Dedicated to the mystery, secrecy, or love evident in the multiplicity of meanings and connections of the Irish expression Rún, this trio formed by Tara Baoth Mooney, Diarmuid MacDiamarda, and Rian Trench draws on all their accumulated experience in various fields—including cinema, folk or choral music, sound design, and collaboration with Nurse With Wound—to create music that unifies diverse lineages in ritualistic harmony. Sacred conjuration affects the horror of the days, without resorting to gratuitous shock tactics, absorbing the weight of the most esoteric metal, the psychedelia and hypnosis of krautrock, the purity and charm of folk and noise-chipped electronics to erect a coherent whole of mental reverie and physical impact. On their self-titled debut album, released by Rocket Recordings, Rún transcend the confines of these genres to mold them into an intense and primordial course that ranges from iridescent beauty to abject terror without concession, rather as facets of the same fantastical reality, from which Mooney’s voice emerges, levitating, as a guiding thread for droney-folky passages of pagan appeal, electronic carvings between the abstract and the evocative, distorted guitar cascades, and galloping drum rhythms capable of invoking for their ritual both psychonauts of the most varied stripes or those nostalgic for the mystical moments of 4AD and weird Britannia, as well as “metalheads” fond of Neurosis or Big Brave and the more unruly and occult electronic crowd.
BS