Music

Khakikid: “I love making chilled music, but inside I’m a little rager”

Dublin rapper Khakikid is flying. From an extended period of learning his craft from a base of little music-scene context, to millions of streams, international hype, and a reputation for a unique take on hip-hop, Abdu Huss is widely scene as a future star of the Irish music scene. To us, his rise seems rapid. To him, however, it’s been a slow process.

“I don’t feel like it’s taken off quickly, but I’ve seen it with other artists, so I understand that feeling people have,” he says. “I welcome all of it. Anybody listening to my music, whether it’s over the last six month or six years, is well appreciated.”

“I learnt from meeting people in real life, when I started I didn’t really know anyone who did music,” The Crumlin-based star tells us. “But I met other musicians slowly. I hadn’t met anyone playing guitar until I was about 19, which is so funny as it’s such a cliche to have a guitar at a party. But I never knew anyone, and I just kept hanging around, meeting people like Bricknasty and F3miii, and getting more into a mix of music, not just rap. I felt like I deprived myself for a long time just listening to rap.”

“The last couple of years I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff like Nelly Furtado, Holly Humberstone,” he says. “Years ago I wouldn’t have looked at it. But a cool thing about it is you get to be 23 and learn what The Sex Pistols and The Beatles sound like. I’ve been discovering legendary music, and musically it’s given me perspective. What I appreciate most is people with unique perspectives and also a unique way of wording things. It’s made me put a bit more effort into how I word things and into being more present in life.”

“There’s this guy called TR-One who points out the absurdity of things people do every day, things we take for granted, and I’d like to be the rap equivalent of that. One of the things I love about Ireland is the self-deprecating nature of Irish people. In rap music, its origins come from boasting. It’s the complete antithesis of Irishness. It’s fun to boast about how much of a muppet you are.”

This journey is not, though, about fame, though Khakikid does appreciate the attention. “I’d do the same thing no matter how many people are listening to a certain extent, though I love that people listen,” he says. “A cool moment was realising that it’s not just my friends that are listening. There’s no way I have a 1,000 friends, and then you see people are listening from The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and so on. That’s the power of music.” 

“I’m so grateful that we live in this time. Twenty years ago, there’s not a chance anyone from my background could have made an impact, just my ma on the welfare with six kids. I could never have made it into a studio 20 years ago. Now I can put  a song on the internet with a cheap laptop and my brother’s gaming headphones.”

“I have hundreds of half finished songs. There’s lots of things that I will come back to, and other stuff I won’t. I get excited and have to move on to other things, but I’m really excited to get onto whatever is next.”

“My live show is like my recordings, but with the energy turned up tenfold,” he concludes. “I like making chilled music, but inside I’m a little rager. There’s no feeling like when I’m on stage, it’s something else. I appreciate every person, every moment. I can’t plan months ahead about going to shows, but people do it to see me now. It’s important I put on the sickest show I can.”

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Amble: “We’ve never had a conversation about the type of music we make. It’s natural”

West coast modern folk band Amble, a memorably atmospheric and personal act that have risen to both a million plus streams, and playing major venues incredibly quickly, are, in practice, the sum of years of experience, despite only being a little over a year old. Each of the three members landed together, as musicians before they were friends, complete with their own set of songs ready to go. The fit, from there, was a natural one.

“We played a little gig in September last year, and that was the start of Amble,” Ross McNerney tells us. “I sent a little voice note to the others after the gig and said the music needed to be recorded. That’s how the band started, social media, really.”

“It works because we all love the same music. We’ve never even had a conversation about the type of music Amble make. It’s just naturally what the three of us want to do. We were musicians and then we became friends.”

“We’re blown away with it so far,” McNerney continues. “There’s no way we expected the response we’re getting. We’ve sold out several shows that are five months away, so the response has taken us aback. We only have five songs out, and we’re only really happy with ‘Lonely Island’ and ‘Mariner Boy’. We record live, and the best take gets it, that’s the way we like to record. So there’s no editing on any of the tracks. You get the exact same sound live as you do on Spotify.”

“The day will come where we might get a drummer and a bass and go mad in a studio, but for now we just want it to be real, raw, music. If people like it, great, and if they don’t, well at least we’ve made music that we like.”

There’s plenty more on the horizon. “We’ve recorded an album now, which includes four of the songs that are already out, re-recorded,” McNerney says. “There are some songs on it that are written by the three of us, as well as individual ones that brought us together. It’s eleven tracks, all recorded live in Windmill Lane, and it is what we are, no add ins.”

“Our individual work has come to the fore with Amble because of the band, and that’s allowed us to make an eleven track album within a year of meeting each other. After the March tour, it’ll be about giving our music the best chance possible. The album will be out as early as we can have it next year, and then we’ll be looking to get on a few festival rosters in Ireland and in the UK, and then adding more music and more shows in the autumn.”

“We’re fully invested in Amble, we believe in it, and we think the music has longevity in it. That type of music, it’s kind of timeless. This sound, not in terms of our music, but in terms of the genre, will always be there. We definitely have a two or three year plan in our heads about where we’d like to see it.”

“I feel like a lot of our songs are based on the ocean, the sea and so on. It seems to come into our music a lot. It’s a style that comes from storytelling, that makes more sense coming from Limerick or Longford than Dublin. It draws on our upbringing, on farms and oceans.”

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Carsie Blanton: “it feels like a collective experience, and that’s what I’ve always been drawn to”

American folk/ protest singer Carsie Blanton is touring Ireland, and having the time of her life. A glance at her Instagram feed shows the long-established folk singer, who has heavy left-leaning political views, flitting from pro-Palestine protests to lively backstage shenanigans. Every picture or video has one thing in common: she looks ecstatically happy. It all comes back to a decision made in the midst of the pandemic.

“When everything stopped during Covid, I had a talk with my band. We’d been touring together at that time for ten years as a band, and 15 as a duo, and we agreed to make things all about quality of life,” she says. “We decided not to do every gig we get offered, as we had. We decided we wanted to tour Ireland, so I made a point of finding an Irish booking agent.”

“Declan O’Rourke handed me this beautiful tour on a platter,” she laughs, talking of her current month-long visit. “He’s mostly doing Fridays and Saturdays so I’ve just filled in some of the other days with my own shows.”

“The next album, called ‘After The Revolution’, will be out in March 2024, but I’ll have six singles before that, a kind of slow drip method,” she says. “It’s an album about hope, the future, friendship and solidarity. I’m trying to imagine a future that’s a little bit better. We can get bogged down in grief and anxiety about the world, so I’m trying to help people see a way forward.”

“I think for me, the idea that hope is something you have to develop, like a muscle, is important. It’s not external, or handed to you, it’s something you practise. We have to get better at it, or the future is a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m part of the left movement in the US, and I think sometimes it feels like we’re slogging away into an endless darkness.”

“I used to feel like I had two separate projects, music and activism. More and more I feel like they’re the same project, about the same thing, cultivating community and solidarity, and helping people to see what is possible. The only conflict, really, is how much time I spend on logistics, getting from one gig to another, which limits my time organising.”

For a long time, part of Blanton’s plan, aligned with her views, was ‘pay what you want’ at the door of her shows. “It’s got more complicated as the shows have become bigger,” she says. “I’m still committed to the idea of providing to people according to their ability to pay. For a decade I asked people to put in the money they could afford and I’d play and we’d call it even. The whole show has a theme of taking care of each other and looking after each other, which I see reflected in the audience and even in the sales aspect of it.”

“I feel very blessed, like I have a community around me. I’m a person with a lot of anxiety. I feel like there’s two types of musicians, anxious ones and depressed ones. The anxious ones prefer to be busy, so that’s had an impact on my career trajectory. I go insane if I don’t do something for a couple of weeks, which is a blessing and a curse, I guess!”

“I’ve been touring since I was 16 and the only break I had was during the lockdown, and my mental health deteriorated quite quickly. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so a job as a performer is a good fit. I feel better when I get to perform. I like to bring laughter, tears and rapt attention. There’s probably some ego attached to it, too, but it feels like a collective experience, and that’s what I’ve always been drawn to.”

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Gregory Alan Isakov: “The creative world is a living, breathing thing”

In a musical world where fame and status is a huge thing, Gregory Alan Isakov, a popular songwriter who focuses more on maximising his interests than musical success, is fascinating, and something of an outlier. 

Living and working on his farm between tours, and very much treating music like something to enjoy as much as a commercial endeavour, the singer is now based in Boulder, Colorado, where he puts his degree in horticulture to good use between international tours, and has found success despite his pointedly fame-avoiding approach to the whole experience.

“For the most part, it’s a huge relief, sending an album out into the world,” Isakov says of his recent record ‘Appaloosa Bones’. “The songs aren’t mine anymore, and that feels good. I’ve always put things out there pretty intentionally, and I tend to veer away from a lot of video content and stuff like that. For me, the creative world is the most important. It’s a living, breathing thing. And maintaining a space to be quiet and musical is so sacred to me.”

“I make a lot of work at once,” he continues. “For this record, I think I recorded over thirty songs that I flushed out, and then I sort of step back and take time away from them.  When I come back, the record reveals itself and the song choices are obvious.”

“I’m always working on something. Records can take a while for me, but I’ve sort of been cooking away at [the next] something already. I’m constantly taking things out. Words. A melody line that doesn’t need to be there. Space is the key in a lot of the music I like making.”

“I think Colorado landscape definitely makes it into the music. But a lot of songs come from travelling all the time. So I find pieces from everywhere.”

When it comes to performing live, Isakov takes a slightly different approach to the notable sparseness that infuses his albums.

“The shows definitely have a heavier vibe,” he says. “ I get to play every night with my friends, and the music takes on this other life. It’s an incredible thing to get to do. I do love making records. I think because on the records I’m playing for one person, in their car, or on the train, or on their way to work, or at night. You can get away with a whisper on a record. Shows are this other thing, and I’ve really come to love both.”

“I have been cursed (or rather blessed) with two great loves. After some practice, I’ve found a balance. But it took a while. Being a market farmer (my first job) has some seasonal requirements that I easily work around. We tend to tour a tonne in the fall  and winter. And I’m lucky I run the farm with two others now, which allows me to do a few festivals and stuff during the growing season. I would feel really strange if I didn’t help run the farm and just played music all the time. I think they both serve me so well.”

“We’ve always loved playing in Ireland,” he concludes. “The UK and Europe really made an impression on me playing there, even when we couldn’t really afford to, we kept booking tours over there. There is such an incredible feeling of playing so far away, and people showing up for us is mind-blowing and humbling.”

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Polly Barrett: “I thought the songwriting part of my life was over”

Closely connected to nature, and with an almost zen-like feel to it, Cork native Polly Barrett’s long-awaited new album ‘Sapling Be’ is a return that had a difficult journey in its route to being. The result combines her deeply organic style of composition with heaps of emotion, a spacey rural vibe that couldn’t have been written in the city, and a true sense of treading her own unique path.

“I went through a period of about six years where I didn’t write anything,” Barrett tells us. “I wanted to, and I tried really hard for the first few years. Eventually I thought that part of my life was over, and I even enrolled in an online course to get a certificate in another area completely, changing paths. It was the longest and hardest period of writer’s block I’d ever had.”

“It was at the same time as I had my son, and that big life change definitely contributed to it. The whole creative industry feels unreliable for family life, so there’s a pressure. I started writing again during Covid, finishing a first song after that long period in 2020, which actually came really easily in the end. That was such a great feeling, and the reaction it got online gave me the boost I needed to keep going.”

From there, Barrett’s road to an album that comes years after she made a very different mark on the music scene was an easier one, and one that also saw her reinvent herself.

“It felt amazing when it all came back, and it made me a lot braver and more experimental,” she says. “I wasn’t really interested in treading the same path, so I’ve been more daring and tried a few new things. It’s been a totally different experience; I feel like I’ve been so immersed in this album, and made so many more conscious choices about it. This is a sound that I’ve very consciously created.”

“I’ve always been very close to nature and felt quite a spiritual person, but it’s only in the last few years that it’s manifested in a very real way in my life,” she continues. “One of those ways was through forest bathing, as well as the process of becoming a parent and seeing the world through the eyes of your child. It all has a profound effect.”

“All my nature references come from West Cork. It has that wildness, and parts of it feel like they haven’t been touched in so long. I feel a real sense of connection with the countryside and the wildlife, like you’re privy to something special and magical, and I think that comes through in most of my songs.”

Playing in the way she does now, combining instrumentation like bodhrán, tongue drum, whistle and guitar with a sublime and distinctive vocal, has also seen Barrett’s stage set up change.

“Live, I use a loop pedal and three different instruments, plus my vocal, which feels quite different to what came earlier in my career,” she says. “I just want to create what I’m creating as honestly as I can, I’m not trying to write a hit or become Ed Sheeran or anything like that. So I don’t really think about other people and their take on it until quite late on.”

“This time around, I wrote the music and then thought ‘who’s going to like this’, rather than trying to write something that someone else would like. I think that’s worked well for me.”

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Sport

Groundhopping: St Patrick’s Athletic (v İstanbul Başakşehir, Tallaght Stadium)

Competition: Europa League 4th Qualifying Round

Date: 22 August 2024

Result: St Patrick’s Athletic 0 – 0 İstanbul Başakşehir

Tickets:  €20 adults, €8 kids

Attendance: 6,219

Game/ Experience Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

The Game: The first, home leg of the final qualifying round for the Europa Conference League group stage, so a massive game for St Pat’s in a season where Shamrock Rovers have already qualified – two teams in the group would be massive for Irish football, and for Pat’s team currently in a fairly uninspiring 7th in the League of Ireland. Başakşehir are a government funded Turkish side with a squad that far exceeds Pat’s in value, but they simply weren’t very good on the night.

They should, on paper, have been significantly overmatched here, but instead the game was controlled by the Inchicore side, who will be really frustrated not to have won it. They created a series of chances – a close range header, a shot from outside the box that slammed against the post, and a cross that just failed to connect two yards out. The ‘nearly’ moments that might be key, but nonetheless, a really excellent effort against a team they should have struggled against. Of course, going out to the heat of Istanbul for the return leg and getting anything is a huge ask, and they’ll probably go out now. But it was a great watch, a memorably strong performance. No harm in those extra UEFA points either.

The ground:  I’ve now sat basically everywhere in Tallaght except behind the goals. In the rain, it was surreal today, with fans packed in back from the touchline to stay dry. A decent turnout, with the noise all over in the traditional away end, and a collection of Turkish fans in the South Stand.

Extras: There was a programme, but as usual I didn’t buy it.

Assorted asides: I found the Turkish fans confusing, largely clad in Galatasary and Fenerbarche tops. I wasn’t even 100% sure they were supporting the Turkish side at times, and the noise from them was loud but very intermitant. I don’t think they were too impressed with their side.

My totals for the year so far:

Games: 8. Home wins: 2 Draws: 4 Away wins: 2

Goals: 22. Home goals: 11. Away goals: 11. Goals per game: 2.75

VIEW ALL GROUNDHOPPING POSTS HERE.

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Wheatus: “If I’d asked a producer to make songs like ours in 1996, they’d have kicked me out”

Pop-rock legends Wheatus are, believe it or not, a proper indie band. The New Yorkers have been without the backing of a major label since their early-00s hits ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, and even back then, it felt like their work was a pure, unadulterated product of the band’s rehearsal space.

“The record came out in America in the summer of 2000, and started okay, but by the time November came around we were playing small shows in Kansas to people who thought we were Smashmouth,” frontman Brandon B Brown tells the Gazette. “We did about six months of hard touring that way, then we blew up in Australia, then a few months after that in the UK and the rest of Europe. We never properly got used to being successful, it always felt fleeting.”

“We had to go home to New York, where nobody knew who we were. It was very grounding, and kind of weird, actually. Our project was indie from the start. I wrote the songs by myself in my apartment, then put a band together, slowly. It took a while to find my voice. It was self produced, too. We were squeezing Paul Simon, Metallica and New York hip-hop into one song. If I’d asked a producer to make a song sound like that in 1996 they’d have kicked me out, so I had to do it myself.”

“Through the years there were other songs that sounded like they belonged on our first album, so we never recorded them. The new version of that record will have the 10 songs people know, and another 10 that through the years felt too ‘first album’ to put out. So we’re making an ‘alternative universe’ version of the record.”

Ever popular, ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ has undergone yet another revival recently, through TikTok. “We like to think the best thing about it is that people continue to see themselves in the narrative,” Brown says. “They make it their own, so it belongs to whoever needs it.”

While Wheatus have continued to go strong, Brown has also found himself engaged with the McBusted project, a mash-up of McFly and Busted. “One day James [Bourne] rocked up at my door in New York and just goes ‘can I just crash here tonight mate,’ Brown laughs. “He had to write a song before the morning, so we wrote a song called ‘Zelda’, which we are playing on this tour. It’s a fun, uptempo basher of a song. James is a good old friend, and we write every time we see each other. I wrote some stuff for his ‘Son Or Dork’ record, and I’d like to do that one day.”

As for this tour, Wheatus have gone big on dates, preferring a long trip with small venues. “They always ask us if we want to do ten dates in big venues or 30 in small ones, and we always choose the 30,” Brown says. “Smaller venues, more shows, is part of what we want to do. To see more people, and go to more places. We don’t make as much money, but we don’t care, we have a better time, and that’s what it’s all about.”

“We learn as many songs as we possibly can ahead of these tours,” Brown says. “We learnt 63 tunes for this tour, and we’re doing all request shows, no setlist, to keep it fresh and new every night.”

“We don’t have a manager, as they’d tell us not to do longer tours and play longer sets, stuff like that. We don’t want to be told to cut back. That’s who we are.”

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Reylta: “my album is like an itch that had to be scratched”

Timeless, life-affirming and yet often very notably dark, Reylta’s debut album crosses the parapet armed with a range of oddities that, combined, feel like an expression of humanity’s broad emotional spectrum. From orange chocolate to suicidal dreams, from sex meets religion to a song written as she sat at her grandfather’s wake, the Galway artist, who blends folk and modernity on her debut album ‘Everything Unsaved Will Be Lost’ really does explore the depths.

“This album is something I had to do, like an itch that had to be scratched,” Reylta says. “My whole thing is that I really want to make songs that heal people, or touch on a thought that you might not have had. It’s not something to put on in the car to sing along to, it’s more of a private album, something you listen to and take a journey with, through some sort of emotional realisation.”

“Some of the songs have been really prophetic. You have to give the songs everything when you write them, and then a couple of months later, almost the exact situation I’m describing happens. I end up saying to myself ‘I told you this a few months ago’, and it keeps happening.”

“It’s very much about the stuff I take inspiration from, too. Damian Rice and Hozier, Dolores O’Riordan, all that sort of stuff is what I grew up with, not traditional music, but I knew I wanted to get in touch with traditional music. There are a lot of folk artists at the moment talking about their own perspective.” 

“Stuff like Phoebe Bridgers’ folks pop is through her lens. I wanted to use my lens, but I also wanted to use the Irish culture, which I feel so connected to, the legends and storytelling are so plentiful. There are so many elements to it that are right there, and I intend on using it throughout my music.”

“I think a lot of Irish people do feel a bit of detachment from the magic that is in our culture. We all feed into the chicken rolls, the crisps sandwiches and the drinking, but don’t delve so deeply into things like the cures. Oddly, I never listened to folk as much as when I lived in England.”

There’s also a notable dark side to Reylta’s record. “Writing about it helps with those issues,” Reylta says of her mental wellbeing. “The first song on the album is my letter to my friends and family about my mental health issues. I didn’t realise until I got to college that most people didn’t want to die every single day.”

“Some people got mad when they heard it. I don’t think they’re mad at me, more at the situation. So I wanted to reveal these truths about myself in a softer, more beautiful way. I want people to love me while I’m here, but I’ve been so mentally unwell for so long, I want people to remember me for what I was. I don’t think it’s as easy as just getting help. It’s never worked for me.”

“I’m a very out there, spritely, confident person. You wouldn’t know by meeting me that I’m quite depressed. I think the reality that my type of person is the worse mentally well person they know might have come as a shock to some people. I don’t know if the record helps me, but it is my reality, and I would prefer that people would know that.”

“There’s a darker side to every song, and a darker side to me, and I’d like people to know me. I think it’s a good thing to have that out there.”

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