Music

Autre Monde: “You weren’t allowed to come in with an idea”

Autre Monde’s road to musical stardom was curtailed, like a number of rising bands, by Covid. Now back with a new release entitled ‘Sensitive Assignments’, and revitalising iconic Dublin label Popical Island along the way, Pádraig Cooney took the time to tell the Gazette how his band stepped back, and started again.

“It was really disappointing at the time,” Cooney says of their unfortunately mistimed debut album. “We released the album a couple of weeks before Covid hit. We played in Other Voices Ballina, which was really buzzy. The next plan was to go to [iconic American industry showcase] South by SouthWest, and then Covid hit. Obviously there were more important things, but it killed the momentum of our band. We just kind of went away.”

For a while, the band stayed quiet, until a new songwriting technique emerged. “What did happen is that after a while we started writing again, and we did it in a really patient way,” Cooney recalls. “We had a rule that you weren’t allowed to come in with an idea. So these songs, we spent a number of months not finishing anything, just experimenting, a lot of loops and synth sequences.” 

“We had 150 little clips, and we picked the ones that we felt had something. They are songs on the album now, but they came from this background, something we hadn’t done before. And we wouldn’t have done it under any other circumstances.” 

Equally, the songs have quirky, imaginative meanings. “The second song is about becoming fascinated by an 80s dictator in Burkina Faso, and trying to use him to impress people,” Cooney laughs. “Then, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is about the book ‘Milkman’ by Anna Burn, which has this bit about the parents of the main character.” 

“Then there’s the bit about being dads. The songs are self contained, and ‘Road To Domestos’ is kind of about learning to use a house. It was something along the lines of the first Grinderman album, a kind of send-up of the self-seriousness of songwriting.” The patterns of Autre Monde’s songwriting, and their subject matter, then, are wildly varied and exploratory. 

“‘Popical Island lost our headquarters years back, and that knocked it on the head really,” Cooney recalls of the death of the iconic label that Autre Monde’s record marks a firm comeback for. “The first Autre Monde rehearsal was on the last day of the place. When it was gone, we didn’t replace it, and we never really took the step to being a business.”

“It was great at the time, but it was pigeonholed as being a bit twee,” Cooney recalls of the label. “I felt like I had to fit into that, which wasn’t really me, though we did some great music and great community stuff. We were all at an age where we could be around all the time back then, going to gigs. Things are different now, but most of us still make music. So we’re coming back under the banner, it just might be a bit less frenetic.”

“Live, we’ve got a really lovely, mild-mannered sound bar instead of a drummer, and it works really well, so we’re all ready to go with our new set up. There are seven shows so far, and the Dublin one will be at the end of October.”

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Cruel Sister: “It’s a frank exploration of my own mental processes, and mental health”

Cruel Sister, the stage name of Dubliner Nico Faith, named for a traditional murder ballad, is very much its own distinct thing. Faith goes it alone, pointedly, producing much of her work in her own bedroom to growing acclaim, pouring her heart into a highly fraught, emotional sound. The latest example of her work is ‘Turgid’ an EP that screeches with emotion, both literally and metaphorically.

“It’s a lot darker than my previous EP, a frank exploration of my own mental processes and mental health, and how that changes how I interact with the world around me,” Faith explains. “It ponders my own insecurities in life, love, and just day to day stuff. I guess it’s pretty deep. I wrote the songs without really planning an EP, but they were written in the same kind of period of life, the last year and a bit, and I guess they kind of take on a kind of theme. The theme became apparent to me when I put them all together.”

“It’s quite cathartic to perform. This EP has a lot of very screamy vocals going on,” Faith says. “It takes a lot out of me to do, and it’s quite daunting putting something so raw out there. I’m not sure at each gig if the audience will be into this kind of music. But it’s what I’ve got to say, which is, basically, argh! Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t. But I love performing so much, it’s my favourite part.”

“When you put a song like ‘Turgid’ or ‘Lenny’ into the world, after trying so hard not to censor yourself, you hope people might connect to it. I know that when I see somebody doing something that looks quite authentic, I appreciate that in a world where we’re used to so much quite over-processed pop music. I have a lot of appreciation for authenticity, and I guess I hope when people see me live, they can see that and relate to it.”

“I produced this EP myself, which is a big part of why I started Cruel Sister”, she continues. “I’ve always wanted to do this kind of music, and I always thought it had to be in a band. I do play with a band, but I came to the realisation that I needed to write this alone. It’s about listening to the voice inside you that says that this is what you want to do.”

“For most of my life, I thought I was going to be a visual artist,” Faith continues. “At the age of about 19 I changed to wanting to be the person who made the music, the producer. So I did that in college, with the support of my dad, who’s a musician as well. I always played music, but I’m entirely self taught. I was very young when I started writing my own songs.”

“I put a lot of reverb on to start with as I hated the sound of my own voice. Now I feel much more confident as a singer, I’ve exercised the muscle.” 

“I’m still thinking about what’s next. I feel like an album is a huge piece of work, an undertaking of such work and thought, that I’ve got to ask myself what’s next, what sound do I want to make. What I’m enjoying is changing constantly, so much that I’m almost already done with the sound of my new EP and ready to move on. I think I’ll know what comes next when I get to uncovering the new songs.”

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Paro Pablo: “It’s political on a ground level.”

The Dublin hip-hop scene has flown to international acclaim over recent years, but for Finglas artist Paro Pablo, the timing has been odd. Having stepped away from the music in 2014 after support slots with Aslan and Hoodie Allen, he watched the scene he’d left behind take off in a huge way, only returning in 2019, with hits ‘4Life’ and later the EP ‘Never Known Love’.

There were stops off, too, in a band called Low Profile, and in writing material for other people to perform, as well as an earlier act that appeared on an RTE singing contest show, but the band were told they weren’t going to win well before the end, despite reaching the final – a peak, but also a hard lesson.

“I would have started out writing poetry when I was 14 or 15,” Paro Pablo says. “My little sister had passed away and I had a lot of anger inside me and no way to express it. That was my way of getting it out, and I won a couple of competitions. Then I got a set of DJ decks for Christmas, and I started writing music. Which was terrible at the time, but that’s how it started off.”

“I’ve been doing it for 15 years now, but with rap and hip-hop you never stop learning. I had been booked for festivals like Electric Picnic in 2020, and then Covid hit,” he recalls. “I felt like I was starting again. The industry is like that, you put something out and it goes well, and for a while things are good, but then you have to start again. There’s no longevity.”

“I think what I write sounds political, but it’s political on a ground level. I’m talking about people and what they go through, but politics wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I do one called ‘Comfort in the Chaos’, and it’s about growing up not knowing what we were doing, but also kind of how that turned into what we have today, with people, especially my generation, who will never own a house. You’re not going to get rich in the music industry.”

“It’s really sad that it feels like it doesn’t matter what you do. I have mates who own successful businesses and have to live in a shared house. Then there’s the homeless crisis, which I write about in ‘Anna Livia’, which is named after that statue that used to be on O’Connell Street, but really it’s about the hostel that’s right there. It’s political, I guess on a real, personal level.”

‘Anna Livia’ will appear on the Mixtape Paro Pablo has coming out shortly, with the mixtape named after the track ‘Comfort in the Chaos’. “With the live stuff, I usually have a full band. I did five shows with Damien Dempsey on his Irish tour,” he says, “and we talked a lot about our music. He said to me that nobody wanted to listen to him until he was 36 years of age.”

“He said he listened to my songs and that how I make people feel is amazing. He told me to take it more seriously, so since then I have done that, I have strategically thought about how to put things out and do things the right way. There’s no label, or backing, so it takes a little bit longer, but I think it’ll work out in the end. We’ve talked about working together, but I’m keeping that for the right moment. I want to build my own name up, to make it bigger, and broader. Hopefully the Mixtape goes well first.”

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Empathy: “I think every band should see themselves as a live band first”

Dublin rockers Empathy immediately stand out as an unusual and powerful band. The launch of debut single ‘Jeffrey’ – a somewhat delayed recorded appearance on the back of a series of live shows – highlights what makes them interesting: a band designed to make you feel good, as hinted at by the name, but nonetheless launching a debut single that delves in the psychology of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The debut single is just a hint at what’s to come, with an air of perfectionism hinted at by the way the band have almost two albums worth of tracks ready to go, but are still fosused on getting that debut single just right. I spoke to guitarist and vocalist Dean about what it’s all about…

First of all, can you tell me a little bit of the background of Empathy and how you came to be?

We are a 4-piece alternative rock band from the Northside of Dublin. Adam (Drums) and I (Dean – Guitar/Vox) had been playing together in various other projects and found that the two of us had great musical chemistry, so we decided to start playing and writing together until we realised we had to make this a permanent thing – so we formed Empathy.

Everyone in the band grew up a stones-throw from each other. Sam (Bass) and I went to school together. Adam & Sam were childhood friends, and Dan (Guitar) and I hung around the same group of music-heads when we were younger. So, we all knew each other growing up, and had very similar tastes and ideas when it came to music.

The name is a relatively unusual one for the genre, which tends to go more ‘agro’. How did you come by it

There are two ways of answering this question. The first is that the name is what we intend to achieve when sharing our music with people.We want to create music that will leave an impression on the listener, and if we’re doing our job right, make them feel what we are feeling. Whether that be via the lyrics, or the general aura of the sound.

The second answer is that 15-year-old me thought the name sounded interesting and the meaning of the word was easy to attach a story to. Overall, my feelings when it comes to band names is that the music and the people make the name. If the music is good, if the music speaks to you, makes you move or makes you pause, then the name takes on a different perspective.

‘Jeffrey’ is your debut single. What’s the story behind it?

I would describe the song as an interpretation of the thought process and internal monologue of one of the most infamous serial killers of the 20 th century. I’ve studied Dahmer’s background, and I thought it would be interesting to try and create a song that encapsulated the internal thought processes and moral wranglings that one would supposedly go through to justify the type of crimes perpetrated by Dahmer.

The music is heavy and violent but shifts to match the processions of thoughts. When you listen to the song, the verse, pre-chorus and chorus all have specific themes. The verse represents Dahmer indulging in his memories and inviting his sadistic thoughts. The pre-chorus is his moral struggle, nearly trying to justify his past-actions, and the chorus is Dahmer finally “letting go” of his doubts and relishing in his repulsive nature.

I think it’s fair to say we do have a cultural fascination with serial killers. Is this a broader interest of yours?

I would say that statement is more than fair. It feels like every week there’s a new documentary, film, or TV series about the escapades of some twisted person. I get the fascination. My background is psychology, so my own personal interest stems from watching his interviews and studying his background, family life and crimes in a psychoanalysis class. It wasn’t the serial killing part that was interesting, but everything in between that. When I came up with the riff, it informed the topic, as the melody was vile. At the time, I just
happened to be studying an extremely vile man.

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Groundhopping: St Patrick’s Athletic (v Sabah FK, Tallaght Stadium)

Competition: Europa League 3rd Qualifying Round

Date: 8 August 2024

Result: St Patrick’s Athletic 1 – 0 Sabah FK

Tickets:  €25 adults, €9 kids

Attendance: 4,352

Game/ Experience Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

The Game: St Patrick’s Athletic are having something of a horror season in the League of Ireland under former national poss Stephen Kenny, but Kenny has a reputation for doing damage in Europe and this was perhaps the best performance in Europe I’ve seen from an Irish side since the day of Dundalk doing damage.

Pat’s saw their own post hit in the first minute… and that was about it. From then on they piled on the pressure, with Sabah FK, admittedly not exactly a big name, but arguably more favoured than Pat’s, looking overmatched to the point that I stood somewhere in the second half where I couldn’t see the Pat’s goal, and it didn’t effect my enjoyment of the match one bit.

Pat’s scored a great goal in the first half, a volleyed finish from the edge of the six yard box, and then Sabah had a man sent off. From then on, they’ll be huge disappointment that they didn’t win by more, which makes a trip to Azerbaijan a tough challenge. It could easily have been a rout.

The ground:  We’re regulars at Tallaght Stadium, but still haven’t managed to get ourselves into the new North Stand (tickets wouldn’t go through this time, odd as it was clearly sparsely populated). Pat’s had made it their own, with the Invincibles in the traditional away section, complete with plenty of banners and making a decent noise throughout.

The atmosphere has definitely improved now there are stands on all four sides, and I noticed even the west stand seats have been replaced.

Extras: The small number of Sabah FK fans getting progressively more irritated in the heart of the West Stand was quite entertaining. I think they expected a win.

Assorted asides: I think this was a touch overpriced to be honest. Great game, better than most I’ve attended in Ireland, but if they’d knocked the price down a bit from €26 including fees for adults they could have sold a lot more tickets.

My totals for the year so far:

Games: 7. Home wins: 2 Draws: 3 Away wins: 2

Goals: 22. Home goals: 11. Away goals: 11. Goals per game: 3.14

VIEW ALL GROUNDHOPPING POSTS HERE.

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Chris White: “This is the chance to see what Dire Straits did”

When Dire Straits called it a day for the first time, Chris White had been a member for only a few years. Those, though, were the peak years, at least live: they included Live Aid, massive global tours, and playing for Nelson Mandela. Today, with the permission of the likes of Mark Knopfler and John Ilsley, White performs in the best recreation of Dire Straits he can manage, an act called ‘The Dire Straits Experience’.

“I had been working with Mark for a few tears on other productions, when the Brothers In Arms album really changed how the band was perceived and the size of venues, particularly with its success in America,” White recalls. “It was an incredible time. A few years later, there was the ‘On Every Street’ album and tour, which involved a huge band; I don’t know how many trucks driving around with stuff. I think Mark was looking for something a little more contained, really.”

“I first worked with Mark on a Bill Forsyth film called ‘Comfort and Joy’. I’d been told to go to a studio for an hour to work on one track. I turned up for that, started playing, and Mark turned up and listened to me warming up. We did the one track, then he asked me to try something on another. I ended up being there for three days, playing on the movie, and then he said ‘I’ll see you around, and you must come and play with the band’, and that was it. Mark gave me a lot of freedom.”

“The Experience don’t play note for note copies of Dire Straits,” White says of his current offering. “It is very much about giving people the chance to see what it was we did back then. There was freedom, and there is now, too, and it keeps things fresh for us.”

“We play for two hours and fifteen minutes, similar to what we did with Dire Straits, and we change around some things, and drop down to a four piece at one stage. There are lots of things we change around, but also things like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Brothers In Arms’, people want to hear those and I still love playing them.”

“These guys are all great performers, they all like what we’re doing, and the energy on stage is on a par with the energy I experienced with Dire Straits back in the day. The Experience allows us to do different things, too. In 2019, for example, we played Mozambique.”

“When the call came in, I said ‘really, are you sure’, as I wasn’t expecting Dire Straits stuff to have translated to a country like Mozambique. But we played two shows, one was a semi-corporate fundraiser thing in a hotel, but the other was on a university sports field to 5,000 people, a 99% black audience.”

“We started playing ‘So Far Away’, and they knew every word, we couldn’t hear ourselves play. It really took me by surprise. So this thing has rolled on and on, and it’s now a full time job. We get old fans and young people, which is a testament to what Mark wrote and produced.”

“I still look back at Live Aid,” he says. “That was my 30th birthday and we were in the middle of a run of 13 nights at Wembley Arena. We went and did Live Aid in the stadium in late afternoon, then went back to the Arena for our own shows, and a lot of people who played Live Aid wandered across and joined us for the night. It was an amazing day.” The band has died, but in this renewed form, the memories live on.

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Jape: “I’ve realised I want to create music without the public persona”

As something of a legend of the Irish music scene, Richie Egan – frontman of his own band Jape, and also a member of now Redneck Manifesto – is now resident in Malmo, Sweden, but remains intrinsically connected with what’s going on back home. So much so that the release of his latest record ‘Endless Thread’ will bring him straight back to Ireland to perform.

“I have been doing stuff on a small scale in recent years,” he says of his new life. “I continually work, and at some points people’s ears prick up and at others they don’t, but I’m a bit of a lifer. I’ve been making commercial music, too, to keep the wolf from the door.”

“A lot of work goes into stuff, and when you put it out into the world, it’s nice to get some kind of recognition. As a body of work, you want it to resonate. Music is like a chain, stuff is connected to what comes before, and by virtue of that, I’m in the chain of Irish music somewhere, even if it’s the weakest link,” he jokes. His latest effort doesn’t lack a few firm opinions.

“‘F*ck the Church’, the closing track on ‘Endless Thread’, feels a little like a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, though it actually predates her passing. “It’s timely, I suppose, but the church’s time is up,” Jape says. “We don’t need organised religion in our lives in my opinion. It’s pretty direct, but it just came to me really fast.”

Next to it is ‘Delete the Timeline’, about social media. “Kill everybody,” Jape jokes, before adding “I used to be very much involved with Twitter, but I came round to the idea you should use your energy wisely. Twitter took energy, rather than gave it. It used to be more sharing and courtesy but it seems very dark now. I find my life is a lot more fulfilling if I focus on creating, not destroying.”

“I’ve realised that I want to create music but without that public persona,” he continues. “I’ve been heavily into Buddhism in the last few years, and to me it seems like there are more answers in quietness and solitude than constantly talking.”

That said, the music will be heading out on the road, in a slightly different form, and Egan is not averse to returning to old times, either. “We’ll be re-releasing Redneck Manifesto records on vinyl soon, as they’re going for crazy prices online, so there’s a chance we’d come back as a band,” he says of his old outfit. “It’s not just up to me, but we all still get on well. I think it’d need to be with new music, not in a nostalgic kind of way. It’s not as simple as lashing together the greatest hits.”

Jape shows will be a different proposition, though. “The live gigs… I did a tour after Covid and found it really stressful, anxiety-inducing. I wasn’t feeling the idea of going up on stage, just playing some songs, people clap and you go away. It felt disjointed to me. From there came the idea of having a quiz. I wanted to learn about each other, and the idea for this round of gigs is that you can put your name into a hat and become a contestant on this quiz, which is going to be called ‘Jape-ardy’.”

“Other than that, we’ll play as much of the new album as we can but also some old stuff. People know certain songs, and it’s not a hard job to play those songs for people. I’d like to play as many songs as possible, the ones people want. The way my memory is, though, I’ll need a bit of preparation time, so give me a shout beforehand,” he concludes.

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Enemies: “There was a growing feeling that it would be lovely to come back in a low stakes way”

After a long break away from ‘the music’, Wicklow rockers Enemies have returned. Once given the almost cliched rock label ‘big in Japan’, the largely instrumental guitar act rose to the top of their niche with second album ‘Embark, Embrace’, and declared it all over shortly after their third record ‘Valuables’ came out in 2016.

Now, returning for a show in Dublin’s Button Factory, they’re back for a “gradual process” of a return. “I’ve remained really close friends with Lewis over the last seven years,” Mark O’Brien explains. “We’d hang out all the time, though he’s in Berlin and I’m in Limerick. We would get a bit nostalgic, and the idea of doing it again, after a couple of pints, got into my head. Watching The Beatles’ documentary ‘Get Back’ was part of it, too, wanting to be in a room together writing like that, joking and messing.”

“Then, privately, a lot of people would come up to me in bars and talk about the band and its’ impact, and there seemed to be a lot of energy around it, too. I suppose there was this growing feeling that it would be lovely to come back in a real low stakes kind of way, just to play with people again. There was no bigger plan than to get in a room and see what happens.”

“At first the energy was a bit awkward and nervous. Then we got into our rehearsal room, which looks exactly as it did seven years ago, and there was this nervous excitement, this vibrant feel about what was about to happen. And we played the first bar of a song, and it sounded so right in that moment. It sounded really good right out of the gate, and I think we took that as a sign. It’s been really enjoyable, we’ve slipped back into the old version of ourselves, without the pressure or stress.”

The first time, O’Brien explains, the band were at the heart of its members’ hopes, dreams, and in particular financial aspirations. “The stuff abroad was always the story,” O’Brien laughs. “So much of the talk was about America and Asia. It was an amazing time for Irish music, and I feel like there’s something in the atmosphere again now.”

“The first time we went to Japan in 2009, we could not believe the callibre of bands we were playing gigs with. They were incredible musicians, playing since the age of four, jazz trained, immaculate, polished guitars covered in turtle wax. And we went over with a guitar case with bottle gaps in it, no training… it took us a long time to get what they see in us.”

“We listen to a lot of very intricate math rock type music, but also Nirvana, Dillinger Escape Plan… there’s a scrappiness to it that we’ve always celebrated.”

But for how long? “We’re trying not to focus on big plans,” O’Brien says. “What ended our band over a couple of years was us putting an immense amount of pressure on it, that it had to grow, that we had to earn a living, that kind of thing. We now appreciate the friendship aspect of it, and we’re making a very conscious effort not to load too much onto it.”

“Getting in a room was the first step. The Dublin show was a second, and it feels really good, we’re having a lot of fun preparing for it. We’re sort of checking in with each other before we do the next thing. There might be tours, or at least shows outside of Ireland, but we have an agreement that anyone can just raise their hand, and that’s what we’ll do, to preserve our friendships.”

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