Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Interview

Where do you start with someone like Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry? In his fifty-odd years in the music business, the man known as The Upsetter has been credited with revolutionizing reggae, inventing Dub, producing some to the finest records to come out of Jamaica and maintaining a creative output that beggars belief. Though he is now 75 years of age, Perry has made fourteen albums in the past five years alone, as well as releasing a compilation album, 2007′s Upsetter Selection. The last decade has seen him work with a multitude of musicians and artists, from Sasha Grey through David Lynch all the way to Andrew WK, with his influence on dubstep and modern dance music (in Britain especially) being acknowledged through several collaborations with Vienna-based dub group, Dubblestandart.

 

With a new album in tow, Perry is coming to Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath this weekend to bring his dub sound system to the Body & Soul Festival. Speaking on the phone from his Switzerland home, he is in fine form. “With me, life could not be better,” he says, “I’m looking forward to coming to Dublin, to manifest my dub creation for the new generation. I love Dublin because Dublin become like my music. My music is Dublin and bubblin’ and dubblin’ and rubblin’ and tubblin’ and Dublin! A pleasure for Mr. Perry.”

 

There’s a good chance a large slice of the musical content of Perry’s show here on Sunday will be made up of tracks from his new album, an album seen by many as a recent career high, marking both his 75^th birthday and his long-anticipated collaboration with producer, Bill Laswell, “New album is named Lee Scratch Perry, Rise Again. If you like it, you like it because it an experiment, an experiment in classical music.” The title rings with religious or spiritual over tones though Perry explains them in his own typical manner, “When someone has a rise, and after they rise and fall, you rise again, and if you rise again, I mean, if you fall when you was risin’, if you was a rich man and you get poor, you don’t give up. If I was high and I fall and get poor, I refuse to stay poor. I will not stay poor, I will rise and get rich again.”

 

With his output bucking the usual trend by getting both better and more plentiful with age, the question of motivation and passion has to come up. How exactly does a 75-year old veteran stay energized? “I’m blessed. I am blessed, well blessed,” he says, chuckling down the phone line, at once sincere and self-aware. “Blessed without limit. I am blessed with words, with no limits. I am blessed with sounds, with no limit. I am blessed by God, with no limit, to do things perfect for God’s children. To do things perfect in the eye of God and man and all God’s children and God’s angels. You just smile wildly and sing….” Here he breaks off into a song impossible to transcribe. There is something about pleasing God, then some lines about angels before it descends into a simple melodic humming and, eventually, a rich, throaty laugh.

 

His positivity is infections, with every sentence ending in a giggle. Perry is a man content, but still deeply motivated, “Well, the amount of energy I have, if I didn’t have a festival to do, then I don’t know what would happen. But I don’t think anything is impossible. I think I can walk on the sea, I think I can fly in the sky and I think I can walk on thin air. I don’t think anything impossible in my life anymore. I’m free from negative vibration, free from negative words, free from negative power.” So what is next for a man seemingly at perfect harmony with the world? “My plan next is to build my studio,” he says. “My next plan is to make sure my wife get our business going so I don’t have to go on tour so often to make small money. Zip out to my studio to make hit music. I rebuild my Black Ark studio and start making hit music again. That’s my plan, rebuild my Black Ark studio in my back yard.”

 

For those not familiar with Perry’s history, he burned down his own legendary Black Ark studio in Jamaica in the early Eighties, “to create a new one, a fresh one.” He is philosophical about it now, “Old things go and new things come, that is the way for all things under the sun, in the sunshine land in Jamaica.” The plan for the new Black Ark however, sounds like it’ll be a considerably different place from the original home of smoke-blown dub, “I’ll wake up and stretch, no alcohol drinking, no beer drinking, no cigarette smoking, no ganja smoking. Fresh air, pure air, perfect air. Perfect words, perfect sounds. No drugs, no alcohol, no nicotine. Let God smile while the angels sing!”

 

So, with time running out and his wife calling him from the other room, there’s just one final question before we go. What makes Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry happy? “Victory! Victory is my Lord God. I want people to know that Emperor Selassie did not die. He just escaped like the escape artists and people think he die but he did not die. And I come to Dublin to show you the type of music that will make you so happy. I come to Dublin to let many people know there is only one Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the Upsetter. All your stress will disappear when you see me in Dublin. All your problem gone and all your distress will melt away. You be so happy. I know it. I can’t wait to have you in Dublin, rubblin and bubblin, bubblin, bubblin and tubblin and dubblin, I can’t wait!” After this all-too-brief chat, neither can we.

Nicolas Jaar Interview

At the ripe old age of twenty, Nicolas Jaar has created quite a stir in the world of electronic music. Playing with downtempo beats and melancholic textures, the music he creates is dark and warm, offering more immersion than release. It is still house at its heart, though of a type as comfortable unfolding within a pair of headphones as over some packed dance-floor. The kicks are always there below the surface; sometimes practically subconscious, other times rising up to hit hard in the solar plexus. The music works with a certain tempo that allows every nuance to shine through. Every acceleration and drop in pace is felt, each echo rings out in a clear space. From the eerie arch-pop of ‘Colomb’ to the bluesy dub of ‘I Got A’, his debut album, Space Is Only Noise, flits across genre boundaries and expectations, constantly surprising and wrong-footing its listeners. It is an album in the traditional sense, a solid, cohesive body of work that is designed to stand as a whole. Removing one track can change the tone of the rest, severing the inviolable ties that are carefully woven between each song.

 

After touring all over the world since last year, Jaar is due to make his first Irish appearance at the Body And Soul festival in Ballinlough Castle, Co. Westmeath next weekend. Recreating an album as deep and subtle as Space Is Only Noise in a live environment, especially one as ad-hoc as a festival, is always going to present difficulties but Jaar has worked out his own way of dealing with this. “I do one type of live show alone and one with a band”, he says. “The one with the band is really musical, I work with a drummer, a saxophone player who also plays keyboard and a guitar player. We try to recreate and explode the songs that I’ve already written.” Does the band work differently to the album? “Yeah, the band is pretty different from the album, it’s a whole new dimension altogether, whereas the solo show is slightly more sample-based, but I still play a lot of my music.”

 

Jaar has seen a lot of the world over the last year, touring whenever college allows. As a student of Comparative Literature at the Brown University, his time is consumed from both sides but he seems to relish the dichotomy, “I love it, it’s great. One fuels the other.” Life on the road has seen him develop a few favourite environments, with Tel Aviv, France and Berlin being worthy of special mention.

 

Jaar’s musical story started quite early, certainly for an electronic musician. “I was 14 years old, I just started making beats with Reason”, he explains. “It wasn’t unusual for me because I was doing it. I’m sure it was pretty unusual to start that young, at least back then but I think now a lot of kids are making electronic music by the time they’re 14. Before, kids were making rock music with a guitar when they were 14 now it’s the same thing with computers, it shouldn’t change anything. I’m sure it has to do with how the technology is getting easier. It’s getting easier to make music with just a computer now. People have been making music from such a young age for a long time.” Despite the jazzy over-tones of much of his music, Jaar himself has no formal musical training. He plays some piano and a little guitar but the idiosyncratic nature of the music he makes stems from a willful evasion of musical rules and established building blocks, preferring to operate outside his comfort zone as much as possible, “When you don’t know what you’re doing, you just start creating more interesting shit.”

 

 

Recently, Jaar’s musical endeavors have not been limited to simply creating his own music but have been extended into curating and running his own label, Clown & Sunset; a move which might seem odd considering his own position on two highly regarded labels in the shape of Wolf + Lamb and Circus Company. So why choose to start his own label? “When other labels ask you for music, they kind of want their own aesthetic and I wasn’t ready to do that for all my releases. I wanted some of the releases to have total creative freedom and creating your own label allows you to have that”, he says. “I have a lot of aims. I can’t talk about a lot of them right now, but mainly just changing the way people are distributing music and releasing only music I really, really love. I think in the next six months you’ll see a new way of selling and distributing music.” What exactly the new way of selling and distributing music is, Jaar isn’t saying, but the ambition and sentiment is clearly coming from a heartfelt place.

 

While the long-term aims remain under-wraps, Jaar’s plans for the more immediate future are simple enough, “The next release on the label is this guy from Montreal called Valentin Stip, who is actually my first girlfriend’s brother, who I gave Ableton Live to. He makes wonderful, slow, sad music and I’m very, very excited about it. It’s coming out on vinyl and digital, which is all we’re doing now. This record kind of needed to come out on vinyl, the textures needed vinyl you know?”

 

Jaar’s plans for his own future are as vague as those for his label. As well as some more straightforward house tracks, the prospect of collaboration seems to be on the horizon, “Yeah, I’m working with a couple of people. I can’t completely say who and what but you’re going to see a couple of collaboration in the future, it’s pretty exciting. I have also been asked to produce a couple of people. I haven’t said yes yet but hopefully there will be something exciting.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeping Into Cinemas Interview

 

Seeping into cinemas is the solo project of Dublin musician, Barry O’ Brien who releases his debut LP on June 17th. An uplifting yet low-key affair, it is filled with a particular warmth and quiet ambition with O’Brien’s multi-layered vocals bringing to mind Elliot Smith’s whispered confessionals. O’Brien recently let us in on the Seeping Into Cinemas story over a cup of coffee.

 

Can you tell me a little about how Seeping Into Cinemas came into being?

 

Started out a few years ago I guess. I had been in other bands, always with other people which had generally been kind of loud and I really wanted to do something quiet. So I started writing quiet songs and putting round four tracks and eight-tracks, then I got really, really into recording and totally felt that that really complemented the songs. They really went hand in hand. Got more and more into the recording, got more into getting more gear, becoming a nerd about it and I just recorded the album that way. I was always writing and re-writing. That’s about it really, I didn’t do a lot of gigs. Did a few solo gigs here and there and I did one last year when I released a single last year. Other than that it was just recording.

 

How long has the whole process taken so far?

 

It’s been a good solid year of pretty hard core work on it. I’ve been fiddling around with things for a while before that but really just a solid year of hard work of writing and recording.

 

How have things been developing on the gig front?

 

So far there’s only been one full band gig. That as a few weeks ago in Shebeen Chic, for the Popicalia gig. That was really good. It was cool to play the songs that way. When I started this record, I wanted it to be really quiet and stripped back, and it still is quiet and stripped back but it has ended up having two or three guitars and keys and drums and whatnot so you need a full band to play the record live. The songs work, or I think they work anyway, just solo or with a combination of guitar and drums and voice or something. The band are just friends who are helping out and they’re not always going to be around so a lot of times it’ll be just me.

 

Do you find it important to be able to play with the songs and the arrangements like that?

 

I don’t think there’s any real definitive, finished version of a song. Obviously making an album, that version is going to be a definite version and that’s cool when you get that down and it’s as close as it can be to what it could be. At the end of the day, you could be able to play a song on any instrument. It could be just those words, that melody and you could be able to carry it on any basic instrument. It’s fun to play around the arrangements and I have the freedom to do that with the band so that’s cool.

 

The lyrics seem to be quite personal?

 

I try to be cryptic, but maybe I’m not! They’re not necessarily all auto-biographical though some of them are. I really just try to set a mood, find something to fit with the music. I’d say that’s as important as the actual lyrics, though I do really love words. I concentrate on the mood, trying to create a certain atmosphere, like they’re times certain words that even the sound of them will complement a certain mood. More often than not, the music will set that mood first but then the lyrics need to work with that.

 

And do you start with music or lyrics when you’re writing?

 

It’s always the music. But sometimes you’ll get a line and maybe you’ll come back to that later. You’ll be playing and then be like, oh what was that line? And you’ll root it out and use it but generally it’s music first.

 

What are the plans for releasing the album? Are you going to work with a label?

 

Yeah, my own label. I don’t know how it’s going to work with everything, it’s probably going to be very hard. It could be nice to expand it after this though.

 

Did you look into working with other labels?

 

No, I’m kind of stubborn in that way. With recording it, I kind of felt like, I’m doing all this. I didn’t mix it though.

 

You got Steve Shannon in for that part of it, right?

 

Yeah, he was great. It was great to get a second pair of ears on it because I hadn’t really let anyone listen to it. Like, the drummer who played drums on it, maybe my mum and a few friends but other than that I’d be like, oh no, it’s not done. But he was so good, just getting a second opinion on it. He only works with things he connects with and he did a really good job on this. It went really quickly, I had tried the mixes myself and I was getting really bogged down, finding it really hard to make definitive decisions, but Steve mixed it in like less than two weeks and it was very good. For me anyway, I had lost perspective at that stage. Some people can do it I’m sure, but you make so many decisions in the creative process that it just felt better to get someone else in on it at that point.

 

Do you see yourself fitting in with the Irish music scene at the moment?

 

I’m just another indie guy, putting out stuff I suppose! Obviously I’d love to be doing this for a living and all that but I’ve been making music for quite a while now and it’s never been that. I’ll never stop doing it because people who want to make a living from this or get famous or whatever, if that doesn’t happen I think they’ll general give it up and move on but I’ll always make music. Like, I racked up some debts making this album and hopefully I’ll be able to pay those back. I just want to make records so if I break even I’ll be happy you know?

 

What are your plans for the summer after the album comes out?

 

I’ve been trying to get some festival slots. No luck so far on that front, but I probably left that far too late anyway. Trying to get gigs in Galway and Cork and things. Got a Belfast gig coming up, so I’m just trying to get around the country.

 

Anything on an international level?

 

Yeah, if it becomes an option I’ll definitely do it. I’ll certainly try to get the album out physically in the UK and see what happens there. Maybe try and get to CMJ. I should probably be looking into that pretty soon actually.

 

What are the plans for the physical product?

 

It’ll be on CD. I would’ve liked to do vinyl but you know, costs. It looks really nice, I’m really happy with it. It’s a digipack, it’s really pretty. Bennie Reilly did all the artwork and the layout and stuff, she’s a really good artist and she’s in a band called Little X’s for Eyes. I’m really happy how it all turned out. If it does well, maybe I could put it on vinyl but we’ll see how it goes.

 

Futures Interview

Futures are a four-piece rock band from Buckinghamshire in England. They formed following the break-up of the hotly-tipped Tonight Is Goodbye. Their particular brand of catchy, anthemic rock, as showcased on debut mini-album Holiday, has earned them critical plaudits as well as a legion of young fans all over the UK and Ireland, managing to sell out venues while still unsigned. With their debut album in the pipeline, Ian Maleney talks to singer Ant West about their plans and ambitions at this very exciting time in the young band’s story.

 

Can you tell us a little about Futures and how you guys started?

 

We started in summer 2009, I think. It was August we started playing together. We had all been in bands together since we were about 15 or 16, and then we met Christian who played bass. We played some London shows and tried to get as much hype around the band as possible and we got picked up by Rock Sound who put out our debut EP on the front cover of their magazine which was a massive, massive thing for us. From there on we just started touring and we’ve just finished our album which we spent about eight months writing. We finished with Gil Norton (producer for the Pixies, the Foo Fighters, Feeder, etc). We’re mixing it at the moment, and that’s where we are.

 

And how did the release with Rock Sound come about?

 

It was our manager and Darren, the editor of Rock Sound who took a risk, taking us on like that, we were a brand new band. It just came about and it turned out to be their biggest issue in like two years.

 

That was a mini-album right? Is the new album going to be a full-length?

 

Yeah, the next album is a full album. We recorded like twelve tracks. We’d sort of been writing it for the last year and a bit but we had a pretty intense seven or eight months working on it. We wrote about fifty-six songs and then chose twelve.

 

That’s an awful lot of songs!

 

It’s a load of songs, yeah!

 

Any plans for what you’ll do with the forty-four you’re not using on the album?

 

I don’t know, probably just sitting on computers wasting away. But every song kind of leads to another song, so you write one song and you think oh, I could use that melody or that lyric. It’s nice to have that many to dip in and out of, that you can take references from. You kind of learn what you want the album to sound like.

 

When are you planning on releasing the album then?

 

We don’t really know, maybe early next year. Probably early 2012, January or February because we don’t want to release it at the end of this year. Make a fresh start with a fresh album at the start of the year.

 

And will you be doing it yourselves or doing it with a label?

 

Yeah, we’ll be releasing it on a label. We signed to Mercury to about ten months ago maybe. They got us in contact with Gil and we’ve just been writing and recording. We haven’t really toured that much at all, this is our second proper tour. We’ve pretty much just been in the studio, writing. So it’s a really great feeling getting out on the road. We’ve never been to Ireland, so that’s going to be great.

 

Do you have any immediate plans for after the tour?

 

Yeah, we’re talking about supporting other bands that come over after September and we’ve got some festival dates planned. Nothing too massive as we want to wait until we have the album behind us. It’s going to be a pretty fun summer, I reckon.

 

Do you have a favourite part of being on tour?

 

Weirdly enough, I like going to each venue. I like kind of driving and sitting there and watching the road. I love the idea of traveling somewhere and playing and meeting the kids afterward, meeting people you’ve spoken to on the internet who are really into your band. Getting to meet them and speak to them is really cool, that’s definitely the best part of it.

 

Do you get that a lot?

 

Yeah it’s cool. We have a handful of really loyal fans, that have been really good to us and helped us spread the word. We mean a lot to them and they mean a lot to us, it’s good.

 

Will the actual physical album be a different kind of design or idea than the last one?

 

Yeah it will yeah. The last one was a cardboard sleeve because it was on the front of Rock Sound but this time it’ll be nicely printed and all that, something to be proud of. Got to starting thinking about artwork soon. It’s going to be in all the shops and things, which is exciting. We’ve already been on Spotify and iTunes and stuff, but it was a great thrill seeing Rock Sound in WHSmith and stuff, it was pretty wild. It’s going to be a good feeling when it’s out. That’s the hardest part right now, we’ve got all these songs on our computers that we can’t show anyone or send to anyone.

 

What are your ambitions as a band with this album?

 

Just get to the level where we want to be. We sort of see ourselves as a band with longevity, we want to grow and grow with each album. We want to play to like 800 people when we start touring the album. Just be one of those bands that comes out on top, because it’s a very difficult thing to do these days, actually have fans that buy your records. We want to be one of those bands that people buy into and actually listen, rather than just download you know what I mean? So many people just do that, just download and don’t really care about them. I think if you care about a band enough, you need a CD. We want to be one of those bands that has longevity because we can make a living off it, because our fans respect us. I think that’s the hardest thing to get into people’s heads nowadays, that buying music is still a great thing and downloading is just crap.

 

Finally, what kind of advice would you have for young bands, like you were, starting off now?

 

I don’t know, just find out what you want to do. Like if you truly want to be in a band, or you just want to be in music. Like, you might want to be a producer or whatever, you’ll figure out what you want as you go along. Doors will open up and you just got to take every opportunity. I look back on six or seven years ago when I was in school and I go, what were we thinking? But all that led to where we are now. Don’t look back, just keep going. Don’t ever think you’ve got to give up because you need to get a job or something, life’s too short. It doesn’t matter, just do what you want to do.

 

 

Baths – Live at the Workman’s Club

The appearance of Cerulean last summer marked a high-water point in the year’s releases. Sunny, glitchy, emotive and, most of all, fun, it captured a precocious talent in a flush of joyous creativity. That gifted youth was Will Wiesenfeld, a 21-year old from Los Angeles. With all the brio of a man unencumbered by the weight of tradition, he set about welding post-Dilla hip-hop techniques onto a gloriously emotional falsetto voice and the results were spectacular. In the eleven months since it was released Wiesenfeld has toured extensively, though he had yet to make it to these shores. Thankfully, that was remedied in a wedged Workman’s Club last week.

Upbeat and exuberant from the beginning, Wiesenfeld goes a long way towards breaking the tendency of electronic artists to be relatively boring on stage. While it is no doubt difficult to get away with typical rock-band antics when you’ve a multitude of samplers and/or laptops on the go, the Baths setup is minimal, allowing Weisenfeld the opportunity to play with the crowd, dance and generally be fun to watch as much as listen to. He exudes no small amount of charm, with the instant likability that is so present in his music just as clear in person. Tracks from Cerulean mix into each other seamlessly. They are mashed up, extended and effected on the spot, breathing new life and energy into the songs. Where the album is a subtle construction built for careful listening, these songs are ready for the floor in their live incarnations; the beats are stronger, the vocals are more direct and the loops are let run themselves out. It’s a great example of an artist challenging themselves, and their audience, to find something new in every performance.

There was a ton of new tracks dropped throughout the set and even a diversion into some filthy trance style noise for a little while and it all combined to keep you guessing. It was never clear where the music would go next and this made the appearance of a familiar piano line or beat from Cerulean all the most exciting. In the end it was those tracks that stood out as highlights, from opener ‘Apologetic Shoulderblades’ to the utterly jubilant sing-along of ‘You’re My Excuse To Travel’, but the directions being explored in the previously unheard songs hint at deliciously interesting developments for the future.

Interview with Twin Atlantic

So tell us, where in the world are you at the moment?

We’re on the way to the ferry right now, on the way to Dover. We’ve got a festival in Belgium tomorrow and then we’re back on Saturday and then the tour starts a few days after that. It starts in Dublin or Belfast, goes all the way through the UK, for a fortnight through to London, then all over Europe too. We get to go back to Scandinavia and all over Europe basically. We’ve got a month and a half in total. So it’s not the longest I’ve ever done but it’s a fair chunk.

You’re promoting your new record, Free. Can you tell me a little about the album?

We’ve pretty much been writing it for a year now, on and off, whenever we’ve had a break from touring and it was coming around to the time where we all felt we were ready to make a proper full length album. So we basically asked around and enlisted the help of the best producer we could find, Gil Norton, who we were all really happy that we managed to work with. And then we made the record there at the end of last year, just there. And that’s it really, we’re all really happy with the record. It’s kind of like what we’ve always hoped our band would be and we think this time we’ve really managed to achieve it. We’re certainly all really proud of it and we just hope that other people like it.

How do you feel you’ve developed as a band since the last release?

I just think we’ve become a little bit more concise. There’s still variations within the songs, but it’s slightly more straight-forward in terms of structures. I don’t think we just about the place as much as we used to do. It’s kind of more classic structures and the ideas in the songs are a lot more universal, they’re not as personal to Sam, our singer.

Is there any kind of significance to the title of the new album?

I think it kind of sums up what the record is for all of us. It’s a slight departure from what we’ve done in the past and we feel like we all made the record that we wanted to make and not what anyone else wanted us to make. So I suppose it has some connotations for us in that respect but honestly, it’s pretty up in the air and open to interpretation, whatever you want to take from it.

The artwork is quite striking too.

It’s basically like there’s a symbol on the front for every song that we feel sums up the song. It’s like the front of the album is a way of linking all the songs together.

You’re selling the record in lots of different ways, was that a band decision?

Yeah, we’re doing quite a lot of different pre-order things for it. Like you can order it with a t-shirt and bags and all this kind of stuff. It’s up on so many websites too, it gets confusing. But hopefully there will be something for everybody.

Is there any reason for it?

Yeah we just didn’t want to just have the option of buying the record, we wanted people to have more than the record. We were all involved in the artwork and everything, and it was all kind of our idea in the first place. I feel that nowadays that because someone can go out and download it in twenty seconds for free over their internet connection, you have to just to think about those things a lot and concentrate on them and make sure there’s something people actually want. Make it special for people so they actually feel like they want to own it. We all know the feeling when you get something and it’s feels nice and looks nice and it’s something you can actually hold. It’s just so much better. Not that I’m saying don’t download it for free. If you don’t have any money, then download it for free. We’d rather people just heard it. Honestly we don’t care. We’ll probably get in trouble for saying we don’t care, but we genuinely don’t care. It’s hard because at some points I feel like there shouldn’t be a price on music, it should be something that is enjoyed by everyone. But then the flip-side of that is that, in order to actually make the music, someone has to actually pay for someone’s time to record it. It’s a bit of a toss up. I think records are probably too expensive to start with. I don’t know, I definitely don’t have a problem with people downloading it for free. If you don’t have the money, then download it for free. If you want the version with the proper artwork and everything then it’d be amazing if you bought it, but it’s not the be all and end all.

What do you think would your label (Red Bull Records) make of that stance on piracy?

I reckon we’re a band at our stage in our career where it’s just important for people to hear us and I think it’s more about development of their artists as opposed to making money for them.

So you have a good relationship with them then?

It’s really cool, like particularly cool. We don’t have any other experience of anything else I suppose, but just from talking to our peer group and our friends and everybody that we speak to, it seems we’ve got a pretty good situation. They’re very willing to help with everything and we’ve just got a really good relationship with them. You hear about bands that don’t get any support and we’ve got friends who don’t get any label support and it’s just really unfair. We’ve been very lucky not to be landed in that situation.

You played SXSW recently, right? How did that go?

Yeah we did, it was amazing man, really really good. We’ve been a couple of times before but this time we actually had the chance to relax a lot. We played four shows in the space of two days and we were there for a week so we got to see loads of bands we wanted to see. I saw Foo Fighters, I saw Death From Above 1979, we just got to experience the festival a bit more than we ever had before. I suppose because we were knew what to expect and we planned a little better, doing everything within certain times so we actually got to enjoy ourselves a lot more. It’s a bit overwhelming at the best of times, certainly your first year and probably your second year. You can’t really explain it until you’ve been there.

You’ve moved into doing more headline shows recently, how have you been finding that transition from support to main attraction?

We’ve supported so many bands over the past few years so we’ve been trying this year to kind of be more of our own band, be more of a headline band. Even if in some places, you’re not playing to many people. As long as you’re going and playing your show and trying to establish yourself. I think we all felt it was time to establish ourselves as Twin Atlantic, not as a support band. But apart from the fact you have to build up your stamina because you have to play a lot longer, it’s been good. It’s cool, the thing about headlining is that you’re the first band there and the last to leave, the first band to load in and the last to load out, so it’s a longer day but there’s a certain thing that you get out of playing your own shows that you won’t get out of a support show, it’s cool to see people coming to see your band and connecting with your music and that they want to support it.

Do you feel like that has had an impact on the way you write songs?

It feels more accomplished, the songwriting, and we get to the point quicker. Feels a bit more like a band that know what they’re doing you know? Like, we were just trying to write better songs obviously, but I don’t think those two things we’re necessarily connected to each other, it was just coincidence.

There’s an instrumental track on the new album, is that a new departure for you guys?

It is, we all have a big love for instrumental music and instrumental bands. I’m not 100% sure how it came about but Barry had a piece of music that he’d written and we all came together and wrote out his idea together and came out with something we all loved. It just made sense to leave it instrumental. I think Sam toyed with the idea of singing over it but we all just came to the conclusion that it was cooler the way it was, that it didn’t need any more explanation. It just was the way it was.

Finally, I hear your singer has a notorious sweet tooth?

Yeah he really, really does! He’s probably better than he was but any kind of fruit gum, wine gum, fruit pastilles, any kind of gum or pastille, he’s the man for that. He’s not like a sweet junkie though, he’s not as bad as that!

Interview with Friend?

Friend? are a five piece instrumental rock band from Dublin, who have just released their debut EP on the Eleven Eleven label. Mark, Josh and Dave from the band sat down over a cup of coffee to have a quick chat about how things are going for them, their plans for the future and the current climate of making music in Ireland.

So, tell us about this EP?

Mark: Making the EP took quite some time, that was the first thing. We needed to get something done and we kind of went to do it, I think, a little bit ahead of ourselves, it would be fair to say. I wasn’t in the band that long and a lot of the stuff that I had written, when we went back to finish it, I wasn’t happy with and it did kind of seem, from my part, kind of a rush job. You know when you go to do something in that particular environment and that kind of place, you want to get the most out of it and that takes time. It’s grand if you’re Muse and you got fifty thousand to spend on a month there but we didn’t have any money. We kind of planned to have it released in summer of last year but we were better off just waiting and taking our time and getting everything fine tuned. When we went back in we were in a much better place to do it.

Josh: It gave us time to develop.

Dave: It was definitely a backtrack that had its pros and cons.

And have you been happy with the reaction it’s got so far?

Josh: Surprised, hugely surprised. Everyone’s been really kind about it.

And how was the launch?

Dave: The launch was a lot easier than we expected to be fair, which was a real relief.

Josh: The turn out was incredible, really unexpected. They turned a hundred people away at the door.

Mark: I think, with the nature of this band, with everything we’ve done there’s been some element of last minute panic. Or maybe I should say last minute preparation! But like, last year we were getting t-shirts done and Dave was cycling around Dublin with a box of t-shirts on his back and we were trying to get up to Knockanstockan to play. And the EP launch was like that as well, I mean we got the EP covers printed the night before, we got the mastered version back from the Masterlabs in LA at twenty past seven and we burned all the CDs downstairs in the Workman’s club while the doors were open. Given that, it was just the relief that when we played the gig we actually enjoyed it so much because we weren’t even thinking about the gig.

Dave: I think we all thought that morning that there wouldn’t be merch at the table until afterward, and we wouldn’t get to see Overhead, the Albatross who were awesome at the launch too. But it all worked out.

Mark: I guess it was kind of a mixture of surprise at the turnout and then the reaction too.

What are your plans for the summer now?

Josh: Festival, festival, festival. I think we’ve got a couple of things booked that we can’t talk about yet. And we’d like to get into the studio again before the end of summer.

Mark: Yeah, just get a couple of things done that never really made it beyond laptops. Maybe show some of the more electronic side of things. We’d like as much time to jam as possible and then go out and play some nice festivals and then maybe in September get over to Europe, stoke the fires a little over there, See if we can get someone to put us up in a chateau!

It’s kind of unusual to see a violin so prominent within your kind of sound. What’s it like working with that?

Josh: We’re very lucky, we’ve very much landed on our feet with our violinist. She’s also a classical pianist and a producer. She’s playing with us now and she’s just perfect.

Dave: Even down to guilty pleasures, she has perfect taste in music, what we all would listen to. So she’s really great to jam with as well. Really, the closer the better to our original violinist who originally arranged a lot of the existing parts. She’s going to move down soon.

Mark: Yeah, she’s going to move down from Belfast and we’re going ruin whatever it is her life consists of now, drag her Dublin, make her play in a room with us. At the moment she comes down at weekends, she comes down for the gigs.

Josh: Her mam gives us Easter eggs.

Has that always been an important aspect of your sound for you?

Mark: Well, we didn’t actually strictly start off with it. We’re even trying to sort of step back from it in a way. I mean, even with the line-up changes and all, we have always sort of been writing for the violin lines, even subconsciously. Like, even when we were in Grouse Lodge and Ken, the engineer there, was recording the final part of one of our songs he was like “No, that doesn’t make any sense!” but then he heard the violin parts and it all fell into place. Now, when you have someone who is incredibly confident and a superb all-round musician, you just want to give them that room. I mean, they could be standing on a box playing ‘Eruption’ you know?!

Josh: I think in the past, with the way the violin lines are written, we just shoved a whole bunch of really busy guitar lines and she worked around them. Now, for the next batch, we want to start writing with it in mind and basing things around the violin. It will be more subtle.

Dave: Which is why Rachel is perfect, because she already has stuff done that she works on herself. We’ll have for the first time someone who is bringing us piano parts and violin parts that we can work with.

Josh: Yeah, it’ll be the first time we’ll have a violinist who can really contribute on every level.

How do you feel about instrumental music in Ireland at the moment? It seems to be going through quite a purple patch.

Mark: We go to a lot of gigs in Dublin and seeing bands that are doing things so incredibly well, like you’ll be playing something and you’ll say oh shit, that’s 3 Epkano or Enemies did that two years ago! So it’s really cool to have that around you and to be into that kind of collective, because as much as it influences you, it also cautions you a bit, makes you be a bit different.

Josh: The fact that there’s such a huge variety in instrumental acts in the country in general now is great too because before you were either one way or the other, but now there’s genres popping out left right and centre. It’s so vibrant, it’s nice.

Do you think there’s a reason for that?

Josh: Everyone’s fucked, no one has a choice!

Mark: I think music here is as strong as I can remember but then again, that could be just down to my personal taste. I know people who seem to be really interested in music and when it’s right under their noses but they won’t check it out, but I think the bands are doing really well and the labels are much better, the likes of Richter and a few others who are working really hard to get bands out there. It’s not like you’re walking up the street and seeing a poster anymore, you’re hearing them on the radio and you’re seeing them at good festivals, they’re getting real exposure. I’m sure a lot of people have gotten into local music on the basis of seeing a local band supporting a bigger band and that’s happening now because the labels are working really hard and the bands are really involved. That whole DIY ethos has always been there, there’s always been people who are really good at it, but I think it’s a part of every label now. I think if you promote something in the right way and you’re passionate enough about it then you’ll get that response and I think that’s quite an effect. I think that’s definitely got something to do with it. People aren’t expecting to make money out of it now. I mean, a few years ago, everyone was into mini festivals and battle of the bands that bring all your mates to pay a tenner in and the bands who gets the loudest cheer goes through to support Aslan in a pub in Wicklow. Now it’s like people are actually going out and are really, really interested in seeing the bands. People are in it for the right reasons now, no one’s looking for fucking stardom or anything, people just go out to enjoy playing music and get a response.