Paul Rooney

Paul Rooney

Paul Rooney is a UK musician and artist whose work combines lo-fi post-punk, experimental folk, spoken word and sound-based art. His songs and spoken pieces focus on ordinary subjects, which he treats in strange and often absurd ways, with an interest in how people try to make sense of the world. He is born in 1967.

Recording work as Rooney

From 1998 to 2000, Rooney releases three lo-fi punk-pop albums under the name Rooney. This period includes a session for John Peel’s Radio 1 show, recorded a year after the band appears in John Peel’s Festive Fifty in 1998. The lyrics of these songs repeatedly return to everyday life, including topics such as found photographs and a call centre shift.

Later releases and solo work

In 2007, he releases the 12-inch single Lucy Over Lancashire on SueMi Records of Berlin. The record features a monologue by a satanic Lancastrian “spryte of the air”. His first full-length album since 2000, Futile Exorcise, appears in 2017 on Owd Scrat Records and presents experimental post-punk folk songs about ghosts, poker and toilet seats.

Broadcasts and wider practice

Rooney’s work is played on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Scotland, among other stations. From 2000, he also makes audio-visual and text works for galleries, often using oblique treatments of ordinary moments, familiar places and the pasts that shape them.

Associated projects

His listed projects include Rooney, The NWRA House Band, The Seven Heads of Gog Magog and Drones and Debris.