The Hound Falls Standing — Cú Chulainn II Preorder Opens

Dispatch I · ᚁ Beith · Birch · new beginning · Milwaukee · April 27, 2026

Friends —

Twenty Aprils ago I dragged a 4-track and a stack of CD-Rs into my parents’ basement in Milwaukee and made the first Cullah record. I didn’t know I was starting a ritual. I knew I had songs and a recorder and one day to use them. April 27, 2006. Eighteen records later, every one given away, every one made on the same date — and today I’m opening preorders for the eighteenth.

This one is the hardest one I’ve made.

Why a year

I started writing Cú Chulainn II in 2024. I thought I was making a single record about a boy who killed a hound and had to take its name. I wrote thirteen songs, recorded most of them, then sat with the demos for three weeks and realized I was only halfway through the story.

The first record ended with him taking the name. This one is what comes after — the long crescendo of battle, the betrayals you don’t see coming, and the death no one walks away from. The standing-stone moment when a hero straps himself upright so he can die on his feet, terrifying his enemies even in death.

I couldn’t release that as one record. The first half is sharp; this half is heavy. They needed separation. Cú Chulainn came out April 27, 2025. Cú Chulainn II opens preorder today, releases in twelve months, and is the loudest, densest, most unsettled thing I’ve ever made. There are riffs in here that have been in my hands for two years waiting for the right place to go.

The names matter to me, here. Cú Chulainn is Old Irish for Hound of Culann — the boy was Sétanta, and he became Cú Chulainn the night he killed Culann’s hound and took its place as guard. He’s also remembered as Cú Uladh, the Hound of Ulster, the warrior who held the province alone against an invading army. My own surname, McCullough, anglicizes from Mac Con Uladh — son of the Hound of Ulster. Same root. Same hound. Same province. Writing this record is the closest I’ll ever get to writing about my own name.

The roots of the name

Same hound. Same province. Two thousand years apart, but still the same root word.

What it sounds like

If Cú Chulainn was the warp spasm — the rage, the transformation, the becoming — Cú Chulainn II is the long fall after. Heavier guitars. Slower drums when the tempo drops, and faster than I’ve ever played when it doesn’t. There are choirs. There is a song that ends in pure feedback for ninety seconds and I will not apologize for it. There is one quiet song in the middle that I wrote in a single sitting and rerecorded fourteen times.

And there is the closing track, which is the standing-stone. I’ll save what it sounds like for later in the year.

Working with Kyle White

The sound of Cú Chulainn II isn’t just mine. Two of the songs are already in the studio with William Kyle White — best known here as the producer of Wire & Vice. I’ve been in his rooms before; I’ve never written for them. This is the first time. Two songs in, and I can already tell what the rest of the record is going to be.

Kyle’s a meticulous studio thinker — the kind of producer who hears the song you didn’t know you were writing yet. His work and credits live at wmkylewhite.com. The thread through his discography is patience — leaving space for a song to become what it actually is, rather than what you expected it to be.

More on what we’re cutting in the next dispatch.

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Six tiers — every tier includes the record

Each tier is an Ogham letter, in order — Beith, Luis, Fearn, Sail, Nion, Úath — birch through hawthorn. Pick the way in that fits you. The work happens because someone said yes; the tier you pick is just how you say it.

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The numbers, for context

Twenty years of releases. Seventeen records made alone or with a small Cullective. Two hundred and sixty-nine of you have backed the last five preorder campaigns. Nearly fifty thousand dollars across them. Thousands of nights in the studio, more than any of us would admit to if asked.

Every Cullah album since 2006 is open-source under Creative Commons. Yours to keep, share, remix. The Cullective is the part that requires you. There isn’t a label, there isn’t a publisher, there isn’t an algorithm deciding whether this thing exists. There’s just whether enough of you want it built.

What the next year looks like

Between now and April 27, 2027, I’ll send ten dispatches — one every five weeks or so. Each one named for the next Ogham letter: Beith, Luis, Fearn, Sail, Nion, Úath, Dair, Tinne, Coll, Ceirt. Each one a window into where the record actually is at that moment.

Some will be process notes. Some will be demos you don’t get anywhere else. Some will be the songs that fell apart and what got built second. The year of work IS the gift, in a way that no finished record could be on its own. The Cullective doesn’t get the album late — they get it as it’s being made.

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More than half

I worked it out the other day. By the time Cú Chulainn II drops in April 2027, I’ll have released eighteen albums over thirty-six years of life. Half my years will have been album years. The line first crossed in 2021 — that’s when I released ½, an album literally titled half, at age thirty. Fifteen records by age thirty. The math wasn’t an accident. Every other April from now on, the ratio holds: one album, every two years, for as long as I keep doing this.

Albums released vs. years lived — actual through 2025, then projected at one album every other April from 2027 forward. Three years got skipped (2011, 2023, 2024); the math forgives them.

Milestone	Year	Age	Albums released	% of years with an album
First record · Adolessonce	2006	15	1	7%
Trinity	2016	25	10	40%
½ — half a life in albums	2021	30	15	50%
Firebird	2022	31	16	52%
Cú Chulainn (CC1)	2025	34	17	50%
CCII announced · today	2026	35	17	49%
CCII drops	2027	36	18	50%

By CCII, the ratio is exactly one album for every two years of life. The line first hit fifty percent the year I released a record literally titled ½, at age thirty. The new cadence — every other April — keeps it there.

A new cadence

The first twenty Aprils were one record a year, no exceptions. The next twenty are going to look different. Cú Chulainn II is the start of it: two records told as one story across two years, instead of one-and-done. Every other April starting 2025 — 2025, 2027, 2029, 2031, 2033 — bigger arcs, longer dispatches, slower work. The thing after CCII is already a long-arc piece I’m not ready to talk about. The Cullective will see it in pieces — the way you’re going to see this one.

The April 27 ritual stays. Just the cadence around it changes.

If you’ve backed before, you know the rhythm. If this is your first one, welcome. The constellation gets a new dot for every backer; you’d be the next one.

I’d love your name in this one.

— Cullah
Milwaukee · April 27, 2026