IRISH MAKEOVER.

1/ MOLLY MALONE sung by Myles O Reilly

2/ THE LARK (in the clear air)

3/ LAKES OF PONTCHARTRAIN sung by Mick Flannery

4/ MARDYKE featuring Karl Nesbitt

5/ SHE MOVES THROUGH THE FAIR sung by Myles O Reilly

6/ BLACKBIRD sung by Kate Murphy

7/ KING OF THE FAIRIES featuring Karl Nesbitt

8/ SCARBOROUGH FAIR sung by Annette Buckley

9/ RED IS THE ROSE

10/ ALL AROUND MY HAT sung by Kate Murphy

11/ SHIRIN

October 20th, saw the launch of our new Shop!!

Our rollout went off without a hitch!

We sold 100 cd's in the first 14 minutes,

And had over 2300 listens to the player!

YOU CAN NOW BUY THE ALBUM DIRECTLY FROM THIS PAGE!

Thank you everyone for being a part of this!!

Skully.

SUPERGROUP 1.4 UK.

A slight switch of genre now as we head towards Irelands masters of dance, trance , lounge and electronica of which Ireland holds some of the most 'elite' of the musical world.
Our first (and Irelands most famous) master of sound first started out as a DJ at the age of fourteen before moving into the freshly developing 'electronic' sound that was now starting to find it's foothold in the international music industry. His experiments with sound engineering on the cutting edge of electronica soon earned him the title of 'The Professor' among Ireland and the UK's musical community.
Despite alot of success with the band 'Chapterhouse' - especialy in Ireland - our pioneer grew tired of the bands international limitations and decided to go on a seven year solo spree as a real 'Professor' teaching English language to the students of Toulouse University in France. It was while teaching on the campus that he ended up going to a concert of a dance teacher who just also happened to be one of the most talented choreographers to have ever come out from Africas Ivory Coast. Her voice was astoundingly beautiful and the songs and sounds of her own African culture at that particular concert became a seed of inspiration in a fresh wave of musical creativity that led our musician into writing a few albums worth of material specificaly geared to surround, capture and and highlight that female choreographers voice.The singer, it seems, was just as impressed by his musical creations as he was by her voice and in 1997 Aida and 'Professor' Skully formed their unique two piece musical masterpiece called Metisse.
'Metisse' - the French for 'mixture' is exactly what it is... a blending of the Celtic Irish electronic music of Skully with the intensely expressive and powerfull African traditional and soulfulness of Aida as expressed in the French language. As the demos of their new musical mixture found their way into the offices of the worlds record companies, the return of post brought offer, after offer, for recording contracts and signings.Sony Publishing offered them a worldwide publishing deal even though they hadn't yet signed a recording contact with anyone...and the sound engineers of every record company to hear them out were all so impressed that they all refused to tamper with Skully's home studio recordings as they were all made to a quality that was higher than their own best technicians could accomplish.Skully's recording, engineering and production skills were it seemed, second to no one elses in the entire music industry worldwide.
A contract with Telstar looked very promising, but when it became apparent that the label were more interested in marketing and commercialisation than anything artistic Skully bought their album 'It's My Fault' back from Telstar. This brave move, that could quite well have ended up bankrupting them, instead led to much greater freedom and success as they returned their 'French speaking' household to Skully's native Cork. It soon transpired that one of their greatest fans was Madonna (whose own trance and dance creations of recent years were very much inspired by the duo) and when Madonna embarked on the film project 'The Next Best Thing' she chose the 'very best' for the soundtrack by using the music from her favourite band 'Metisse' . The singles and album quickly made their way to the top of the Billboard and every top compilation album producer concievable requested tracks from Metisse for their upcoming releases from 'The Ministry of Sound' and 'Chillout' to 'Essential Soundtracks'.
A 'Metisse V Horslips' track -using the now world famous Dearg Doom riff from the founders of Celtic Rock- became the Irish football teams theme tune as well as the RTE World Cup theme for the 2002 World Cup...The same year also saw the pair play to crowds of between twelve to a hundred thousand throughout europe. RTE also use Metisse creations for their 'Nationwide ' news programme and their music has been featured in countless TV programs throughout Ireland, the UK, Canada and the United States in programs such as 'ER, The Bill, Dead Like Me etc. When the UK electrical giant 'Curry's' were looking for an artist to help them test and advertise the most powerfull new sound audio systems for home use on the market today it seemed only natural to approach the sound engineer that the worlds most reknowned sound authorities described as the very best...Professor Skully is very much in demand.
Metisse's second album was entitled 'Nomahs Land' and again it drew heavily on Aidas haunting African cultural vocalisations and Skully's rich electronic and classical soundscapes to draw its listeners on to a deeply moving and emotionaly empowered musical journey that keeps up the emotional momentum from the very first note until the very last...When the couple (very amicably) seperated (they are still very close and live five minutes apart )Skully's musical escapades continued (as do Aida's ) with a number of musical collaberations and a solo release with a very unique and 'tasty' approach...
Skully's solo album aptly entitled 'without a voice' features wave after wave of laid back, funked up, upbeat and chilled out musical genius - including the purely musical renditions of former Metisse masterpieces such as 'Nomah's Land' but an extra stroke of genius came in his first solo American release that paired him up with the world famous American 'gourmet' and 'hand made' fudge company, the 'Seaport Fudge Factory' in San Diego. The company ships its gourmet confectionary worldwide but in 2008 they made a very special selection of chocolate entitled the 'Sweet Chocolate Seranade' which includes a special selection of Skully's songs on disc including 'It Rained that Morning' and 'Nomah's Land for Three Piano's'...a move that is very likely to start a wave of 'Skullymania' among the worlds female chocolate lovers!
Further projects over the last eighteen months include 'STILL' featuring the vocals of LA female soul singer 'Esther' and 'Irish Makeover', a chillout makeover of famous Irish folk songs and tunes featuring many established gifted vocalists and another traditional tune first made famous beyond Irelands borders by the Celtic rockers Horslips entitled 'The King Of The Fairies' (a classic reworking of the original 1976 and 2004 versions of the Horslips track 'Trouble' is also found on Skullys other original solo profile in the links below) . There are also upcoming plans for a tour of the Irish Makeover set along with further collaberations with vocalist Kate Murphy and further dance albums in the process of being mixed right now.The musical empire of Professor Skully is expanding rapidly so there are plenty of links to explore for this Master of Irish trance, dance and electronica - including the link to find and order that exclusively tasty chocolate fudge mix to drive the women folk wild...so get stuck in by exploring the following at...

FUDGE FACTORY:

http://www.seaportfudgefactory.com/skullyshirin.html

SKULLY.
http://www.myspace.com/skullymusic

IRISH MAKEOVER.
http://www.myspace.com/irishskully


METISSE.
http://www.myspace.com/metisse

STILL.
http://www.myspace.com/musicstill




http://www. theryan-o-riain22. mfbiz. com//supergroups14/4529951614

Having firmly established himself, both nationally and internationally, with acts such as Chapterhouse, Métisse and more recently as a solo artist, Cork producer and musician Skully embarked on an ambitious and bold new project. Working on his new album Irish Makeover (2008) saw Skully recruit and collaborate with emerging talent in an effort to bravely reinterpret and revamp classic Irish folk songs. The fruits of this labour are a triumph: a record which should achieve both longevity and critical acclaim.

Skully, who is based in Ireland, reflects on how the album was conceived. He reveals: "It was on a winter's night in Cork about two years ago. Métisse had kind off wound down. We had stopped recording together. I was working on my solo album and I met Charlie Pinder from V2 and Sony Publishing in Cork. I remember the brutal rain pouring out of the sky. We were running back to his hotel and he turned around to me and said: 'I have a great idea! Why don't you do Skullyized folk songs?' None of us took it very seriously. I had never thought of it before. Even the thought of Irish folk songs would have put my barriers up. After a couple of weeks of living with the idea, I kind of thought: "Let's give it a crack!" I started at the Rushbrooke Hotel in a little garage looking out over the river and it was just a stunning backdrop. It represented the turning over of a page for me musically and the beginning of a new era. I was now going to work with lots of different people on a very exciting project."

Skully enlisted an impressive array of talented musicians to aid him on this new musical departure. He enthuses: "I didn't want to go for the old favourites. I wanted to use what I thought were the up and coming vocalists. So everybody is very young on the album. It is a Cork project and this album was made on the shores of Cork harbour, although it is very colloquial and very local with very local ideas, it is still a worldwide project."

One musician enlisted by Skully was Cork troubadour Mick Flannery, who recently entered the Irish top ten album charts with his second long-player White Lies (2008). Skully is delighted with Flannery's performance on the track The Lakes of Pontchartrain. He explains: "What I was trying to do here was take these songs into the 21st century. What is The Lakes of Pontchartrain? It is one of the most beautiful folk songs that we have. Everyone is used to listening to this, sitting at a fireplace in a pub down in West Cork or in Kerry or somewhere like that. Mick Flannery has this incredible raw voice. Although he is very young, he sounds weathered. My brief to Mick was to sing this like he was in a pub, which he did sitting on a chair with his head in his hands. Then I just twisted this piece of music so far away from what you would be expecting. It has suddenly become a very electronic sound, very far away from its origins, which were the pub. Mick's voice was the only voice that could have done that."

Another well-established Cork vocalist who appears on Irish Makeover is songstress Annette Buckley. "Annette did Scarborough Fair. Although it isn't really an Irish song, it is on every single Irish compilation album. It's a beautiful folk song. Again, I wanted to break down all the preconceived ideas of what Scarborough Fair is about. We all know the song and the Simon and Garfunkel version. Nothing of that is in this song. In fact, there is a quality to Annette's voice which is like a 1920s voice. There is a gorgeous quality to it. Here you have an Irish version of an English folk song sung by an Irish Girl that sounds like it comes from the 1920s, yet it is electronic. It's very odd! But it works."

During the process of recruiting vocalists for this project, Skully discovered a new
Cork vocal talent – Kate Murphy. Skully recalls: "Kate Murphy is from Douglas. She is a friend of my sisters. That is how I recruited her. I was at a party one night and I heard Kate singing and she blew me away. She is a folk singer and a very talented songwriter. She sang Blackbird and All Around My Hat, which I still think is an Irish song, but some people say it's English. Kate was a stunning vocalist to work with!"

Juno Falls main-man, Myles O'Reilly, was given the unenviable task of singing on the interpretation of the classic The Ballad of Molly Malone, which for this release has been simply renamed Molly Malone, presumably to distinguish the new dark version from the original. Skully confesses: "Miles and I go back a long time and he is an awesome, awesome vocalist. Miles did two tracks; She Moved Through The Fair and probably the most recognisable, yet weirdest track on the album, Molly Malone. This is a really sinister, twisted version of the song that we all know and Miles's voice cuts through it."

Thanks to the Internet, Skully sought input from his fans across the world while working on this album. This was also a factor in terms of creating the album's quirky artwork. Skully admits: "Sean O'Leary who designed the cover wanted a dog with a pair of headphones. So we decided to ask everybody online from our My Space page if they could send us in photographs of their dogs wearing headphones. We got llamas, rabbits, pigs and dozens of dogs. We even had people complaining that their dogs ate the headphones. Eventually we got our dog and headphones for the album cover."

Irish Makeover is released nationwide on October 20. For more information visit the website www.myspace.com/irishskully.

To thank everyone for their support here on Myspace,

I have persuaded my record company to allow me to sign the first
100 CDs sold.

The link (to buy) will be put on the IRISH MAKEOVER page this coming Monday 20th October.

Thank you to everyone..

Skully.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that :

SCOTT

is the winner of my writing competition!

An album will be on its way to him, as soon as they roll off the presses!
................................................................................

And now to my next venture!

The IRISH MAKEOVER album will be released world wide on October 20th.

I want you to take a photo of yourself, or your favorite person or even PET!

holding the album..

IN YOUR FAVORITE PLACE!!!

That may be your Kitchen, Skydiving from a balloon, in front of your favorite landmark, hanging off the grand canyon, scaling the great wall of china...

We will then incorporate all the photos together into a giant poster, and make it available to everyone!

All you have to do is, take your photo, and upload it to your own pics, with the name of the place, then let us know, and we will do the rest....

This should be a laugh!!

Skully.

With great difficulty, We have narrowed it down to these three Finalists...

THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE!!

A signed, Numbered IRISH MAKEOVER album. (from the first run)

Please Read each one, and leave a comment with the name of your preferred Author :

SHIV. IAN or SCOTT.

Thank you everyone who sent in a story or a poem..

It was great fun!

Skully.

..........................................................................................
The Bard and the Merchant's Daughter (Skully's competition)

By SHIV.

The Bard and the Merchants daugher

I first saw him in winter.
That evil cold winter.

They called him the Bard
The Bard of the Fenians
A songster turned rebel
A devil incarnate
For he shows no mercy
to the landed gentry.

The freeze had the schooners
held fast in the harbour
In the town, tension was mounting,
with fear of the rebels
And the threat they might bring,
to a town held defenceless
by the winter hard winds.

I, noting my father distraction,
bade my handmaiden,
to bring us warm cloaks
to flee unnoted,
To that world of wild country,
marshes and hill.

On the high hill over the harbour
came the smoke from the fish palace fires
and with it,
the scent of smoked fish and oak ember,
Linger we did not,
But hastened away,
away
Away upp rocky icy incline
and sharp ridges,
into deep woods with soft snow beneath.

There was no sound
No birdsong, no voices,
just the low moan of snow
deep on the high branches
And it was there
In that stilly cool place .
There that I first saw his face.

He stood, silent and strong
Still and unbending.
Only his eyes,
His icy blue eyes,
held lifes silver spark
T'was the Bard of the Fenians
Face to face with
The Merchant Daughter

I felt those eyes ore me
ANd a hot glow diffused me
His upper lip twitched yet
he did not move nor did he speak.
And i wondered
what he was thinking.
And what was he doing
Was this my last moment?

And then, I wondered no more.
Our eyes did the talking.
Not a word did we utter.
Yet we talked with our souls.
I saw, in my heart,
His demented torment
Yet he felt my soft words
as I offered myself
To the Bard of the Fenians
in the cold lonely woods.

He would not take what
I offered
I felt his turmoil.
My eyes pleaded
Come with me, Come back to the fold.
My souls yearning was unheard and unheeded,
He turned away from me,
and again was no more


Many years have passed.
Many cold winters.
The schooners lay rotting
in the estuary sands,
The Bard of the Fenian
is but a long lonely tale
Yet still, I remember
those moments of magic
in that cold winter glade.

The next time
I saw his face,
It was springtime.
He was in chains,
And defiant.
His eyes looked at mine with
cold deep desperation.
The last time I saw his face, on the deck of the Slave boat,
His eyes told me everything, I needed to know
He had fought a just battle against my kind as the foe
And the price that he paid,
Made him heart sore.

The He loved me,
I knew,
without even a doubt.
Yet he hated my kind,
And its gilded establishment.
They sent him away,a poor human cargo
And left me here,
alone and bereft.

And now tis I,
The Merchants Daughter,
who sings the tales of this land,
I try to pay homage,
to the work that was done,
to earn freedom and laughter
By the Bard and his men
And record the memory of times past
and terrible deeds
wHen ships of human cargo set out from the harbour
to far distant lands.

Now, I'm the Bard,
The teller of tales
And the words that I speak
Come directly from him.

By Shiv

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=94514640

..........................................................................................
The Bard and the Merchant's Daughter (Skully's competition)

By IAN.

The Bard and the Merchant's Daughter

The bard and the wine merchant's daughter
Fell in love over twelve pints of porter
"The marriage will be swift
"The honeymoon bliss."
- He was pissed as a fish but he'd caught her.

Like many a plan when you're slaughtered
He believed it could never be thwarted
"Your Da likes the wine
"It'll all turn out fine
"And if not I'll be hung, drawn and quartered."

Now, her Da was a rogue and a drunk
A bona fide Pogue and a punk
And news travels fast
Even south of Belfast
Soon their dreams would surely be sunk

Well, they both left the bar feeling squiffy
As they stumbled along, oh, so pretty
"I'm in love!" cried the bard
"Here's my glove!" cried her Da
Sent the bard tumbling into the Liffey

"You'll rue the day you did court her,"
Cried the merchant to the bard in the water
"Say good-bye to your life
"And keep your hands off my wife!
"I'm a merchant and she's mine, cos I bought her!"

So, take heed all you lovers of romance
Don't get caught in the old song and dance
Through a merchant's eyes
There's no rules for the prize
'Gainst his money you don't stand a chance

By Ian.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=163962505



..........................................................................................
The Bard and the Merchant's Daughter (Skully's competition)

By SCOTT.

THE GIFT OF THE LOUGH

1) The old man sits feeding doves
by the lough on a soft day.
He is there yet is distant.
His mind is always at play.

2) She is a sweet lonely lass
from the small town up the way.
She came to the lough forlorn
to kneel down sadly and pray.

3) She sees the man smiling bright
with a look of joy so real.
And so she dares to approach
as though his beaming might heal.

4) Why the sad eyes pretty lass?
Says he in a soft clear lilt.
Do you not know God's glories
reach out to erase your guilt?

5) Says she I am hating life.
There is no love and no hope.
My dad is the town merchant,
and for love I blindly grope.

6) Who might you be gentle sir?
Says she through a stream of tears.
Says he I'm the bard ageless
sent here to remove your fears.

7) Hear that sweet dove cooing song
to tell you life is a gift.
Hear the wind and the water,
and let your spirit just drift.

8) Each day is a newborn babe
that you must care for and love.
To waste it would be tragic,
just like you killing that dove.

9) He then takes the cooing bird,
and puts it in her soft hands.
Then with his hand a caress,
and a kiss upon her lands.

10) When she looks up nothing's there.
The bard is not to be found.
Just her smile and the cooing,
and a cross upon the ground.

c 2008 Scott Manke aka moscapoet


http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=253356524

For years people have wondered about the meaning of this song. In fact there is no right or wrong explanation, no one really knows!

Its mystery is partially why this remains one of the most beautiful Irish folk songs ever written.

SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR.

My love said to me
My Mother won't mind
and my daughter wont slight you
for your lack of kind
She went away from me
and this she did say

It will not be long love
till our wedding day

She went away from me
and moved through the fair
and slowly I watched her
move here and move there.
She came away homeward
with one star away
as the swans in the evening
move over the lake


I dreamed last night
my own love came in
she came in so sweetly
her feet made no din
she came close beside me
and this she did say

It will not be long love
Till our wedding day.

....................................

The sun was going down as Myles finished recording this wonderful vocal, we looked out the window of my recording studio, and saw two swans taking off on the bay.

Skully.

I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to send me photos of their dogs wearing headphones!!

REX will appear on my album cover, but all the dogs, and our horse will stay in my pics!!

This was a lot of fun!!!

Are we ready for the next crazy Skully competition??

Skully.

ps : sorry Ann about TINKLE eating your new pair of headphones! :-)