The latter half of 2023 was busy for Irish midlands producer OWLS. With headline shows in Dublin, a slew of electrifying underground shows and the release of singles Swallow My Love & Bury Me, the darkwave specialist re-emerges in 2024 with a vicious synth-punk protest in his latest Body Bags.
The song and video have been largely informed by the unfolding events in Gaza. Body Bags looks at humanity turning in on itself. For all the beauty & harmony in the world, we are chaotic by nature – violent and cruel to our own. It explores the human condition and our ability to inflict pain and suffering upon the most vulnerable. It’s forced the Longford artist to look outward instead of inward.
“All of my songwriting up until now has been dealing with internal conflicts and self assessment. It feels selfish looking inwards when being faced with genocide daily. I teach History. It seems to be repeating itself. I had a Palestinian student join one of my classes recently. They presented a project on the ancient buildings of Gaza City only to highlight the fact that they’re no longer there. That hit hard.”
OWLS pulls from elements of synthwave, industrial and darkwave to deliver a relentless two minutes of synthesizer punk, drawing inspiration from artists like Meryl Streek, N8NOFACE and Bob Vylan. The video for the track was shot on site in Co. Longford Ireland by Nathan Sheridan. It features the characters ‘Bird’ & ‘Gimp’. A macabre couple finding moments of co-operation & harmony in the complete chaos & violence of our world today.
