On July 8th Lux Alma premieres her latest solo work and first self-produced track, To the Sea. It is an audio-visual celebration of the elemental beauty and awesome power of the Atlantic Ocean, which will be available on all digital platforms on 9th July.
The idea for this piece was born during the dark days of lockdown. Alma is a native of Tralee who now lives in Dublin. Confined to the city for months on end, she found herself missing the sea. “I had the Irish Sea nearby but it’s not a patch on the wildness of the Atlantic,” says Alma. She took to looking at the Kerry coast on Google Maps. “I followed it from south to north, wishing I could visit every inlet and bay,” she says. When lockdown lifted, she hightailed it home and undertook that journey in real life. “I stopped at every single one of those inlets, 86 of them in all,” she says.
Alma put her sound design skills to use, making sound recordings at each stop of her coastal journey and weaving them into a piece of music. Each instrument on this track is a sound from the seashore. “The sea isn’t just the inspiration for this piece of music; it is the music” says Alma. “Every hit of a snare drum is a crashing wave in Rossbeigh, each kick drum is a thundering roll of the ocean at Coumeenole, and every synthesiser has a different sample of the Atlantic at its core.”
All of these sea sounds are folded in with Lux Alma’s trademark harmonies to create a unique piece of music – a digital shell to hold to our ear when we’re missing the sea.
The work was commissioned by Siamsa Tíre, The National Folk Theatre of Ireland, under their Associate Artists scheme which has supported thirty-six artists during lockdown to explore and develop their practice and ideas of Irish folk culture.
Alma’s music is inspired by nature and her Irish heritage, and is influenced by the likes of Enya, Kate Bush and Björk. She is known on the Irish music scene not just for her solo work. She has sung with acts such as The Coronas, Villagers, Wallis Bird, Róisín O, and Sorcha Richardson and her folk trio The Evertides has been a mainstay on the folk scene for years.
