Hilary Woods - Night CRIÚ

Following two acclaimed experimental instrumental records in Feral Hymns (2021) and Acts of Light (2023), Hilary Woods returns on her new LP Night CRIÚ, to song form and most notably, to her voice. Relearning how to use it, and crafting songs centred around it, Night CRIÚ’s intimate ecosystem of seven songs uses vocal harmony and the annunciation of lyrics as ways to re-enter the body, to speak to and make the unconscious conscious.

A ceremony of light and shade, Night CRIÚ is a record that riles against bludgeoning monoculture in its reclaiming and mourning a lost innocence all at once. Woods’ sonic palette is both dynamic and vulnerable, in its reaching to integrate lost and splintered parts of the whole. Unmoored sonic threads recall the cracks, fringes, forgotten agency and layered dormant personas that surface at night, waiting to be retrieved and integrated come daylight.

Inspired and energised by many things including the revival of indigenous language, a personal history of attending parades and processions, early Irish music, the joy in Northern Soul dancing, aspects of Czech and early Italian cinema, the immediacy of sound, and the rising up of a present moment collective in their vocalising and standing up for what it means to be human in the face of tyranny and oppression, Night CRIÚ was recorded between the west coast of Ireland, Dublin, London and in part Latvia between 2023 and January 2025. Canticles for voice, brass, strings, electronics, field recordings, texture, synths and piano, these songs were chosen from many early home recordings that Woods held up as mirrors of juxtaposition to each other. Written and produced by Hilary Woods, Night CRIÚ is mixed by Dean Hurley with additional production by Dean Hurley and Oliver Turvey, mastered by Brian Lucey, and featuring work by Hannah Fallon, Hangleton Brass Band, Gabriel Ferrandini and Ajo Gonsenica.

“Each record is a life buoy, a snapshot, a marker in the sand, a date that requires me to meet it” according to Woods, “A raft, at once cathartic, buoyant and playful, making records is a way of being”.