If you didn’t detect album drums when Ciaran McAuley dropped his Roger Shah & Hannah Brine collaboration but a few weeks back, well, you might well now.
In his career the Irish producer’s done EPs, mixcomps and production partnerships, but he’s never gone full LP. That’s all set to change in 2022 however, when after fifteen production years, Ciaran’s set to deliver. Building up to it, McAuley naturally enough has a good few appetite-whetting singles up his sleeve, the second of which drops today.
‘Anything’ places him alongside UK-born/Australian-based vocalist and latter-day track spinner, Clara Yates. Clara wrote & sung her way through lockdown, building up a bank of songs, which gave rise to releases with Giuseppe Ottaviani, Ferry Tayle, Jorn van Deynhoven and a dozen or more others.
For the most musically attuned, seeing Ciaran & Clara’s names together might also ring some sizeable bells. This is not the first time the two have collaborated for Black Hole Recordings. Indeed – with their ‘Light A Rainbow’ release back in Jan – it’s not even the first time this year.
That Ciaran and Clara have chosen to collaborate again so swiftly says as much about their studio chemistry as it does the singer’s storied song cupboard. With ‘Anything’, Ciaran’s delivers something primetime-facing, that has spirit to spare and a near boundless uplift to it. Through a song that speaks of a love challenged by both physical & emotional divides, Clara balances out that tone with just a hint of lament. An impossibly touching heart-on-sleeve style trancer, Ciaran & Clara’s ‘Anything’ is available here: