Foburg
The release of Foburg took place on September 25. On that date, Pope Benny Dickhead II recited a Te Deum in Rome, requesting that the many defunct indie record shops of Nothern Europe should be miraculously re-opened, so that multiple copies of Foburg be bought by the first-born of each family in Christendom.
His wish was granted, and now Cathal Coughlan need make no more records, his fortune having been made. He will henceforth attend to his first love, the promotion of faith-based intitiatives in education, healthcare and animal pornography throughout the American Sector of the known world.
A North American release of Foburg will happen in early 2007.
You can buy the Foburg CD from this site. Watch this space also for announcements regarding the availability of MP3 downloads of Foburg from various outlets.
The titles of the songs comprising this epoch-making event are as follows - click on the highlighted titles to hear a sample of each (preferably using a dedicated MP3 player such as Winamp, not McWindows McDRM Player or iTunes):
- Ophelia Crescent Is Burning
- Widening the Gravel Road
- Foburg (They Bought)
- North Esk
- Epiphany Season
- Black Confetti
- Fur Jacket on a Hot Night
- The Adoptees
- Rat Poison Rendezvous
- The Centre, revisited
- Big Wax Hand
- The Sacrament of Killing
- The Intake Room
- Asunderland
You can also hear, in full, other tracks, by going to the Cathal Coughlan Myspace page
Foburg interactives
And so we come to the first of the Foburg interactive occurrences announced some weeks ago. Full details here...
Flannery's Mounted Head
When the piece begins, Flannery is the night manager of a call-centre in his unnamed, developed country. When it ends, 'he' is a free-associating disembodied head, in a jar behind the counter of a bar.
He is a testament to the transformative powers of idleness, and more especially to the extreme reactions which it can elicit from the society in which the idler resides. Mystics, artists, scholars without accreditation - all of these have existed in various non-sanctioned occupational voids throughout human history. Sometimes a way (a form of words, perhaps even a system of belief) is found to make their infractions respectable, sometimes not.
The story begins in a time when the path of human history is narrowing, and certain principles and cultural norms are held to be universally valid, across the known world, to a degree never seen before. But the delusion has come and gone before, and will again.
The primacy of material possessions, the retreat of individuals from the humans which surround them (in favour of policed proxy interactions with nominated 'communities of interest', loose bonds based on money and desire), and the readiness of the keepers of the wisdom to authorise bloodshed, anywhere, in defence of The Lifestyle - these are the commandments.
It's a miracle - and like all miracles, it's a localised illusion. One day you're in the correct locale for maximum appreciation of the miracle, next day you're not. One day you're a model citizen, next day you're a wanted terrorist.
In the beginning, Flannery likes to get intoxicated on petrol fumes. This can happen. One day, his family is incinerated. He is compensated for this. He needs to work no longer.
Nearby, a very large institutional building, a relic of a never-discussed past era, is reopened as a consumer paradise. Flannery happens upon it, and realises that his purpose will now be to breathe in the building's synthetic aromas, to slowly roam its halls, to live fully its hallucinations, and hence to even love one of its denizens, for all his limited eternity
.He embraces the Lifestyle's shop window with a mystical intensity for which the window was not intended. What will happen when he comes face-to-face with the few actual humans who make and enforce decisions?
This is just a building. These are just products. Why doesn't this idiot get a job?
