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BLOOD FOR GHOSTS - THE ALBUM
The title Blood for Ghosts is a play on Ezra Pound’s phrase ‘Blood brought to ghosts’, referring to the new life brought through translations, in his case, of Chinese poetry. In my case, it refers to new versions of songs discovered in the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco; songs that may have been forgotten or lost through time.
I was interested in discovering if some of these songs could survive being brought into the present day; if they still felt relevant or were still able to move us in some way. Of the ten songs, six are recognisable from the original song sheets, one was adapted from another version, for two I have written new music, and for one, new words.
The musicians who played on this record were carefully chosen to bring the songs to life in the way I could imagine them in my head:-
Liam Bradley on percussion and drums,
Nick Scott on upright and electric bass,
Seán Óg Graham on guitars, bouzouki, banjo, button accordion and drum machine programming
Ruth McGinley on piano (for some of the tracks)
Dónal O’Connor on fiddle
Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill on clavinet
Dave Lynch on organ and mellotron
Niamh Dunne and Joshua Burnside on backing vocals.
I love how these musicians brought their own slant to the songs through the wealth of their experience and by responding to the music in their own way.
I am very proud of the recordings and am excited to share them with you all! Thank you so much to everyone who pre-ordered a copy of the album and the book and helping me to bring them into the world.
Duke Special x
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BLOOD FOR GHOSTS - THE BOOK
Blood for Ghosts’ was released on vinyl in November 2023, but Duke decided not to release it on CD. Instead he chose to release the album as a book - extended sleeve notes that trace the journey of the songs, the recording process, and his thoughts on the act of translating the songs for a contemporary audience. In an age where music is regarded as a free commodity, the idea of ‘The Book Is The Album’ seems an important response to the devaluing of music.
Duke explains further why he wanted to release this book...
Okay, I am taking a risk here. To my mind, CDs have become somewhat redundant. For many people, music is experienced via streaming platforms - wonderful in some ways, as we can access pretty much anything at any time; in other ways, rubbish for the artist who sees little return for their work (unless you are one of the few who gets millions of plays, and even then…). Books are something that I still prefer to hold in my hand and leaf through rather than scroll up and down on a screen. So, I am releasing Blood for Ghosts only on vinyl (another beautiful artefact) and as a 64-page, hand-finished book, which will come with a download code, allowing you to save it onto your preferred device. The book is the album! It can be seen as a companion piece to Blood for Ghosts as you listen on whatever platform you currently subscribe to, or as a richer version of the sleeve notes I was able to write for the vinyl. Alternatively, it can be viewed as the album itself, the music being out there, somewhere in the digital ether. Either way, I hope it sheds some interesting light on what was going through my head when I made Blood for Ghosts.