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Oxegen.ie
Antoinette Curtin talks to Autamata
fulcrum Ken McHugh about the early days with Jivin' Ivan, setting out on his
own, the idea of gig as spectacle and playing the the Temple Bar Music
Centre on November 4th...
A cursory glance at contemporary band culture reveals something of an
over-abundance of retrophilia. And as much as I love them, as much as I find
myself seduced by their long-locked glamour, listening to such music can at
times feel suspiciously akin to a guilty pleasure.
A guitar teacher once told me that most new music is not new at all, merely
more hip-ly packaged, and present evidence, whether it is gleaned from the
indebted brilliance of The Killers and The Libertines, or from the novelty
naffness of the Scissors Sisters, undoubtedly bears this out.
From such a scene Autamata clearly stands apart. It may seem absurd to even
measure them against such a yardstick - they are patently not a 'guitar
band' - and yet this acknowledgement helps define what Autamata may in fact
be. To begin with, the moniker refers primarily to Ken McHugh, the founder
and creative fulcrum of the project, and a man whose childhood was enviably
steeped in music.
"The local national school used to have a class where everyone had to learn
an instrument. My family in particular fell really heavily into it, so from
an early age we started getting on stage. Then it just built up over the
years until every break, Halloween, Christmas, we'd be booked out to play.
It was great! I didn't start playing guitar until I was about fourteen. I
had this teacher called Jivin' Ivan - he was a one man band guy. Ivan
introduced me to the blues and all this guitar music. It was only then when
I came to Dublin that I really discovered a lot of different types of
music."
That move not only exposed Ken to more disparate musical forms, but saw his
enrolment in a sound engineering course which lead to the conception of
Autamata: "I did a year of electronic engineering at Kevin St, but I just
wasn't into it, so I did a sound engineering course. From there it kind of
took off. I was always writing music, but I wasn't going 'I want to release
all these albums.' I suppose sound engineering was a way of learning the
trade of how to make records."
Following the course Ken worked in studios in a variety of production roles,
and there is a sense that as well as providing a day job this period served
as an apprenticeship where he could continue to develop his creative
impulses. "I worked with loads of different people helping them make
records. Then I got a bit tired of producing for other people, and I said
'Right, let's just focus some time and not work with anyone else for a
while', although I still had to, just to make a few quid."
This meant working hard. "In the evenings I was working on my own stuff. So
that's kind of how Autamata started. It was always there, but it came to a
point where I finished off ten tracks and what I used to do was press up
about a hundred copies and give them out to my friends. With this one
everyone was going, 'You have to do something with it' so I decided why not.
That was two years ago now."
During this interval Autamata metamorphosed into a fully functioning live
and recording outfit. Despite an initial lack of concern for the performance
dimension, Ken now sees it as central to the development of Autamata.
"When I finished the album first I hadn't even planned to play it live. I
never wrote it that way. But a few months after it came out people started
saying they wanted to hear it live. So I thought I could do it two ways. I
could either go with laptops - which is just boring - or I could do it
right. So I set up a five-piece band around it and we re-worked a lot of the
songs and then decided to bring in visuals. We did our first gig a year and
a half ago. I've only done six or seven since, but we'll be touring a lot
more than that in the future. I've just been taking baby steps with the live
thing. It's really come on though. It's really starting to work now."
This visual element is vital to Autamata now, as will be clear when they
take to the stage of the Temple Bar Music Centre on November 4th. "We've a
company set up now as Autamata Visuals. The whole future goes very much hand
in hand with that. With every new track that I'm writing I'll sit down with
a couple of good friends of mine, Blackburst, and chat with them about how
we want to visually interpret the track."
This idea of gig as spectacle also represents a 'value for money' facet Ken
is keen to imbue their ventures with. Both ideals are evident in plans
currently being devised for the springtime release of follow-up album, Short
Stories.
"There's a whole album ready to go. I could literally release it in the
morning, but I've decided not to. There are twenty songs already and most of
them are more or less finished, so I've decided to move to the country for a
while after the gigs [Galway, Roisin Dubh, November 6th; Cork, Cyprus
Avenue, November 13th] and I'm going to write another twenty tracks and pick
the best ten. It's a bit of a tall order, but I'm trying to write an album
that's all killer, no filler, without sounding cheesy."
Far from being a cliché, such aspirations are refreshing when compared to
the somewhat shoddy attitude many acts betray towards an album as an entity.
Even relatively admirable new releases, such as the latest Libertines
offering, are flawed by their sporadic intensity; the worth of the whole is
devalued by patches of forgettable flimsiness.
Ken appears to have found a method of reconciling his desire to produce an
album of intrinsic, solid consistency, and the need to provide value for the
fan, by the use of a multi-format release for Short Stories.
"I plan to have ten tracks on a normal CD, but there will be a version that
includes an extra DVD. You put on the DVD and the ten tracks have the audio
visuals, but also a list of another ten tracks you can listen to in your own
time. When you present an album you can only ask a listener to sit down for
a certain length of time. And everyone's complaining about the price of CDs
and they're right. If you give more to people they will easily pay the extra
fiver."
Such pragmatic generosity is already in evidence on
autamatamusic.com where
an abundance of material is on offer, without cost, and is epitomised in the
free, internet only release of 'Out of Time' on November 4th. The graphic
element of Autamata's material is not confined to supplementary trappings,
but is embodied at the core of the tracks themselves. A soundtrack quality
is one feature Autamata listeners have readily responded to, and is perhaps
linked to the fact that the album began life as an instrumental endeavour.
As a result the music of My Sanctuary speaks for itself, and often, it
speaks loudest. It's an album that revels in its wilful resistance to
categorisation, a conscious decision on behalf of Ken.
"I was quite conscious that it was eclectic and I wanted it to be that way.
A lot of artists bring out albums and they have to sound one way and then
they can't change or move away from that sound. So I thought, let's bring
out the album this way so then I can do anything I want as the audience is
aware it will be eclectic."
Not only is the album diverse, it is elegant in its magpie tendencies. Songs
such as Jive County, Fragments, Jellyman, Out of This, and Postscript all
offer distinctly different pleasures, while achieving a similar standard of
quality. Like a prism, the album turns, revealing disparate depths. 'Out of
This' is one highpoint among many.
"In the new mix I've brought in real drums and violins and it is
specifically a radio mix. I did it in a way to give the song a chance. I
just thought there's a beautiful song there so let's change the production a
bit because the song was written around the production at the time."
Whatever the reasons, it works, and the November 4th edition may be quite
unlike anything you have heard before, the new simplicity lending it a
greater resonance than most singles can hope to aspire to. But all that's
just words. Go to the website and listen to the song for yourself; it is its
own most eloquent spokesperson.
The Autamata show comes to the Temple Bar Music Centre on November 4th. And
we have two pairs of tickets to give away in our latest oxygen gigs comp.
Click here to enter. You can also catch them in Galway at the Róisín Dubh on
November 6th, and in Cork at Cyprus Avenue, on November 13th.
Hot Press - November
1 2002
"Autamata For The People"
Producer and film-scorer Ken McHugh
unveils his debut album
Tales From Inside A Bubble was to be
the original title of Autamata’s debut album My Sanctuary. “I wanted to
convey the fact that I wasn’t writing music for a scene, or music to be put
in any one category,” says Dubliner Ken McHugh of his first solo project.
“Eventually I felt that My Sanctuary conveyed the same message in fewer
words.”
The message is an interesting and
unusual one. In a musical climate where recapitulation is often favoured
over originality, Autamata’s album is astonishingly eclectic. In the
broadest sense it is an electronic record, but one listen to the five tracks
from the Amnesiac-influenced opener ‘Fragments’ to the orchestral sweep of
‘Little Green Men’, is enough to give any pigeonholer a sleepless night.
“I was definitely conscious of the
fact that it has lots of different styles,” concedes McHugh. “I love the
freedom of being able to write whatever I want, but sometimes I have to
control myself. It didn’t take long to record [the album], but in the mixing
stage it took a while to get the whole thing to flow. From the outset I
wanted My Sanctuary to be a varied collection so that in future people are
aware of what I can do. So there is some method to the madness.”
Naturally, it takes technical
expertise as well as creative nous for such a multidisciplinary project to
succeed. This McHugh has in spades; over the many years of what he calls his
‘apprenticeship’ in music, he has honed his skills as a producer and
film-scorer, working with Creative Controle, The Plague Monkeys, Naimee
Coleman and David Kitt.
My Sanctuary benefits greatly from the
excellent vocal talents of Carol Keogh and Cathy Davy, Autamata’s two chief
collaborators. McHugh met both musicians through his production work, and
feels that “they ‘re quite simply two of the best singers in the country.”
Remarkably, every track on the album was written as an instrumental, even
those which Keogh and Davy have made their own with distinctive vocal
performances.
An affable pragmatist, McHugh is aware
that the public will need plenty of time to digest a musical meal as complex
as My Sanctuary. He has delayed the release of a single until January next
year, and, his next task is to get a live act together. “It’s always a
challenge to make a good live show out of electronically-originated music,”
he says. “But I really think we can do it.” He has already enlisted a
drummer, and will start gigging as soon as a full band has been formed.
Outside of Autamata, McHugh continues
his ‘behind-the-scenes’ work, having recently worked on the soundtrack to
Conor McPherson’s new film The Actors, which stars Michael Caine and Dylan
Moran. He is also in negotiations with The Beta Band about producing their
next album.
Sam Healy
Hot Press - November
19 2002
This fortnight: a hot seat, a spot
light, a tape recorder and Autamata
What's your guitar/drum
kit/bass/piano/whatever (make & model)?
Just bought a new Fender Mustang guitar today. Mmmmm... nice...and it looks
cool too. I might start wearing it to the pub.
Where did you buy it?
Soundgear (Portobello).
What was your first instrument
(make & model)?
A concert flute - handmade by Santa Claus (actually some fella in Clare,
apparently).
If you had an unlimited budget,
what would you buy?
Microphone Neuman U47 vintage
Amp Vox AC30 Vintage
Guitar A handmade Martin
Piano Steinway grand piano
Studio device I have all the toys I need.
Who and what song did you play air
guitar to as a kid?
Too many to mention. I was caught playing air guitar to Mundy's 'Mayday' the
other day though.
What instruments can you knock a
tune out of (however bad it may be)?
Guitar, bass, keyboards, low whistle, bodhran.
What's your favourite studio effect
and why?
Currently, tape delay (instant dreamyness).
Did you ever get
piano/any-other-instrument lessons when you were a kid and do you have any
fond memories of them?
Piano from an old hag. If I played a wrong note, she'd push my fingers in to
the keys and hold them down until I screamed with pain. Unfortunately, this
turned me off finishing my grades.
What's the most rock n roll thing
you've ever done to an instrument?
Break a guitar in half at one of my old school band gigs in the gym. It was
a bad idea though as I had to work loads of terrible jobs to buy a new
one.The chicks loved it all the same.
What's your favourite Irish musical
instrument shop and why?
Charlie Byrnes. They know their shit and have lots of weird things.
What's your favourite place to
record and why?
In my own studio Area 51 in Dublin. Its 'my sanctuary', y'know?
Autamata's debut album, MY
SANCTUARY, is out now on Left Hand Records. |
