmonic instrument.

This album is a more reflective, personal selection of songs, each one inspired by an event, a place or the memory of a person and sometimes a combination of all three in a collage creation of sorts. In this album, I source some vintage joy in the sound, it is a gentle re-telling of tales and it exposes what I most enjoy surrounding myself with musically. I am inspired by Joni Mitchell, Marc Ribot, Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane, Jeff Buckley, Nina Simone, Claude Debussy, Duke Ellington and all the musical performances from The Muppet Show.

My music pulls threads from Jazz, Soul, Rock, and Romanticism to create an alternative, sometimes experimental, often poetic sound.

I am a lover of the left-behind, of old things, of letter-notes and half-light ghosts which get stitched, strung or typed back up together to make something new.

The eight songs are as follows;

Slow Exhale

Aran Jumper

Feathers

Broken Hotel Room

Touching Infinity

Dead Lady's Cigarettes

Passion Fruit Moons

Endless Augusts

The Musicians

The album features some of the finest, most delicate and thoughtful playing from three talented and generous Paris based Jazz Musicians.

Long time collaborator Sava Medan is the bass player on this project and also the score arranger. Sava, originally from Belgrade, is a virtuoso jazz bass player and has performed with the likes of Kenny Wheeler, Mark Murphy and Bojan Z. When he was in his late teens, he even played with Chet Baker. Sava is also a composer and songwriter and his song Yellow Suit features on Beauty in the Park.

Soheil Tabrizi-Zadeh is a multi instrumentalist and composer. For this record, he plays both Guitar and Trumpet. Soheil grew up surrounded by traditional music from Iran, Classical Western Music and Theatre Sound Design, specifically at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord. He is very active in the Parisian Jazz scene.

Adrien Cao comes from a family of musicians, he started studying music at the age of 7 and has recorded a number of albums as a soloist with the Centre of Baroque Music in Versailles (Princess Diana was present at one of Adrien's first solo performances!) A drummer, arranger, composer and music educator, for this record he plays drums. Adrien is part of a number of diverse contemporary jazz projects including the Logan Richardson Quintet, Alium and the Tony Tixier Quartet.

The album was recorded at Aeronef Studios Paris by Antoine Karacostas.

It was mixed in Munich at Realistic Sound Studios by Florian H Oestreicher

The photographs used in this presentation are by Philippe Lecourtier, Nick Paulsen and Karl Burke.

The teaser video was made by Philippe Lecourtier.

Thank you for reading this far!

I would really love to add your names to this ongoing dream-line.

Please help me finalise this album by donating what you can.

New Album by Liv Monaghan