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Having played in various musical projects from a young age, in early 2004 Ciaran Smith began playing his own 4-track recorded songs live under the name ‘Crayonsmith’. Soon after, he asked close friends and local musicians Ronan Jackson and Ruadhan O' Meara to jump on board. With them, they brought bass, synthesizers, samplers, autoharp and live percussion/drums to the mix resulting in a fuller band sound.
After touring the songs for 2 years, in 2006 Crayonsmith self-released the lo-fi debut album, Stay Loose, featuring superb artwork by Mike Ahern of D.A.D.D.Y. to critical acclaim. Apart from small musical contributions from Ronan and Ruadhan (and some drums by ‘Goodtime’ John Cowhie), the album was primarily written and produced by Ciarán himself (with mixing help from Northstation’s Steve Fanagan) during 2005.
On hearing Stay Loose, American indie icon Mark Linkous personally asked Crayonsmith to open for his band Sparklehorse for 14 dates on their UK/Irish tour in October 2006. The album also secured Crayonsmith support slots with international acts like Quasi, Islands, Robin Guthrie (ex- Cocteau Twins), Juana Molina and Charlotte Hatherley (ex- Ash), as well as gigs with Irish bands such as The Chalets, Jape, The Redneck Manifesto and Giveamanakick.
In February '07, Crayonsmith signed with long time friends Out On A Limb Records (who had previously released albums by givemanakick and Waiting Room) based on a mutual respect for each others work and ethos. Directly following this signing, Ciaran did a solo Crayonsmith tour of the US West Coast and Canada playing with likes of Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Starfucker and Mt. Eerie.
On Ciaran’s return, the band reconvened and began work on the second album under the working title, White Wonder. This was to prove to be a more collaborative effort than its predecessor Stay Loose. Influenced by the US indie label Anticon, the band decided to compose their songs by combining sampled drums and sounds with live instrumentation. Crayonsmith enlisted the help of George Brennan (from dark instrumental hip-hop act Deep Burial) to help with beat production on the new songs. The finished beats were then taken to Experimental Audio Studio where Steve Shannon (of the electronic act Halfset) recorded all the instrumentation between July and November 2007. Between breaks in recording, Crayonsmith continued to tour Ireland and the UK, playing with some of their favourite bands including Caribou, Meneguar, Danielson Famile, Dan Deacon, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Loney Dear and Monade.
White Wonder was released on April 4th on Out On A Limb records with another fascinating artwork job by Mike Ahern. The album features catchy, punchy songs made up of sampled beats and drum machines combined with live drums, duelling vocals and vintage synthesizers, guitars, bass, autoharp, toy piano, percussion, classic harmonies, found sounds/samplers and headphone interplay. After their headline album release tour, Crayonsmith went on to play some Irish shows with Why?, Yeasayer and The Mae Shi before setting out on a 14 date US tour with Islands, fitting in extra gigs with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and All Girl Summer Fun Band around America. Returning home to play the Oxegen festival in July, Crayonsmith then completed a short German tour with Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and played dates around Ireland with Calvin Johnson and Trans Am, all the while continuously writing and playing new material.
They started 2009 with some shows in Ireland with Max Tundra and School of Seven Bells. In April, Ciaran met up again with old friend Casiotone For The Painfully Alone to open for him solo in Galway and Cork. August saw the band play two headline shows - Dublin with old Australian friends Pikelet (Evelyn from Baseball) and Extreme Wheeze (Joe from Alex and The Ramps) and Cork with good friend Magnet and Compass (Austin Brown ex-Why?)
For now, Ciaran is playing solo electronic shows as well as some acoustic shows. He played the Hefty Horse solo acoustic night with Goodtime John and Squarehead in September. This November, Ciaran will travel to Berlin to play with Phantogram and Benoit Pioulard and will open for Messiah J and The Expert in Dublin at the Richter Singles Club for the launch of their new 7'' single.
contact crayonsmith@gmail.com
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