Pool Of Sound - Rooney

Paul Rooney

Paul Rooney, one of Merseyside’s best kept musical secrets, is an artist/musician born and based in Liverpool of whom The Wire magazine stated, "makes music with words investigating the intersections of music, myth, memory and place. His records and installations explore the unpredictable narratives that haunt everyday objects or places, and the comically unreliable nature of narrative itself."
Paul studied at Southport Technical College and Edinburgh College of Art but in 1998 his art practice shifted from painting to music. He had recorded the first 'Rooney' EP, 'Got Up Late' in October 1997, playing all the instruments and also providing the vocals. Initially only five copies were self-released on Common Culture Records but Roger Hill on Radio Merseyside played some tracks from this EP and from his subsequent EP 'Different Kinds Of Road Signs'.
His music journey continued with the band 'Rooney' and their three experimental lo-fi punk pop albums about everyday life. These three experimental pop CD albums, in which every song's humorously disturbing anti-lyrics simply described mundane life, from looking at found photographs to doodling on a call centre shift, all of which were recorded on a minidisc 4-track recorder.

Rooney live at The Magnet, Liverpool, 1999

The band's debut album 'Time on Their Hands', distributed by Cargo records, received much support from John Peel and was initially a solo project by Paul until the project became a gigging band when Colin Cromer, ex 'Half Man Half Biscuit', and Ian S Jackson, ex 'The Sons Of Harry Cross', joined him in 1999 to form 'Rooney'. The album was widely and favourably reviewed prior to the band's first and only John Peel session that year. The second 'Rooney' album, 'On Fading Out', was released in 1999 and the project ostensibly ended with the third and final album, 'On the Closed Circuit' in November 2000, though gigs continued sporadically until late 2002 when Paul Rooney decided to focus on other performance projects and gallery works. Recognising the limitations of the scene's heavily ironic approach, Paul decided to move on saying, "I didn't want to be part of that any more. In 'Rooney' I was happy to play galleries, but now I am less concerned about using it as part of my art career. I have more respect for what it means to make a good record."
Paul Rooney’s records have been broadcast on BBC Radios 1, 3, 6 Music, Cymru and Scotland amongst many other stations.

Futile Exorcise

Paul's next public release, under his own full name, the 2007 post-punk dub 16 minute opus 12″ single, 'Lucy Over Lancashire' featured an unreliable narration delivered by a satanic Lancastrian sprite. It brought something entirely new to the genre and was described as a 'masterpiece' by BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley. This 12" red vinyl has since become something of a cult classic. His first full length album since 2000, 'Futile Exorcise', was an album of revenant songs that delves even further into the demonically possessed everyday. This sung and spoken word post-punk experimental folk revenant songs featured ghosts playing poker and haunting toilet seats and was released in 2017 on Owd Scrat Records ( 'Owd Scrat' being an old Lancashire term for 'the Devil' ).
Again the magazine The Wire was approving as writer Julian Cowley reported, "Futile Exorcise', the brilliant new album from Liverpudlian multimedia artist Rooney, is a record to return to again and again".

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