Sirkt Son

Sirkut Son

Derry native, John Rooney, has always been creative. He won his first art competition aged 4 (a drawing of himself and his mam for Mothers Day) and eventually went on to study Visual Communications in Belfast. After graduating, he moved to Dublin, where he continued his illustrative pursuits and also busked on Grafton Street as the bassist in an 80s hair-metal group. Covering the songs of Kiss, they called themselves Shift, — wordplay on the band they emulated, using Irish slang. Alternating between leather trousers and matching suits, Shift doubled up as a 50s/60s era wedding band, and even had the opportunity to play at an Irish bar in Russia after an eager publican approached them during one of their street sessions. The gig in “Hamiltons” felt like the bands peak, and so they parted ways after that.

Going solo, John began making synth-wave as Haüer, and ran a successful night called Technoir in the venue formerly known as The Twisted Pepper. However, the over-saturation of synth music at the time combined with the desire to begin injecting vocals into his music — plus the fact that no-one seemed to be able to pronounce Haüer — led John to explore new avenues. This eventually lead to his current project, Sirkut Son. Initially, John broached the idea of vocals to his ex band-mate from Shift. When he put down his own demo to give some structural advice, he thought, “This sounds alright actually, maybe I’ll give this a go myself.” From there, he got in touch with producer Sean Corcoran with the intention of producing an EP, but there was so much recyclable material from his years of making music that they finished up with a seven track album.

Obtaining the title Sirkut Son from a piece of graffiti on Clanbrassil Street, John tells me it was originally used to name an old demo which has since been re-worked and has become the first track on his debut album, Photo Sensitive. Now named, You Have Used Me For Long Enough, the track was the first single from the album and is complemented by John’s self-made music video. The video portrays John “playing” a series of handdrawn cardboard instruments in his Berlin flat, while wearing a black and white mask that is not too dissimilar to the face-paint of Gene Simmons.