GREAT IRISH BANDS, PART 35: WORMHOLE
May 1st, 2009 by Conor McCabe
I’ve been meaning to post Wormhole for a while now. Donagh mentioned them to me during the week, so that was the prod I needed to get it done.
I know very little about the band, having only picked up their Chicks Dig Scars CD last year second-hand. Thankfully, there’s a couple of websites dedicated to them, including this one which gives a wonderful history of the band.
Also, a fan has done up a myspace page, and that’s here.
There’s a collection of videos from the band available here at Ringsend Blues.
Here’s one of the videos, for the song ‘Lay it On.’ Fantastic stuff.
Enjoy.
nice catch conor/donagh. have often mused that my fantasy dublin gig would be whipping boy supported by wormhole. listening now to chicks dig scars, quite flawed - ropey plodding drumming. but I love the opening track with its whipping boy guitars and MBV-like vocals submerged too low in the mix. second track sounds quite Pavement-like. I remember the heady days when a pal in Cambridge picked up this album based only on digging the cover and we had it on heavy rotation when Whipping Boy came to town. really like ‘in my head’ but where did they steal that riff? …I’m sure I recognize it. where can we find raw flawed brilliant noise like this nowadays, is there a healthy scene I’m missing out on? nearest I’ve found is new local treasure greystones theatre, recently hosting acts like Noise Control and Heritage Centre. ‘gotta get my prospects right….’ lay it on, wormhole. cheers, al
Fantastic stuff, I used to have that album or ep or whatever - the one with the yellow school bus on the cover.
I cycle over that Ringsend roundabout every week; never knew about the video. Who knew Dublin bands made videos back them? Where did they show them?
As far as I remember, the real kick-off for Irish band videos was when No Disco came along in the 1990s. Bloody disgrace on RTE’s part when it was scrapped.
Lovely to see Wormhole remembered. I made that ‘Lay it On video a long long time ago. At the time the No Disco people used to allow me to do post production of low budget videos in RTE in Cork. Between about 1992 and 1995 I made about 40 low budget videos for Bands like In Motion, Pet Lamb, The Shanks, The Revenants etc. If I had a couple of weeks and a bit of cash I’d go to the library there and unearth them all and youtube them.
That’s a great video, ec. And that’s quite a body of work! I’ve seen a lot of those videos over the years and they really stand up.
wow, they evolved into electronic sensoria band and backed up damo suzuki! …who woulda thunk
Amazing band. Without sounding wanky and Simon Reynolds’ish about it, they had a thing going on in the rhythm section that was uncanny - as in sounding like it came from another place, outside conscious musical intention.
@ec - did you do that great video for In Motion where the guy is on the bus into town, all in fast-forward so that the entire journey takes the length of the song, and he ends up on O’Connell Bridge? If so, nice work. I love that one.
[…] time an interview with Eamonn Crudden on his film, Route Irish. Eamonn is also the man behind the Wormhole video posted here last […]
The other Eamonn here [D1 - Dead Elvis] … we made a whole bunch of videos back then for bands in Dublin with an average budget of about £20 - £40 .. they were all shot on super 8 then projected onto a white wall and copied onto vhs video for editing.. we pretty much made them specifically to be shown on No Disco.. I remember shooting that stop motion one for In Motion… I think the guy in the video was the drummer in the band.. great to see the Wormhole video again !
cheers for the comment Eamonn. Dead Elvis was quite a venture. Well done.