Melbourne-born, Irish-raised electronic artist and techno producer Christopher Coe is set to perform at Éalú Le Grá in Galway later this month, alongside artists such as Octave One, Mad Professor and Axel Boman b2b Mano Le Tough.
Coe, who combines techno with live electronic experimentation and improvised performance, is no stranger to the international festival circuit, having performed at Awakenings, Glastonbury Festival and Kappa FuturFestival in the past, as well as clubs such as DC10, Sisyphos Berlin and Sala Sonora Bilbao.
Over the years, the Mayo native has collaborated with artists including Mad Professor, Stelarc and Reinier Zonneveld, and played back-to-back live sets with KiNK, Colin Benders, and Carl Cox – serving as creative director for the latter’s live shows.
Coe also co-founded the Awesome Soundwave label with Carl Cox in 2018, focusing on releases from live electronic artists.
Ahead of his performance at Éalú Le Grá (tickets available here) 909originals Emer O’Connor caught up with him.
It’s great to have you back home in the West of Ireland for Éalú Le Grá festival. Can you tell us how your relationship with the festival blossomed?
Through mutual friends, mainly John Walsh and Daithí Kelly. I met them a few years ago in Mayo when I was looking for help to get out to Achill Island to film a live set, which you can see on YouTube now. They originally tried to convince me to play Burning Man. I was like, ‘I don’t wanna go to Burning Man, I don’t wanna be part of some rich c*nt’s f**king ‘dream about a utopian society,’ and blah blah blah, what a load of shite!
So I wasn’t interested in it at all until my friend Carl Cox said he’d fly me in, so then I said, ‘grand, I’m going!’ I didn’t need much convincing…
Ha ha ha!
Well, we made friends over the years, that’s what it boils down to – me, John and Daithí. We have mutual friends in the west of Ireland because, of course, I’m from Westport, so I was coming home often. They had run Éalú a few years before and I texted Daithí and asked, ‘Why the f*ck didn’t you book me, man?!’ and he goes, ‘Ahhh shit sorry man, of course!’. So they booked me last year to play, and it was one of my highlight gigs of the last few years.
Yes, I really enjoyed your set last year.
Ahh, you were there, nice. Yeah, the whole vibe of the festival was really special. It reminded me of early Australian festivals like Rainbow Serpent or Earthcore – the ‘bush doofs’ as they call them. There are a lot of outdoor camping festivals with incredible sound systems that grew in Oz, made with genuine love and intention.
I’ve played so many of these kinds of festivals, the first time was 1996. I’d just come back from playing Tresor and then I played Earthcore. I fell in love with the freedom it felt, being able to camp. The weather was great, of course, in Australia, so that made it easier.
But Éalú kind of reminded me of the feeling I had back then, a very genuine event, made with love and a desire to share something special, together with all the trappings. The other thing I love about Ireland is that Irish people start warm – they come to your gig and they’ll be ready for it, wanting to have fun. They want you to succeed. There’s no sense of the audience standing back with arms folded, saying ‘entertain me’.
They’re shouting ‘Yeoowwww… let’s go!’
Yes, exactly, ‘C’mon now!’ So the energy was already really special. For me, that was such a joy. There was a moment where it was going off but it was too bright, I had to run off stage and tell them to turn off the lights!
I think there was a mutual connection. I felt everybody there was really special and I think Daithí and the lads felt it was a worthwhile thing to repeat. So I said to them, ‘park me in from here on’, I’d love to play at it every year if there’s a possibility to do that.
Éalú is into its sixth chapter now, and it’s getting bigger and better each year…
That’s right, though I think they’re trying to find the right balance in terms of the size of the crowd. Obviously there are commercial concerns, they need to make some cash and cover their costs, but they have the right attitude about finding the right balance. I might be wrong, but I don’t think they are interested in trying to turn it into a super festival with 10 or 20 thousand people.
They are trying to balance sustainability and intimacy, 750 people is the cap and it’s a beautiful size festival. The first Electric Picnic only had a few thousand and it was so special and so nice and it just got too big for me, I couldn’t go back – except for the 10th anniversary when I got guestlist from the headliners, Arctic Monkeys. But then I never went again, couldn’t cope. I went to Glastonbury once, I never went again, they’re just monumental, they’re scary!
That’s a whole city in a field, it’s bigger than Galway, 250,000 people camping in a few fields for a week.
Although Glasto does retain a gorgeous vibe, that’s one thing I’d say for it. They do get a lovely crowd overall, and little pockets of cross-cultural gems that you can discover randomly. Éalú is like a micro-Glastonbury.
That’s a fair comparison. The thing is, Éalú would fit into Glasto as one of those pockets. The thing I love about Glastonbury is it’s the festival of festivals. It’s a real festival, not a commercial concern – of course they make money, but it’s created by bringing together all sorts of different collectives and people.
It’s so real in the tradition of festivals, especially English festivals that go right back to medieval times, when different groups of people got together in a field to celebrate the lunar eclipse or whatever it was. We’ll always find a reason to party, right?
Absolutely.
I think Glastonbury carries that tradition through – that’s why it’s so special and genuine. It is huge though, and it can be daunting. That’s why, as you say, Éalú is a micro festival, and it’s a lot easier to deal with. It’s a really lovely experience, because you have time to make authentic connections with people.
What I like about these smaller festivals is you can get to hear and see music that you don’t necessarily hear anywhere else. These are artists that can’t be booked on the bigger festivals because they don’t have the draw, the pulling power.
I think that’s also special, because you can discover interesting artists. Of course Glasto has that too but on a much bigger scale, you might not see them because they could be a two-hour walk away.
You mentioned there about playing Tresor in Berlin, back in the mid-90s, how did a lad from Mayo get gigs in Tresor back in ‘95? What happened there?
I’d love to play in Tresor again, it’s been that long. I was already living in Australia, I came to Oz in 1990. I was trying to make my way as a musician back then. I met a fascinating experimental artist from Poland who came out to Australia, his name was Zbigniew Karkowski. We were introduced through another friend of mine and we became collaborators in this experimental electronic project, along with a performance visual artist called Stelarc. We did a few exciting shows together.
Anyway, Zbigniew said, ‘you should play at Tresor – my friend’s the booker there’. He put me in touch, and she said ‘come on over, come play’. It was that easy back in the 90s.
What was Tresor like back then?
It was the original Tresor in the vault. I had only just starting really DJing, I’d always messed around, playing records. I’d previously been in a band, aiming to be a pop star but realised that was delusional. The band broke up and I got into making techno – I soon understood that was far easier, you don’t need to depend on the band.
And so in ‘94 I released a kind of cross-over electronic album with some rock elements, called Digital Primate, and I really, in earnest, got into DJing and making techno under that name.
Funny you mention this, my old friend Sunil Sharpe brought it up the other night, I was telling him I’d be chatting to you shortly and he said, ‘ask him about his old alias Digital Primate and his work on Pro-Jex’. Can you tell us a bit about that time period, creatively speaking? Do you have any plans to reignite that jacking Chicago sound?
I always think I’ll go back to it and then I forget! That’s funny, when I was playing at Index last year, I met Sunil, he came up to me and, ‘I know your records, I know you as Digital Primate’. I said, ‘F**k, how?!’ But Sunil even knew the very first piece of vinyl I put out, which I only made 100 copies of and only released in Australia. I said, ‘How the f**k do you know that?!’ and he said, ‘Yeah I’ve got a copy.’
Sunil could have been a librarian in another life I think, ha ha.
He’s a real collector isn’t he?
He is an absolute gem and a true ambassador for the electronic scene in Ireland.
I know, I really admire what he’s doing. So, back then I was playing in Tresor and there was Globus upstairs and Tresor downstairs, in the bunker. I was 25 years old and didn’t know my arse from my elbow. I was playing techno. And the DJ that was playing before me was DJ Hell, and the DJ that was on after me was Surgeon.
Oh wow!
And then I played another time, with Rolando. I didn’t know these guys from a bar of soap, like honestly, I was like, ‘you’re cool, you’re nice’. Surgeon subsequently became a friend many years later, but his records were the records I first bought when I was getting into techno, the early Balance Records and stuff.
Then I met Mark Ernestus from Hard Wax Records – again I had no idea who this guy was – he gave me records from Burial Mix Records, Rhythm & Sound records, and said, ‘I think you might like this stuff’. When I brought them back to Australia, to my friend DJ Spacey Space, his jaw dropped to the floor. He said ‘I’ll swap you my entire record collection for those three records’.
I had really no idea who I had played with at the time – I was just this naive 20-something-year-old, maybe a bit arrogant, playing at Tresor. I didn’t even realise the enormity of it at the time, but it was an amazing experience.
Many years later I was making more techno and met the guy who ran Pro-Jex, Charlie Hall – he started it in the late 90s. I met him at Earthcore, and got him to play at a party of ours in 1996/97. Then a year later I started my own club here in Melbourne, called Centrifugal, which became a big underground club for quite a few years.
I was making techno and always sending it to Charlie going, can you release that? And he said, ‘well, it’s not quite good enough’. Until finally he said, ‘now, this stuff…’ . It was music that I made in Westport when I was on holidays there. Charlie said, ‘right now you’re ready, let’s put this out’.
He ended up releasing five records of mine through Pro-Jex – that label had DJ Rush, Organ Grinder, and Dave Clarke, all the luminaries of techno. Myself and Dave Clarke were the only two white guys that were released on that label.
DJ Rush did a couple of remixes for me, which were savage. In fact Rush and I had dinner together in Portugal last year, having not seen each other for twenty years. He now lives there, and he found out I was coming to Portugal, and texted, ‘we have to catch up’ so we went out in Porto. We plan to catch up again soon.
Ahhh lovely, he’s such a diamond. I met him in Cork years ago, we flew down to see him play for Technoland, for my mate’s birthday, and after he finished, I thanked him and told him so, ‘we flew here just to see you and it was so worth it, you were phenomenal!’ and he goes in his deep sexy Chicago accent, ‘it’s people like you that make this job worthwhile.’
Such a sweet guy! When was that?
2010 I think. Then I suggested him to Ro Flynn for Subject, who got him over for a sold-out Twisted Pepper, hanging off the rafters we were!
Ahh, he’s such a legend. I wasn’t so mad into his schranz so much, coz it was too hard and fast, but now in comparison with what’s going on these days, it’s really funky and groovy by comparison. The stuff that he did with Pro-Jex was truly super funky and they still stand up today, I think they were crackers. Look and See is my favourite track.
I love it when he sings while playing live…
‘I’m gonna funk you right up, gonna funk you right on up…’ He and I had been talking about collaborating together for a long time again. He said, “awww man, I keep talking about getting in the studio but then I lose my focus’. I said, ‘I’ll just come down and force you.’ So I think this year, I need to make a time and do that, call him and say, ‘let’s just f**king get in the studio!’
You totally should, time is of the essence!
I will, you’ve inspired me 🙂
I know you created your MNTNs of SLNC album back in 2018 with aerial visuals shot in Mayo. Now that you’re based in Melbourne for many years, does the distance from the dramatic landscape of our Emerald Isle alter your relationship with it creatively?
I think that’s a good question. I think it does, because of course from a distance I can tend to romanticise it a bit more, rather than if you’re in it every day – you tend to take it for granted, perhaps.
Mind you, I’ve always loved the landscape of the west of Ireland – even as a young fella ,I always loved it. It’s always been so mysterious, particularly down around Doolough, Delphi, south Mayo and north Galway, the Maams they call it. That landscape is mystical, and magical – much like the Scottish Highlands, it’s very raw and rugged.
That album was inspired by that landscape, it just dawned on me that looking across, standing in Ballycroy National Park, looking across at the Sheefrey Mountains, it struck me that that’s what techno looks like. It’s sort of an abstract thought but to me, I sort of had this feeling that that’s where my appreciation of techno came from.
It wasn’t, for me, an industrial environment, it wasn’t for me Köln, Frankfurt or Berlin. For me it was perhaps as cold, as the landscape is cold and barren, but it was more organic and for me. I got this sense of rhythm, I felt that the land was creating the rhythm.
I went on to think about the land, the changing of light, and the effect that it gave on these mountains and how they seem to be moving. So that’s what gave me the inspiration to come home for at least six months and climb the mountains, to make this music that was inspired by the experience.
That’s where SLNC came from, and of course I wanted it to be a live visual experience. All of the visuals were created with drones and whatever, and I continued that concept as much as I could.
And then in the last few years, I started this project called The World’s End, which is where I go to the islands, set up my gear and play live in a location inspired by the surroundings.It’s not direct – I’m not recording the sounds of the seagulls, or clinking rocks or anything like that.
I’m just in the environment and playing with my modular gear, making techno or electronic music that’s inspired by just being there. That, to me, is like an extension of the project. It’s an ongoing relationship with the land and the environment from my childhood and upbringing.
I think, as Irish people, we’re very poetically connected to the land, much like Aboriginal Australians are very connected to their country. I still really relate to that – that concept that our land is part of us. I mean, I’m sure it’s the same for most people who live in a country setting – it’s nothing new – but it doesn’t take away from the profundity of it and how special it is, and how it inspires us in many ways to be poets or writers or mountain climbers.
Even though I’m a city girl, my Dad is from the hills of Donegal and my Mom from County Limerick and I love getting away to the countryside, you truly feel grounded when you get there.
Ahhh it’s great, the fresh air and the mud! I do want to plant more trees, I think we need more trees in Ireland.
So when you come home, you’re going to buy some land and plant some trees?
No, I have a plan already. We already have the land.
I’m sure you know about the 100 Million Trees project that’s going on in Ireland at the moment, is it part of that?
Yes, it’s part of it, we want to get the subsidies in and the grants, and we have the people who can do that. They already know how to apply for the grant and they know what trees to plant. So this is my mission when I come home.
I can see an album emanating from that growth.
The World’s End project is what I’m most excited about, because I’ve done three now. One is on Achill, one is on Inishturk. I’m about to release one from Clare Island, and every year I’m going to go to a different island and do it until I die. I can’t get to every island, because there’s loads of them. I mean, there’s 365 islands in Clew Bay alone.
Yeah, you should definitely go to Inishbofin though, that’s a cracker, our whole family went last year for the arts festival.
That’s the next one I’m doing this year!
We heard a cuckoo and even saw it fly, you’ll have to sample a cuckoo.
No way, there’s a cuckoo there?
Yes, flying wild, first time I ever witnessed one in action, and it didn’t shut up the whole weekend, I’d say it would make a great sample.
Sounds like it.
Let’s talk about live performance pressure – obviously you’ve no pressure when you’re on these islands, doing your live performance – but when you’re on a mega stage of a festival, I know you’ve mentioned in previous interviews it being both frightening and energising. What kind of fear is it? Is it technical, emotional or existential?
I think it’s all three, particularly at my age. The first fear is the technical one, because I’m shit-scared that something will go wrong. As you can see, there’s a whole bunch of wires and cables here behind me and a whole bunch of other things, and there are so many other things that could go wrong.
On the other hand, it’s existential and emotional, because I am literally flying by the seat of my pants, it’s very much an improvisational thing. I have some ground rules, I have some foundations, I use Ableton with loops and parts of tracks of mine, and if something f**ks up, I can always just drop back into Ableton and play a track. So I’ve got redundancy, but if the Mac falls over, then I’m totally f**ked.
But your improvisation – that must produce some unexpected ideas live. How do you later decide which moments deserve to be composed material?
That’s a good question. I don’t know. A lot of the time, I don’t record the live sets, because they’re just there for that moment, that’s it. It’s a philosophical decision on my part.
I talk about it a lot with other artists. KiNK and I talked about it a lot – he’s the same, he doesn’t record his live sets because they work for a particular context. If you go back and listen to them, you go ‘what the f**k was I thinking, that sounds shite’. You don’t like it. He’s the same.
But in the moment, in that context, it works, the crowd responds, you respond accordingly. So, I find at the bigger festivals, whilst they’re nerve-racking in their own right – I have played at some very large events, like 15,000–20,000 people – they’re sort of abstract, so I’m less nervous in a way.
You’ve got to jump in the deep end, but I’m not the headline artist, so I don’t have that pressure to deliver what the crowd is expecting. They come to see Carl Cox, for example, and they’ve got a lovely extra bonus in me. That’s grand. The pressure is on him. He’s the one carrying the show, not me,
I’m there to deliver, you know, like a warm-up DJ, to continue building the vibe to the point where it comes to the climax – where he steps on and just brings it home. That’s my role, and I’m really happy with that. I love doing it and that’s really enjoyable, because sometimes I feel even a bit freer in that context.
The pressure is greater in a small room of 20 people, in particular if they’re friends or acquaintances. At Éalú, I might be a bit more nervous because it’s a smaller crowd and you’re kind of more connected. It’s raw, so I tend to get more nervous in that situation.
It means more to you?
They’re all very meaningful, but maybe I feel more exposed. I’m not protected by the big stage and the big production. It’s more immediate. On the technical side, I’m actually less worried about it than I used to be, because I’ve done so many shows now I can kind of handle it.
I’ve played a Caprices Festival where I wasn’t able to sync between the computer and the hardware. But I was totally fine because I was able to DJ it, and nobody noticed. When I was playing with KiNK, DJing a back-to-back set at a club, it was crazy actually. It was so hot, it was 50° and we were sweating so much that sweat was dripping onto my controller, and it just stopped working.
Oh no!
Yeah, but for some reason, in that kind of heat of the moment, you just go right, ‘okay, unplug that, move this and do that’, you get on with it. And you just go with what you’ve got.
Jeepers!
The technical side of things is less fearful now than it used to be for me. But definitely the existential side or the emotional side are very interlinked. And the smaller events are more nerve-racking than the really, really big ones because of the abstract nature of the crowd.
One of my favourite ever live sets that I saw was Alex Smoke, the Glaswegian, playing at Crawdaddy in Dublin back in 2006, it absolutely blew my mind. I have a recording of it and it’s still a belter. I also saw 2020 Soundsystem play live at Sónar in 2005 – a much bigger crowd – but still, the power of live music in an electronic setting is just sensational. When was the last time you were surprised and amazed by an artist that you saw perform live?
Haha. Well every time I see a live artist, I’m like, ‘wow, f**k I never thought of that’, or ‘that’s cool’. There’s this artist here in Melbourne called Honeysmack – he’s a good friend of mine who’s a live artist. He’s more like a punk, but he plays live techno. He always surprises me, the stuff he does, it’s amazing.
KiNK, the same, never ceases to amaze. Carl Cox, too, really does impress, he started playing on his own as a live techno artist only a few years ago, though he’s done lots of bits of live work over the years. You know I’ve worked with Carl quite a bit over the years.
I was trying to play that down actually, because so many of your interviews hone in on that relationship a bit too heavily. I really wanted to know more about you – but of course go ahead…
Thank you. So, what surprised me in his set was, I know every single routing and every single plug-in in his setup, and yet he still delivered something that I have no idea how he did it. I love when people do that. Like. ‘how the f**k did you get that sound so loud’!
Going back to what you’re saying, there’s something about live sets. Even if you’re not aware that the artist is playing live, there’s an energy about it that’s different than a DJ set. I’ve often had people coming up to me after and going, ‘what the f**k did I just experience, what was that?!’ and I’m like, ‘I was just playing live, and I was just kinda making it up as I go along’.
What they were feeling was the energy that’s emanating from it because there’s an element of risk. I think that’s the point. Octave One talk about this as well – they’re very much about reproducing things fairly faithfully. But no live musician ever reproduces something exactly off the record. And why should you? The whole point of playing live is to be in that moment and be in that context and deliver something within that environment.
Also, on the element of risk, I think the idea that I’m enjoying the set and I’m really into it, but things could just completely fall apart, pushes me further. Even if people are not aware of what I’m doing, even if they think I’m just DJing, they still pick up on this energy, something about it that’s different. That’s what I get really excited about, and that’s what’s so interesting about live.
Also I think, as we move more and more into the perfect world of AI reproduction of music, I think that this live side of it, this imperfection, and this rawness is going to be more sought after, perhaps.
Absolutely. I think live performances are definitely on the rise. So what skills do you think producers most underestimate when they’re transitioning from, DJing records into live performances? What would you say to up-and-coming live producers/DJs?
Oh God, I don’t know, because every time I look at some of these young live artists’ setups, f**k, I wish I was as good as them. I want to ask them, what are those skills that you’re using to deliver that amazing vibe?
I look at some of these incredible live artists like Yanamaste and Char, and a few of these younger ones that are coming up now, the FJAAK boys, Kerrie, the Irish live artist, she’s awesome. I look at them and I’m like, ‘I wish I could get my rig to sound like that’.
I think the thing about it is that with live, there are infinitely more possibilities, it’s obvious. I mean, of course, DJing is really creative, and I don’t want to play that down. It’s an incredible skill to be able to read a room, select the records and continue to keep the dancefloor alive.
Well, you can add another hundred possibilities to that as a live artist. The granularity becomes smaller – you’re thinking not in terms of 32 bars, you’re thinking in terms of what’s going to happen in the next bar. You’re thinking of ‘when should I drop the kick out’ and ‘should I change the pitch of it’ and ‘oh, that acid line is going too long, I’m going to change the note’. Thinking in much smaller increments as you go along.
As to what skill would I advise? Well, I was doing a little tutorial yesterday at a school and somebody asked a similar question. I said you just have to start, and find out what it is that you enjoy about it. You don’t have to jump into modular straight away, you can jump into just one unit, like a Digitakt or a drum machine, and start jamming with it.
I think in terms of the actual live performance, it’s important to think about how you deliver your sound, because you’re competing with DJs who’ve got tracks that are already mastered and sounding perfect.
As a live artist, you’re delivering a much more dynamic sound that is not mastered. So you’ve got to think about how you’ll deliver your sound and what kind of output you’re going to put out. Don’t rely on the front-of-house guy, deliver something that you’re happy with. I mean, there are so many factors – come to my masterclass in Ibiza in October to find out.
You’ve said in the past that simplicity is key and yet temptation pulls you towards complexity. So what practical rules do you now enforce to stop yourself from overbuilding a track?
This is such a good question. It’s an age-old struggle; it’s a never-ending struggle. I still, to this day, find myself overcomplicating things. Just before we started talking, I was sitting down, thinking ‘I’m actually going to unplug all this stuff and start again’. Keep it really simple in the live context – actually, less is more.
Another friend of mine said, ‘only play with one sound at a time’. You know, for 32 bars, or for a track, and then move on, don’t try and fit everything in all at once. Which is what I do.
I’m like, ‘oh I want this, oh f**k that would be great, let’s throw this in’, and then I’ve ended up coming back to a track, even when I’m producing it, and pulling out loads of stuff because it’s too maximalist. Simplicity is really important.
In a live set, I have to keep reminding myself that actually, even if I’m a little bit bored, because I’ve heard this stuff over and over, the person hearing it for the first time is not necessarily bored. So you can carry on with a groove or a vibe for longer than you realise – then when you bring something in, it’s special. I have to keep reminding myself of this.
I understand that you only have hearing in one ear, quite like several of my DJ and electronic music superfan friends, funnily enough. They all have really bad hearing in one ear, as opposed to the other. How do you think this has shaped your sense of rhythm, density and arrangement compared to stereo-focused producers?
Well do you know what, I don’t know, because I’ve never heard stereo, so I really have nothing to compare it to. I was born this way.
But you’re right, I know a lot of producers – some of my heroes – that are also deaf in one ear. And it’s funny, we don’t really talk about it that much.
I remember when I was first asked by Carl Cox to work with him in the studio I said, ‘listen, I have to tell you, I’m deaf in one ear, so I don’t know what stereo sounds like’. He’s like, ‘oh no, you’ll be grand.’
I was also talking with my friend Tobi Neumann – who I collaborated with last year and am actually working on an album with in May — and he said to me, ‘I really like your perspective on the bottom end, you kind of tend to make it all kind of weird and organic – I don’t know anybody else who does that’. I said, ‘really, that’s just because I’m trying to hear it!’.
Interesting.
It might also mean that I tend to overcomplicate things, then I have to pull things out. It’s just something I’m used to, so I don’t really have a comparison.
When I’m in the studio, mixing something, I use a really good piece of software called Flux MiRA, it gives me a visual of the stereo picture, and it really helps me a lot to kind of place the frequencies in the right space. It’s a beautiful visual, actually, it’s quite colourful too. When people ask me, ‘how do you get a great stereo mix?’, it’s because I look at the scope, I can’t hear it. I don’t know what it sounds like, but it looks nice.
I also really like density, I love, for example, My Bloody Valentine. I love the density, the wall of sound that they created with those beautiful records. Or deep dub techno, Chain Reaction and Maurizio, that stuff, it’s raw and deep, but it’s really dense.
I get so much pleasure from the density of stuff. I guess the reason I love techno is because it’s so focused on the bottom end, the bass, the kick drum and the bottom end. I really enjoy that.
So, you obviously have your hearing impairment, but you’ve also collaborated with artists with intellectual disabilities in the past, I believe. What did that project teach you about authorship and artistic value?
Jeez, that’s a good question. It was a project in Westport with such a lovely group of people – Western Care was part of it. My friend Grainne O’Reilly is a carer for this group and she asked me to come and work with them on a project.
They do an arts project with different artists every year. These people were quite severely disabled – none of them were able to speak in any real intelligible way – but we could connect in other ways. I felt that we were definitely creating something together.
I guess what I learned from them was that in a way they were just ‘being there’, you know, they didn’t care about the outcome of it.
There was this one girl who only speaks one word for everything, and she quite happily went up to the microphone and sang that one word over and over again. It was lovely.
Also, there was one guy who didn’t speak – he just had this little mischievous smile on his face. One moment he went up and just did something that sounded amazing, and then he looked at me out of the side of his eye and gave me almost a wink. Grainne said that they really got something out of just the experience of being able to work with sound. I feel very emotional when I talk about it
So, what did it all teach me? It taught me a lot about how people connect. I think the point, of course, was that art is therapeutic. I think that it does create meaning for people in any state of life, and that means it’s really important.
For me, it was incredibly heartwarming to be able to do it, and it was a real privilege, actually, to work with these people. I’d love to do it again.
What a wonderful experience. You do a fair amount of collaborations. How did you adapt your collaborative approach when working with musicians versus visual artists like Roy Gerritsen?
Well I don’t know if we adapt, I think it’s just more like an extension. I love Roy’s work so much, everything he’s done is just beautiful. I got him to work on Carl’s live shows as well, because he’s next level. So when we work on these island films, for example, I also collaborate with filmmakers to shoot these projects. I’ve been working with a team called Point Break – Hannah and Jake – they’re amazing younger people who do amazing stuff.
When we collaborate, I just say, look, ‘you’re the filmmaker, you’re the artist on that side in that field. I’m just here standing twiddling knobs, but you’re the one making the film’. It’s my idea, it’s my music, but you’re actually the filmmakers. You’ve got to find the shot. I can’t direct you because I’m busy trying to make the music.
When we film and they create beautiful work, they edit accordingly. I send them a piece of music and they edit it to the music, and then we send it to Roy, and I just say, right, do what you think is going to work as an animator in this context. And he does, every time, because it’s great. We’ve done that for quite a few years with the live stuff, and with the shows he’s done incredible animation and beautiful work.
It’s the same again when I collaborate musically. Last year, and on the record we’re about to release with a number of different people, sometimes it’s remote. For example, I did a collaboration with Josh Wink – we’re great friends, but we did the collaboration remotely. I sent him an idea and some vocals. We also collaborated with an interesting, I would say beat poet, called Tony Morris, who is a bit of a recent Instagram sensation. He’s a septuagenarian man who recently discovered Instagram and started releasing these really weird electronic-backed little vignettes and pieces of poetry.
Would you ever get Carl Cox or Josh Wink over onto one of these islands to produce some live techno for you?
I would love to, it would be great, but would they come? Maybe Josh might? I don’t know, I think Carl would be like, ‘where’s the racing track, where’s the cars?’
Yeah Carl would be like, ‘bring me to Monaco, that’s my kind of island’, haha. Now, not everything you make is pure raw organic or fresh – you’ve spoken openly about copying as a creative tool. Can you name a recent piece you consciously tried to emulate and how it transformed into something recognisably yours?
Everything I do, I’m trying to copy something else. Like a piece that’s been released?
Maybe recently?
Well I’m constantly trying to make a really great dub techno track. I’m always trying to make something of that nature, and it never comes out the way I want it to. I did this track with Diego Navaz in Ecuador, in Quito, and really the idea was to try and make a really minimal dub techno track. We came out with something completely different, with this kind of weird Afro vibe, but also really minimal, sort of experimental techno.
So, it never comes out the way I want it, but oftentimes it’s more interesting. So I’ve come to realise that when I try to copy something, I’m actually totally unable to really reproduce that thing, whatever that thing is, so I don’t need to worry about it.
It’ll never come out sounding like the thing that I was trying to copy, but it may be inspiring and might lead me down this path to finding something else that sounds interesting or more fun or deep, or groovy.
Have you got any ideas of what deep and groovy stuff you’re going to bring to Éalú le Grá, just to wrap up nicely here?
Ahhh not at all, what are you talking about? It depends on how many pints of Guinness I have before.
It’s an improvisation. I never prepare a set for a specific context. I have, you know, a set of things that I’ve prepared that are in the arsenal, but I never go, well, I’m going to start like this, I’m going to end with this, this is going to happen in the middle, because I’m not that organised, first of all. Secondly, I’m really lazy to do that kind of work. Jesus, that’s too much work for me
You played in the dark last year, but yet you’ve got all these amazing visuals in your arsenal – would you not think of bringing those into play?
No, I actually have come to realise that I’m very tired of the visual side of it. I just want the sound to be the thing. That’s not disparaging the work we’ve done in the past, or any of those incredible audiovisual projects. It’s mind-blowing and amazing, but it’s a different thing.
I’ve come to realise that what I love in that context, whether at Éalú le Grá or in a club or on a dancefloor that’s pumping, is that the best thing to do is turn off the freaking lights and get into the music. Don’t get distracted by the television behind the artist.
Are you staying in Ireland for long, or is it a fleeting visit?
I’ll be staying for the month. I’m going to go home, I’ve got to spend time with family, especially the mammy.
Yes, you can’t be missing your Irish mammy, especially a Mayo woman, I know what they’re like.
Exactly, haha.
Éalú Le Grá takes place at Ballinderry Park, Galway from 29 June to 1 July – more information and tickets can be found here. Words by Emer O’Connor.
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