And it's a sad thing and it's a beautiful thing. Knowing, about Brian. As I listened, my mind filled with one idea. Music like this;-Like sky-diving slowly, like throwing yourself backwards into the motionless balcony high above a deep day. Music to make your dreamless bed like the centre of life or some happy universe. Not since "hands, hands like hooks, you'll get hurt if you play with crooks" have words deserved to be trapped between your ears and your pillow so much. If not the words then at least the titles of the songs themselves:-You Don't Want A Boyfriend, Understand, The World Ended With You, Time Stood Still.

With their first LP, Understand (Setanta), Brian interrupted the kind of chaos you hear on Dublin's most hateful music stations with a kind of graceful noise that so few attempt to make nowadays. Almost invisible, silent, full of grief and nearly without error, it compelled those with ears to hear and a heart to feel to listen real hard. If I could sing. But I can't. Instead I run. I never stop running. Here and there, always running. Ken Sweeney sings and as he sings, he runs. Away from something. Really slow, breathing not only knife sharp air but the lingering dampness of an almost forgotten dawn. "It's true", he says as the phone-card hits 48 units, "sometimes I think not just music but all great art that's born out of sadness. All the music I grew up with has been like that, The Blue Nile, The Go-Betweens, The Stars Of Heaven, and others. Stephen Ryan of The Stars Of Heaven wrote to the guy who runs Setanta and said he loved Brian. That meant the world to me. With that sort of listening history when it came to writing songs, all those autobiographical ideas seemed to be the natural starting point." That all great art is borne out of something melancholy or other! Watch Paris Texas, read The Dead, look at Mary Ellen Marks Pictures, listen to American Music Club and try speaking against the motion. I know for sure that the slow relentless rhythm that motivates sadness is what makes it so easy to get down inside the new horizon, to feel what the artists life is like to understand. With Brian, it's so easy.

"The Whole idea of connecting with an audience is lost on so many bands. For so long it seemed as if there existed a race between Irish bands towards Spontaneous Combustion. I think I'll never come close to blowing up on stage myself. The sense of satisfaction I derive from Making music comes from elsewhere, from reading a letter from someone who's appreciated a song or lyric or through coming to terms with my own feelings in a song I've written". Truely, there is great satisfaction to be derived from both creating and appreciating the power of the poetics of the ordinary. Music, by way of extension, is a frequently noble pursuit and intrinsically one worthy of accomodating such an approach. But is it always adequate ? "It definitely is for me at present. Natuarally there are times when I still question I'm doing the right thing and without the support Setanta and Keith Cullen offers, it's unlikely that I'd still be in a situation where I wanted to continue to make music for the forseeable future."

"Understand was an intensely personal record with "You Can't Call Home" being the only song that wasn't autobiographical in some way. Ultimately there are ideas and feelings which music has yet to adequately express and for that reason alone it's always worth trying again and harder still next time". On the hottest summer day it can be a nightmare keeping warm. It's a thin line. Between a sad and a beautiful thing. Between love and regret, hope and despair. But it's on the very site of loss and despair itself that hope is born. Planes Stacking Up, the title track of the new EP, sees Brian float on a metaphor of resolve, way past the clouds, between the stars and higher still beyondthe harvest Moon. 28,000 feet and climbing. 28 units and descending.