Sister Irene O'Connor - Fire of God's Love Sister Irene O'Connor

Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. Freedom ToSpend offers the first authorised reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with care and consideration from the best available sources. As a young Roman Catholic nun in the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary order, Sister Irene’s forays into music began in 1953 when she moved from Sydney to a convent in Singapore and began teaching children with learning difficulties. Acquiring an acoustic guitar and learning three simple chords, Irene’s songs blossomed with the children’s enthusiasm. Serendipitously, a parent of one student worked at a commercial radio station in Singapore, and Irene was invited to the station to perform and record in its studio. She went along, wearing her habit and carrying her guitar, and cut her first original song there in 1965. Under the pseudonym Myiriam Frances, to maintain anonymity within her order (“Nuns didn’t do that kind of thing,” noted O’Connor), Phillips released a series of Sister Irene’s records at the tail end of the 1960s

It was at the convent in Singapore that Sister Irenemet Sister Marimil Lobregat, a fellow Franciscan nun who moved to the island from the Philippines in the early 1960s. More than a decade later, as if by divine intervention, they reconnected at another convent at Point Piper in Sydney. Marimil, also a musician and sound enthusiast, worked at the Catholic Radio and Television Centre in Homebush, in western Sydney, as an audio and visual technician. Sister Irene, faithfully honing her musical craft, and Sister Marimil hatched a plan to meet at the centre over a series of Sunday afternoons, and create the songs that would become Fire of God’s Love. The songs of Fire of God’s Love are sung in an angelic soprano by Sister Irene (with lyrics spanning English, Latin, and Malay) and produced by Sister Marimil, recorded on aTeac 3340S 4-track reel-to-reel. Marimil was instrumental in conjuring the uncanny otherworldliness that permeates the album. The crystalline fabric of Sister Irene’s voice is held exquisitely in a shimmering mosaic of reverb and analogue synthesiser hum, while momentously ringing out like a bell in the darkness, projecting until truth or the divine appears. Themes such as mercy, grace, light, and mystery are punctuated by a gentle acoustic guitar strum and eternal piano notes spinning slowly on a vibrating thread

For the songs with keyboards, Sister Irene played all the parts live in real time, including the bass pedals. The drum machine was generated by the same organ she played, and performed simultaneously. All of this lends to an atmosphere of heightened presence, an organic flash helmed deep from the subconscious. Originating from ideas created in a quiet convent and sequestered from worldly influence, the liturgical framework of the album is filtered through the intimate devotion of two Sisters — their own interpretation of pop music stripped of pretension and superficial glamour.

The album’s title, like many of its songs, stems from a Bible verse, in this case Luke 12:49. But Sisters Irene and Marimil ushered it into a space where all spiritualseekers can appreciate the transmission [Or: unusual hermeneutics]. The lyrics address universal needs, wants, and desires: everlasting love and affection, an end to loneliness, a new form of relief, and deliverance from the fear of death. Instead of hymnal forms, Sister Irene, perhaps inadvertently, utilises folk and psychedelia fashionable at the time to deliver a sermon that reads like love letters to a divine presence, speaking to the soul, beyond any formal religion. Fire of God’s Love is an inspiring archive of early electronic experimentation between two women friends and mystics, a documentation of their divine energy channelled in a disciplined way. Upon initial release, it was neither a flat-out success nor a failure, but was met mostly as a curiosity. The pair never made more music together, and in the 50 years since, their one-off collaboration continues to draw listeners in by way of record shop find (whether the original Phillips pressing or sonically superior 1976 reissue on AlbaHouse Communications) or more likely via YouTube, as a stumbled across and feverishly commented-on cult classic. Today, Sister Irene is living in Sydney, Australia, and is happy that new audiences are finding meaning in her music with Sister Marimil. Her story is a testament that you don’t need much to create a visionary, enduring album: a tape recorder, friendship, the Fire of God’s Love to ignite the pathway forward. That might be an aspirational friend, or an earthly companion right beside you. Sister Irene O’Connor’s of God’s Love will be released via Freedom To Spend on November 14 in vinyl ,CD, and digital editions