Stardust falls on The Coral’s flickering, imagined Italian Western soundtrack as Cillian Murphy joins the band for…
OCEANS APART
The Coral – OCEANS APART
From Sea Of Mirrors – Released Fri 8 September 2023
Run On Records in assoc. with Modern Sky UK
Also released this autumn:
Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show – Physical Formats Only
Freedom reigns in the world of The Coral after almost 30 years as a band, adding concepts and collaborators to faintly-pencilled wish lists, and now another layer of intrigue embedded into upcoming album, Sea Of Mirrors’ reveals itself with the release of Ocean’s Apart – featuring a walk-on part by actor, Cillian Murphy.
Denoting a new phase of prolifcacy within the incomparable band of world-creating psych-folk-pop wanderers, The Coral announced not one, but TWO ALBUMS earlier this year, both for release on the same day this September. At the same time they revealed that the actor had been involved in the recording of Sea Of Mirrors’ closing track, helping to see out the vividly-imagined Italian Western soundtrack that never was.
The gangplank of Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, a physical formats-only album that leads listeners from 2021’s No.2 chart success double album, Coral Island to their newest long-player, was similarly blessed with the voice of actor John Simm. The band revealed his narrated contribution to Drifter’s Prayer earlier this month.
The result of off-the-cuff remarks in the studio, happenstance and the contact book of the album’s co-producer, Sean O’Hagan, Murphy agreed to narrate spoken word verses as Ocean’s Apart’s slow-building, swirling, string-laden album finale comes to a close, using words written by the band’s keyboard player, frequent songwriter and poet, Nick Power.
With the band describing the track as ‘the bohemian rhapsody Queen would’ve written if, instead of touring the world, they stayed in watching cinecittà studios films and listening to Gene Clark’, the song’s drama is borne of studio sessions riven with playful levity and unending possibility.
Singer and songwriter, James Skelly adds: “Once everybody had put their parts on the track. Sean suggested we have some dialogue over the outro and said he’d done the soundtrack to Cillian Murphy’s first film, so he had a contact. A few weeks later I got an email from Cillian saying he was a fan and would be up for helping us.
“We discussed the character and how I saw it as a once great star like Buster Keaton or Bella Lagosi on the set of a low-budget B movie, looking back thinking: ‘How did I get here?’ I sent him what Nick had written and then left it up to him to do his thing and when we put what he sent us over the music it fitted perfectly.”
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My life is a soundtrack, i track my life through music, photography is my passion, my escape, my expression. Without both i have pieces missing, thankfully i’m blessed and get to combine both.
Born in Manchester, lived in Australia for 22 years where i was heavily involved in the Australian Music Industry, firstly in bands (Singer) and then managing bands (all original), I moved back to the UK, Wales specifically 10 years ago
