PRICE:
$12.50$10.63
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Onomatopoeia
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
EDDA 045CD EDDA 045CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
2/9/2018

Dell'Orso Records present a reissue of Butterfly Child's debut Onomatopoeia, originally released in 1993. In the early summer of 1993, Rough Trade released Onomatopoeia, the first album by Belfast native Joe Cassidy's Butterfly Child. Having first come to the public's attention after a wave of press resulting from two EPs released on dream pop legends' A.R. Kane's H.ark! label, an incendiary first BBC John Peel Session, and a UK tour supporting The Sundays, Cassidy recorded Onomatopoeia in a couple of weeks with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Gary McKendry of the now infamous Papa Sprain. Gleefully using a shoestring budget that felt like a one-million dollar advance, Cassidy and McKendry bought an 8-track tape machine, a cheap drum machine, an even cheaper reverb unit, a secondhand synthesizer, and a bunch of tea. They then proceeded into the album's recording sessions with a classic Irish carefree attitude and confidence. As Cassidy recalled: "I always felt that no matter how little audio equipment or musical instruments we had back then, that it was always possible to make something really special, despite our limitations. In fact, having extreme limitations often helped push us to get the most out of the solitary synth or the one bad drum machine with silly tom sounds that we had at our disposal. I love that the song 'Our Lady Mississipp', for example, is like the nursery school jazz version on the album, and then by the time we did the second Peel Session six months later, I had Pendle on guitar, James Harris on bass, and a fantastic drummer (Richie Thomas of Dif Juz, Moose, The Jesus And Mary Chain, This Mortal Coil), finally realizing what the adult version of that song could sound like." Part of Onomatopoeia's charm that still holds true almost 25 years later is its child-like, timeless quality -- it sounds nothing like anything of its time. It is a unique and beautiful collection of "almost songs" that flourish as a whole body of work that beg the listener to delve deeper, to get lost in the aether of its lyrics, and to let it quietly roar all over you.