Daniel O’Sullivan is a composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist living and working in London. Today, has shared a new track from his second solo album, Folly, out on April 5th via O Genesis Recordings. Along with the album news, O’Sullivan has announced details of several new dates, including shows at the Royal Albert Hall, London and Bristol’s Colston Hall as special guests of Echo Collective.

Daniel O’Sullivan explains, “Partly inspired by a biography of Michelangelo, partly about my son’s birth, ‘Under The Knife’ is about the violence of transformation. Just as much about texture as it is melody, each instrument was recorded one by one and I kept thinking ‘could a song feel like marble?’ Something to do with weight and density maybe, but at the same time trying to convey the lines and contours of a human hand.”

Folly was written around the birth of his son Ari and the passing of his friend Ian Johnstone, and both events were significant in the album that followed. O’Sullivan explains, “Joy is inseparable from suffering and sometimes those polarities arrive at the same moment. Music offers a vessel to contain the unspeakable.”

This cycle of twelve songs deftly illustrates O’Sullivan’s ascent as a unique and multidimensional songwriter. Moving from the familiar pantheon of experimental music and arriving upon a universal narrative probing the human condition from the inside out. Both lyrically and within the intricate lattice of arrangements, traditional forms are reshaped into transcendent pop symphonies. Both intimate and alien, archetypal and atypical, joyous and melancholic, the aperture of Folly is wide open and light streams in.

Folly is O’Sullivan’s second album under his own name. The album was recorded and mixed by Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Julian Cope Band, Spiritualized) at his Aeriel studio premises in Wales and mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy.

DANIEL O’SULLIVAN
FOLLY
TRACKLISTING

The Air St Evignne
Under The Knife
Time Elapsing Blue
Rattleman
Honour Wave
Air Tunes
The Diamond Vehicle
Penny Rag
Silhouette
Utopiary
Amnion
The Coming of Age Story