Pádraig Cooney has been writing and performing in Dublin-based bands for over a decade, from Land Lovers through Skelocrats to Autre Monde. He was a founder member of the Popical Island Collective, which ran a label, venue and other initiatives through the 2010s. He is now releasing material under his own name.
‘Centuries of Learning’ is Pádraig's debut album. It is a distillation of his creative endeavours over several years writing, playing and singing in Dublin’s alt-pop underground, and an attempt to approach a record, 13 years after the fact. The songs are restricted to synths, guitar and drum machine, with a mixture of premeditation and improvisation, make the most complete one-person pop suite that his abilities would allow at that time.
The title 'Centuries of Learning' is taken from the song Space, where in context it refers to the accumulation of education, technical expertise and cultural knowledge put by Europeans to the service of violent exploitation of the rest of the planet. However, as the album title, it says: "I've been at this long enough, here's what I have learned".
