The Goo 1
MAY-JUNE 23 I can hear by the way the music is pu
t together that it's a one man show. As a drummer is the rhythm track where your writing starts? Yeah, generally it's myself making the tune, sometimes with the help of a musician friend here and there but on this new album I stumbled upon a couple of different tunings that interested me on the acoustic guitar and worked on some nice chord progressions that developed from there. I'm not a great guitarist but I work within my sphere and find what works for me and hence, the tune. Once that's started I usually introduce a rhythmic pattern into the track and that's when the drummer inside of me kicks in. It’s the drummer's curse, you’re always thinking rhythmically. Some of the time signatures on the album are quite complex and technically hard to achieve. Yeah, I suppose if there is anything technical about my music it’s rhythmically. I do mess about with time signatures quite a bit but not in a contrived way. Ultimately, I strive to marry these rhythms with something accessible so it's sort of like trying to find that sweet spot between something techy and something that’s accessible. That's what I try to do anyway. Have you ever played live? Yeah, pre-pandemic I was doing bits and pieces but there's a new lineup now. Michael Liffey who plays in Mail Order Messiahs, Ben Shorten from Tomorrows and Paul Savage - who was in O Emperor but has a new solo project called Whozyerman? - are my band cohorts and it's a really exciting line up. We’re all mates but it’s tricky at the moment because obviously with me being in London we can't rehearse as much as we’d like to but I'm managing to get over every 5 or 6 weeks so it’s progressing nicely. We should be ready by the end of the summer to start touring the album. I don't want to misrepresent the album live so I'll perform when I'm absolutely sure we are ready. Canada has a great reputation for supporting its artists. When you resided there did you feel that you were part of that support network? I wouldn't say I was part of it though I did become friends with a few of the artists and bands out there whom I still keep in touch with to this day. Montreal is a bit of a weird place. It's one of those kinds of cities where people go to make it. That's not why I went there but there's a bit of that buzz there. There's a lot of shit there to be honest with you. But there's also 10 or 20 percent of it that's amazing. So it's quality versus quantity and every person you meet is in a band. There is great funding for people living there and it’s a socialist leaning city so the arts are well looked after. The cost of living there is also much cheaper than Toronto or Vancouver. I FEEL LIKE A BIT OF A SQUARE PEG It was great to get a record company there to put out your work though? Yeah, but honestly it was very random. Moderna sent me an email and I just got chatting to them. And it was a bit of an odd fit really, because they were doing predominantly instrumental composer kind of stuff, very minimal piano based music and minimal electronica. So, as is often the case with my own stuff, I don't think people necessarily know what to do with it. It's kind of like oh, we like it, it's good, but we have no clue what to do with it. I feel like a bit of a square peg at times. The new album is on Strange Brew, the Galway based label (home to Paddy Hanna, Daithi, Houseplants and Junior Brother amongst others) run by local promoter and Roisin Dubh booker Gugai McNamara. How did that come about? Yeah, same kind of story. I put an EP out in 2020 on a mates little label and Gugai picked up on one of the tracks and would play it regularly on his 8 Radio show. I didn't have a deal at the time so I asked him if he would be interested in putting it out and the upshot is that it comes out on May 26th as a limited one hundred pressing on vinyl. Most artists seem to mellow with age but your music is becoming increasingly austere and uncompromising. Is this a fair summation? Yeah, definitely. I've always been interested in noise music and that avant garde sort of thing, but I always try to marry it with melody, that’s genuinely quite important to me. I like melody and I like noise and I also like wrestling with the two things, if you know what I mean? I just try to incorporate a lot more of the found sounds but really, in all honesty, it's just experimenting with things and reacting to what's coming back at you. Like throwing shit at a whiteboard and seeing what happens. I was a big fan of Irish 90’s music like Rollerskate Skinny and Dudley Corporation back in the day - in fact Ken Griffin from the Skinnys messaged me on Facebook recently to say how much he liked my stuff so that was cool. Uncompromising is a good word. I generally do what I want and then take the consequences. Feather Beds third album Softer Measures is released May 26th on Strange Brew Records. PAGE 29