From the city streets of Belfast to the subdued hallways of Berlin, Irish songcraft writer Mahuna has a journey defined by persistence, memory and an unyielding dedication to songcraft. The track "Far Off Summer's Night" is not just a song; it is a whispered elegy, a tender piece of art written for his father, and one of the most evocative moments on his debut album Forever Is Mine.
Written around the deceptively tender phrase, "Just a shadow it would seem / Walking with you to the stream", the song feels more like a piece of music than a formal composition. It's intentionally intimate. The song was recorded live in a single take and Mahuna was trying to capture the immediacy of grief and the flickering beauty of memory. The repeated refrain “The hour is late / the fireside waits” urges us as listeners to reckon with our couple of brief moments, somewhere between dusk and memory, where the living mingle with the echoes of the dead.
The inspiration is very personal. Mahuna, who is the sixth of seven boys raised in a family of nine in Belfast, grew up with the backdrop of the Troubles, when music provided an escape and solace. When his father passed away, Mahuna was left with a hole that turned into something else to reflect on, creating a ghostly heaviness in “Far Off Summer’s Night,” which is a tribute not just to a man, but to lineage, space, and the unstoppable persistence of memory.
Sonically, the track draws from the intimacy of Nick Drake, the whispered caressing of Paul Buchanan, and the raw immediacy of Damien Rice, but Mahuna's weathered, tender voice makes it his own.
Mahuna now resides in Berlin and continues to negotiate between family life and creative pursuits, which is a process that reveals songs that are just as much about survival as art. “Far Off Summer’s Night” shows that music can accommodate grief without being obliterated by it, and turn memory into something tangible and ever-present.
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Website: https://www.mahunamusic.com