Sister Irene O'Connor - Fire of God's Love

Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. Freedom ToSpend offers the first authorised reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with care and consideration from the best available sources. As a young Roman Catholic nun in the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary order, Sister Irene’s forays into music began in 1953 when she moved from Sydney to a convent in Singapore and began teaching children with learning difficulties. Acquiring an acoustic guitar and learning three simple chords, Irene’s songs blossomed with the children’s enthusiasm. Serendipitously, a parent of one student worked at a commercial radio station in Singapore, and Irene was invited to the station to perform and record in its studio. She went along, wearing her habit and carrying her guitar, and cut her first original song there in 1965. Under the pseudonym Myiriam Frances, to maintain anonymity within her order (“Nuns didn’t do that kind of thing,” noted O’Connor), Phillips released a series of Sister Irene’s records at the tail end of the 1960s