Belfast based wordsmith, Malojian, has just announced the release of his new album ‘Southlands’, due to be available on May 18th. ‘Communion Girls’, the first single from the album, is out on 16th March and gives a little taste of what you can expect from this release.
Stevie Scullion (Malojian) said, “I didn’t really intend to start another album so soon after my debut, The Deer’s Cry. I had been writing a lot of new songs and wanted to demo them, so I asked Michael Mormecha (drums) if he fancied helping out. We started with Communion Girls at Mikey’s studio (Millbank). I knew straight away that I wanted to record the whole album there.
Millbank itself is really interesting. There’s a lot of history about the place. It’s still a working farm so there’d be all sorts of stuff going on that you wouldn’t get in a conventional recording studio. The whole process and environment kept making me think of Dylan and The Band at Big Pink. Very chilled out & a lot of fun. Rural and real.
We recorded loads of stuff, always trying to capture a live performance as the foundation and then building from there. We actually had an album after 10 days, however things started to take off a bit with The Deer’s Cry so suddenly we were touring more than usual – and Southlands got put on hold.
Every time we came back to finish it, I had new songs – I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff (illness, death, the birth of my son) – and I think it’s all there in the songs. What I’ve ended up with sounds like a proper band record – rather than just a singer songwriter with some session guys.
The album was mixed at the end of 2014, in a small cottage overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in a remote part of County Donegal. No phones. No internet. Just peace and quiet and nature. It felt like the perfect way to wrap up the album.”
Keep an eye on Malojian’s website http://malojian.com/ for tour details soon to be announced.
