Plaice‘s slow approach to the music industry has, it seems, largely been about self-exploration and self-expression. Adam Browne was formerly part of Autumn Owls, and since branching out on his own, has largely been exploring DIY-style recordings, that deal with his own emotions.

Along the way, he’s set up a record label, Sad Songs, which he hopes to expand to other artists, and slowly shaped a slightly dingy niche. I asked him all about it…

Tell me a little bit about Plaice – you seem to be doing quite a bit of hopping around between genres?

I don’t think my sound strays too far from the sum of my influences. There might be electronic moments here and there sprinkled with more acoustic/ lo-fi based work, but if you step back and take it all in as a complete body of work, there’s some common blood flowing through it all, mainly, melancholy.

How different have you found solo work to your time in Autumn Owls?

Being part of Autumn Owls was some of the best years of my life. Every kid should be in a band at some point, it’s brilliant craic. You just don’t get that with solo work.

Working alone can be incredibly soul destroying. You generally don’t have anyone to reassure you that what you’re doing is good and worthwhile, so you live in this constant state of paranoia and fear that you’re a complete failure, which is true for the most part. However, the sense of accomplishment from having created something entirely on your own, and seeing it through to completion, is an amazing feeling.

The process behind Planar En Plain Air seems to have been an interesting one. How did you gather your fragments and samples to build it?

The majority of material on the EP was cobbled together from demos and ideas I had for my upcoming album, Losses. Most of this stuff didn’t quite fit with the album tracks, so I decided a few weeks ago to release them as an EP.

I had to flesh out some of the tracks but the majority were just sitting on my hard drive and needed a little bit of love and care. It’s a very last minute thing and I didn’t have the money or time to get it mixed or mastered professionally, so the overall quality might not be up to scratch, but I think it works ok as a small collection of tracks regardless of fidelity.