Back in early 2017, Steve McAuliffe (a regular performer of his own poetry on the Ungagged podcasts) set upon a quest to track down the legendary and mysterious musician, The Mighty Ur.
As he explained to the somewhat bemused website producer, V Pearson, the quest was triggered by a strange dream:
‘In the dream I saw a huge mouse-like man stood against a backdrop of rolling hills that seemed vaguely familiar, he was pointing at a nearby river, I remember the sound of its churning, rushing waters was almost unbearably loud. I also remember my dream-self thinking it must have sounded even louder to the mouse-man who possessed huge over-sized ears that rose above the crown of his head. Suddenly the day-time scene switched to night and the mouse pointed upward toward a star which was shining brightly in the darkened sky. I instinctively knew the star to be Sirius, and the body of water I believed was The River Ure in North Yorkshire. From my recent readings I was aware that the ancient Sumerians believed Sirius to be home to their pantheon of mighty gods, their capital city was known as Ur. The connection was made. I had heard that the infamous punk musician Andrew Monks had moved back to North Yorkshire, to a place called Leyburn (close to the Ure), and he had renamed himself ‘The Mighty Ur’. Upon awakening, I knew exactly what I had to do. I knew that I was destined to work with him on a musical project that could possibly change the world of poetical/musical collaboration for ever.
So a week later, when I arrived on his doorstep bearded, bedraggled and sopping wet from the waters I had swam across to reach him, I was not in the least bit surprised that he was expecting me. In fact, he had built a studio to record what he called;
‘Songs to tear down the prison walls and to liberate the mind’
The rest, I guess is …. Well, it’s a work in progress’.
So there you have it. The Mighty Ur’s mission is to tear down the walls and Steve McAuliffe’s mission is to rebuild Albion from out of the rubble.
From out of this necessary and hopefully complimentary tension they intend to birth a new kind of world, a kind of anarcho-utopia. This may sound ridiculous and hugely over-ambitious, but at the end of the day and in the midst of these strange times –
Well, who knows?
You can follow SteveMcAuliffe & The Mighty Ur on twitter
The double-a-side single: Albion Sleeps / Socialist Cortinas by Steve McAuliffe & The Mighty Ur is now available on iTunes, Spotify, and many other platforms.
Their celebrated EP ‘rejecting Soma’ is also available on iTunes, Spotify and Bandcamp.
An album is rumoured to be in the works.
‘-Beneath the pavement, the beach!’
