Previously featured genre hopping guitarist and creator of the DIY project Centre/Left/Right Ciara Rooney has returned with her second album ‘Bikes & Bridges Lead to Broken Bones‘. Taking influence from the hard rock and metal she listened to as a teen, this album goes in a totally different direction to her last album “Sketch”. Ciara spoke to The Jumble Magazine about this musical shift, the song she loves most, and how a literal broken bone inspired the album’s title.
Since I last spoke to Jumble I released a synthwave single called “Thursday”, which is a remix/re-imagining of a track I did for a university project. I’ve also been working on a heavy metal EP. So far, every album I’ve released has had its own follow up bonus track(s), either an EP or a single, so I’m hoping to continue that.
Bikes & Bridges Lead to Broken Bones contains songs I wrote and recorded during my first couple of years of creating this project. During my teens I was influenced by hard rock/heavy metal bands such as My Chemical Romance, Iron Maiden, and Metallica, so a lot of my guitar playing mirrored that. By the time I entered my twenties and began creating this project, a lot of those influences carried over, so it’s very much a hard rock album.
I came up with the name and album art around February/March 2020, after literally crashing my bike into a bridge which resulted in a broken finger and fractured toe. The two months of recovery was incredibly frustrating because I couldn’t play any instruments, however it deepened the sentimental meaning of the hand logo I used on my first album “Sketch”. Initially, I had used it to express how important I feel my hands are to my ability to create music, but now that I know what it’s like to have very limited use of them I’m glad I had the foresight to choose the image of a hand as somewhat of a symbol for my music.
My favourite track is either Wrath, Velocity or Rush. Wrath is the 2nd ever song I composed for Centre/Left/Right, it’s quite thrashy. Velocity and Rush both have this heavy metal/punk thing going on but then some contrasting ‘clean’ parts which I really like, it reminds me of the music from “Sketch”.
Most listeners probably wonder “What’s with all the genre hopping?” This album is quite different to the last, just as the last is quite different to the one before that. It’s my goal for Centre/Left/Right to cover as many musical genres within my range as possible, so there’s something for everyone. If this album wasn’t to your taste, check out some of my previous releases or stick around to see what I come up with in the future!
I’d also like to give a huge thanks to Patrick Moore who helped write most of the drum parts for Among Aliens, Velocity and There’s Something in the Sky back in 2018.
Listen to ‘Bikes and Bridges Lead to Broken Bones’ SoundCloud and keep up to date with CENTRE/LEFT/RIGHT’s future music by following the project on Instagram.
The Jumble 