Cabaret Voltaire presents ... OISIN LEECH

Name: Cabaret Voltaire presents ... OISIN LEECH
Start: 2025-03-28T20:00:00+00:00
Location: The Barrel House Ballroom

Schedule

Fri, 28 Mar, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

The Barrel House Ballroom | Totnes, EN

Oisín Leech
The proud recipient of Cerys Matthews' Album of the Year on BBC 6music is coming to Totnes. The Irish singer-songwriter performs as part of a tour for Cold Sea, his critically acclaimed debut album which was described as a “Stunning debut” by UNCUT Magazine with MOJO saying that Leech is “in lush, filmic mode on his debut with John Martyn-esque mystery”.
Cold Sea was recorded in Donegal by Brooklyn artist Steve Gunn. Leech and Gunn worked for four days out of an old sea-facing schoolhouse which they turned into a working studio for the duration – borrowing equipment from local musicians and treating the recording process like a road-trip.
The album also features many luminaries such as Dónal Lunny, Bob Dylan’s long-time bassist Tony Garnier, M Ward (My Morning Jacket, She and Him) and local Donegal fiddle player Roisín McGrory but the main body of the album is a live performance by Leech of the songs with thoughtful atmospheric additions by producer Steve Gunn.
Upon the release of Cold Sea, Leech has appeared on the Cerys Matthews BBC 6 Music show from Maida Vale in London and also has seen his debut enter the Top 20 Official Folk Album Charts in the UK. Cold Sea has seen over 1.5 million streams since March.
Earlier this year, Oisin embarked on tours supporting M Ward, Vashti Bunyan, Lisa O’Neill, as well as Gaz Coombes, who Oisin will join up with again for a few dates on this upcoming run. After playing to a sold out audience at London’s Lexington last spring, Oisin returns to play Union Chapel, his biggest show to date in the UK. The tour will conclude with a homecoming show at Whelan’s in Dublin.
“Exquisitely delivered.” Uncut ★★★★
After a musical history that led Leech from the street punk bands of yesteryear through an ongoing seven-album stint with folk duo The Lost Brothers, he found himself for the first time working on songs to sing alone.
The thought of performing songs with no accompanying harmony and minimal arrangement led Leech to soul-search for new expressions and ways of playing. Throughout the great pause of the pandemic, after his family had gone to bed, Leech sat by the fireplace experimenting with open tunings. The poems of Seamus Heaney and Leech’s own history as a studied playwright inspired the words. In his mind, the songs became imagined vignette films playing behind closed, guitar eyes. After writing nearly 40 new songs in this fashion Leech wrote “October Sun” which would become the foundation for his debut album Cold Sea.
Seeking a producer for the record, Leech made a list of several people he’d like to work with. The first was guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn, who happily accepted after hearing a demo of ‘October Sun’. Leech was sitting on a dream of making the record in Donegal Ireland, a county significant to Leech because it is the place from where his ancestors come from. Pitching this idea to Gunn sparked the first of several serendipities circling the Cold Sea sessions – Gunn had always wanted to visit Donegal to connect with his own familial roots in the region.