Reviews

Hot Press - Oxegen 2004 - June 30 2004

"Tychonaut – Who they, we all wondered. The answer is surprisingly simple yet still surprising. The Tycho Brahe are no more, long live Tychonaut. Name aside, the band’s world is still intact – Carol Keogh’s stunning vocals taking you on a musical journey that reaches places that few others could even contemplate.

Look out for: bemused faces and the penny dropping."

RTÉ ACE - December 5 2003

The Tycho Brahe - Love Life
Konstantin Records - 2003 - 76 minutes

Surprising and delighting many upon its release last year, The Tycho Brahe's debut album 'This Is' found few detractors. At a push, the most frustrating aspect of the album was its relatively short running time, a criticism that cannot be levelled at 'Love Life'.

Apparently the first ever studio recorded double album by an Irish band, 'Love Life' certainly does not aim low. The Tycho Brahe seem to relish the opportunity to tear into as many styles and weird noises as they can. There are a few slip-ups along the way mind you, but overall they come away with an aggregate victory over the two legs of the album.

The music laid down by Diarmuid MacDiarmada and Donal O'Mahony is endlessly inventive, and provides a suitably complex backing to one of the most listenable voices in music. Carol Keogh's voice runs through the fabric of this record, displaying the same pop sensibilities from her days with the Plague Monkeys, but here interwoven with an ever-growing array of instruments and sounds that sets this band apart from their Irish contemporaries. 

It's possible to sing along to tracks such as 'Steel Wheels' or 'Golden Wedding', yet these sit side by side with long instrumentals or strange interludes like 'The Sun King'. The net is cast so wide that something here must catch your attention.

On occasion, particularly on the second disc, there are tracks that are way off where the mark should be, but with a sound this recklessly experimental it's hard to say which avenues shouldn't be explored. Above all else, the Tycho Brahe's music has the element of surprise, and it is hard to place a value on that.

Ray Donoghue, 4/5

Hot Press - September 17 2003

The Tycho Brahe
Love Life
(Konstantin Records)

“Why do we automatically sink to fighting the uncontrollable things/When we could just pack up our belongings and go?”

That’s the first question The Tycho Brahe put to the jury on ‘Steel Wheels’, the breezily propulsive opening tune on their second album, and while this writer has no answer, I do have another query: “Why is it we feel compelled to chase only the ones who run away?” The vile Viconte de Valmont purred in Dangerous Liaisons, to which arch ice-bitch the Marquise de Merteuil snapped back “Immaturity.” When it comes to pop’s groaning banquet, we all turn into little Neros demanding finer wines and shinier baubles.

A couple of years ago I interviewed Carol Keogh and listened intently to what she had to say about keeping things small and beautiful, stressing music over personality. I rubbed my chin and reviewed the tape and scarcely agreed with a word she said. But… a fundamental difference in doctrines doesn’t preclude a reconciliation with the music. I like The Tycho Brahe a lot, plus, putting out a double album on no budget is ostentatious to the point of Wildean.

But is it vanity publishing?

No. Love Life is perfectly realised within its own parameters. The Tycho Brahe, more than any band operating out of this country, sound like no one so much as themselves. Obvious reference points are damn near impossible – I might resort to something like “mid-period Kate Bush fronting some lost 4AD band”, with the caveat that it be that label’s Les Mysteres des Voix Bulgares as much as This Mortal Coil.

Their sound is polyphonic but also polyrhythmic; the pizzicato pluckings of ‘Imprint’ combine with scattershot snare drum and high drama strings to make a sound that is genuinely cinematic as opposed to simply aping treasured film scores.

I do have problems with some aspects of the record though. Carol Keogh’s words would scan like arthouse hand-wringing if her voice, somewhere between north of England folk chanteuse and indie cipher, didn’t render them synaesthetic. She’s more in love with her ideas than the desire to communicate them, so when a line like “We have only love, only love/Hold onto it”, cuts through the mix you have to savour the raw emotion invested in it. Moments like these strike the partial listener in a way that the more esoteric stuff can’t.

If Carol Keogh ever quits music, her recitation of ‘The Sun King’ should score her a regular gig on children’s television Storytime slots – provided the little tykes are whacked out on ’shrooms.

Peter Murphy
Rating: 7½ / 10

Dub Links - November 21 2003

Tycho Brahe, Dublin indie band, play a late night gig at the Olympia on the 21st of November. The band have just released their second album, played a festival on the continent and worked with Today FM's Donal Dineen providing music for one of his movies. Tycho Brahe is finishing an eventful year with a concert in the Olympia.

The musical talents of Carol Keogh and Donal O' Mahony were first unleashed on the Dublin music scene with The Plague Monkeys. The band had a very inventive and distinctive sound with Keogh's brittle and whispered vocals backed by O' Mahony shimmering, minimal guitar playing.

The band released two albums Surface Tension and The Sunburn Index and developed an audience of music fans who wanted something more adventurous and subtle than what the Irish music scene had to offer at the time. But the band were frustrated that they did not make more of an impact in Ireland and abroad and subsequently broke up. 

After a break of a year or two from music, Keogh and O' Mahony found themselves making music together again. They decided to involve Diarmuid Mac Diarmada, the multi-instrumentalist from The Jimmy Cake. The three band members had played together in a previous incarnation called The Low Babies. They decided to christen their new band Tycho Brahe, after a famous Danish astronomer from the 16th century.

Their debut album released in 2002, This Is showed a more musically confident band than The Plague Monkeys. The band blended sonic experimentation and complex music ideas with Keogh's expert vocals and eclectic lyrics.The album was well received at home and abroad with the B.B.C. playing “Your House from Mine” and John Peel featuring the album on his show.

During the summer the band released their follow-up album Love Life. The band has enough songs for one album but songs kept coming and the band saw two different styles of songs emerging and decided to make a double album with the individual titles Love and Life. This concert in the Olympia will top of a busy year for Tycho Brahe and galvanise their growing popularity.

Time : 11pm
Tickets : €15

Rubyworks - "This Is" - July 16 2004

Out in the UK, Sept 20th.

Tychonaut are that rare thing, a truly equal musical partnership. The band possesses three exceptionally talented collaborators - each with their own quite specific musical predilections and abilities - "This is" was recorded by writers/producers/multi-instrumentalists Donal O'Mahony and Diarmuid Mac Diarmada, who with this album confirm their growing reputation as the most musically literate and endlessly inventive songwriter/producers in Ireland.

Their 7" single is available to buy from Sept 13th.

PRESS
UK Release Date: Sept 20th

XFM London - "... the best new Irish band in years."

bbc.co.uk - "A self assured, beautiful and understated album.'

RTÉ.ie - 'It's an album that's both playful and serious and has the intimacy big bands waste even bigger cheques trying to capture. Definitely one to listen to and see stars."

Hot Press - It's a joy to hear this miniature cast of local luminaries weave such a wonderful web of avant-pop. The performances are delicate yet assuringly confident and brilliantly produced, mixed and mastered by O'Mahony and MacDiarmada. Carol's voice is the crowning ace in a strong pack.

Irish Times - "The debut album is languidly adrift in a sea of its own making' irish independent - 'Keoghs singing is often sublime and there are plenty of delightful, intricate moments here."

Hot Press - September 17 2003

The Tycho Brahe
Lucky The Bee
(Konstantin Records)

Woah – this threw us a curve. ‘Lucky The Bee’ is up-beat, compact, economic and (whisper it) catchy, with Carol Keogh wrapping her comely tonsils and artful words around the Tycho’s poppiest tune, embellished with quite delightful keyboard textures and white funk lite guitar. If the TB keep moving in this direction, they’re gonna end up the victims of daytime radio play.

Hannah Hamilton

claus.com - October 2003

A review of their album 'Love Life'

"So much for the Tycho Brahe. With their album - 'Love Life' - they manage to produce one of the best albums to come from the Irish music scene this year and then they ruin the good work by spawning possibly the worst. Frankly, the Tycho Brahe took it a bridge (or maybe in this case a middle eight) too far. Their new collection, the cleverly packaged and immaculately produced 'Love Life' is a double, a loosely thematic double too, with one CD dedicated to Love and the second to Life. It’s an aural equivalent of the fabled 'Game of Two Halves' blessed and cursed in equal part with very marked peaks and troughs."  Read the review

2FM.ie - My Sanctuary
Lefthand/ RMG - 2002 - 54 minutes

Autamata is the nom-de-plume of one Ken McHugh, producer, multi-instrumentalist and the man behind his own label, Lefthand Records. 'My Sanctuary' is the result of a year's work drawing on a diverse range of influences. McHugh wears his production credentials on his sleeve and (mostly) opts for a less-is-more feel. He juggles quiet and loud, and inverts the notion of instrumentation by using the usually skeletal click tracks as primary beats.

Where sparse electronica risks falling into the clinical category, it is usually rescued by the undulating (and lovely) vocals of Carol Keogh ('Out of This') or Cathy Davey (Let's Normalise'). However 'Registered User' takes a wrong turn and ends up as a dull journey through bleepy robotics. Autamata try to cover a lot of musical terrain and the result is rather uneven.

'Little Green Man' begins as an aimless synthesiser plod before turning into an updated John Ford film score. 'Jive County' - one of the best tracks - is an airy mix of acoustic and electronic sounds. This up and down-ness is most noticeable in the constant interjection of sounds or samples at oddly-timed intervals. Autamata runs towards the finish line that Fourtet has already crossed, but the latter in a more engaging way.

McHugh produced David Kitt's 'Big Romance' and understandably, there is much overlap in production sounds and sequences. While Kitt's younger brother singing on 'Another Love Song' was something of a first, McHugh's nephew sounds like an unsuspecting vehicle for pretension on 'To Be A Robot'.

This is a very worthy, if somewhat patchy effort that has some beautiful moments. Autamata's real potential is apparent, but it's a little thinly spread on 'My Sanctuary'.

Sinéad Gleeson, 2/5

RTÉ ACE - October 10 2002

The Tycho Brahe - This Is The Tycho Brahe
Konstantin - 2002 - 45 minutes

These days it's not often you'll lament an album for being too short, but that's a sigh you'll breathe time and time again with this one.

The name chosen by former Plague Monkeys duo Carol Keogh and Donal O'Mahony and Jimmy Cake man Diarmuid Mac Diarmada for their debut album – that of a Danish astronomer - is wilfully obscure, the tracks on it are anything but.

While Keogh's vocals are unmistakable there's a level of fooling around here which was never part of the Plague Monkeys. It's an album that's both playful ('Hooga Chakka' 'Listless') and serious ('Your House From Mine', 'Unplanned') and has the intimacy big bands waste even bigger cheques trying to capture. There's no set sound or pieces and you get the feeling that this band can steer itself any way and with anyone its trio so desire.

Definitely one to listen to and see stars.

Harry Guerin, 4/5

BBC.co.uk - An Orang-Utang Howling For Egg

Various Artists
An Orang-Utang Howling For Egg
(Goppa)

This collection of surrealist gems from Irish label Goppa is a reminder of how much genuinely strange and lovely music there is around, and how much of it can still tickle the most jaded of ears.

Compiled by label boss Diarmuid MacDiarmada, the album ranges from offbeam pop to unsettling ambient soundscape to hysterical jazz/punk thrash, but still there seems to be some kind of thread holding it all together. It opens with the wide-eyed, swooningly lovely "Childless' by Dublin's The Tycho Brahe (of whom Mr MacDiarmada's a member). On the strength of this it's now my life's mission to obtain their entire back catalogue (there's not much of it, by the way). If Jane Siberry had joined Pram, it might sound like something like this, but that's a glib comparison that doesn't really do them justice. Gorgeous.

"Childless" reminded me of the music of Daniel Figgis, whose sublime Skipper slipped quietly under the radar in the early 90s, taking its fragile electracoustic sea-shanties with it. And sure enough, he provides the next track, the all too short "Free"; a delicious melange of gently pulsing chords wreathed in curling wisps of electric guitar.

More abstract delights are offered by King Camera (Diarmuid again, this time meeting with Volcano The Bear), whose psychedelic folk cutups sound like the Incredible String Band and the Red Crayola remixed by Pierre Henry. Good clean fun, as is the electroacoustic sound painting of Artificial Memory Trace. Here a strange narrative of muffled clangs and chimes imagines a fly's ear view of a trip through a faulty central heating system.

PKD's juxtaposition of cut up percussives, feedback and primitive electronic thump is less convincing, though Jimmy Eat Cake's Pauline Oliveros meets AMM workout "Perfect Smoke" lives up to its description on the press release as Gyorgy Ligeti played on a slave ship".

Scarier pleasures emerge with Nurse with Wound's murky "Die Flip or Go To India", which is a genuinely chilly affair featuring the voice of David Tibet, sometimes mutated into unearthly groans or abstract splashes over deep rumbles and ghostly drones. Not to be listened to just before bedtime, take it from me.

Just as scary are Melanie Finch and sometime David Tibet associate Araanos, whose odd, slightly deranged songs collide with jazz, folk and improvisation in unpredictable (and in Finch's case, potentially dangerous) ways. Belinda Quirke's distant, dirge-like "Chestnut" doesn't come off too well in this company, but nine out of ten's not bad for any compilation. Unreservedly recommended.

Reviewer: Peter Marsh

BBC.co.uk - This Is

This is is the debut, self produced album of Dublin Trio, the Tycho Brahe. Accomplished and intimate, lo-fi and warm, this is an album that is far too short.

All the tracks are very organic, with beautiful, poetic lyrics. There's a relaxed feel about everything; throughout the strings are played without vibrato, everything is pared down; sounds are used for their warmth, daubed onto a freeform canvas, and everything's given room to breathe.

The album starts with "Sailing at Half Mast" which has a lilting rhythm underpinning it throughout with the words...

'If I'm half what I should be,
Still more than I was before,
And if I'm more than I could be,
Still half what we were...'

Former Plague Monkey Carol Keogh's distinctive voice uses her immaculate poetry to take snapshots of life, holding onto sentiments that jigsaw into an entire song.

For example, Listless: "In a plane full of people, who are listlessly eating and wordlessly singing, to the world of the working. And full-on rush hour traffic welcome home".

The busy chaos is reflected in the tempo and distorted drums, and in Carol not being able to get her words out for laughing. But finally, through the blasts of strings and saxophone, it feels as though all the humans and machinery have gone to bed, leaving only the saxophones to wash back and forth, like the incoming tide,

The strings that begin "Your house from mine" are beautiful and real. You can hear the slow vibrato and the coarseness of open strings - and then the best song, for me, begins.

The line 'Bloody lows, bloody highs' can get stuck in your head for hours, days. The Tycho Brahe take a sentiment and build it into something else through repetition. The core of the song is that line, and 'I need to see your house from mine'. Both represent an unsettlement, and perhaps loneliness that can be cured by knowledge of another. This gives the song a simultaneous air of sadness and euphoria.

The Tycho Brahe are also confident enough to leave us with a couple of whimsical jams like "Emily is going"; a little finger picking with the occasional piano plink, in accompaniment to the sound of children playing. Likewise, "Tycho Brahe" ends with a car alarm in the background.

The is a self assured, beautiful and understated album. I only hope that their success is huge but doesn't stop them from making such fantastic music in the future.

Lucy Davies

thumped.com - June 3 2003

It's gorgeous, this. Home recorded super smart indie-pop, manned by 2 boys and steered into heart warming, soul stirring territory by Carol Keogh, a lady blessed with some utterly sublime vocal chords. Sublime seems an apt word to spread across this whole release actually, the attention to detail and the quality of sound is superbly intricate throughout, spindly guitars weave patterns around gently pressing drum machine patterns, live strings are meshed with splashes of gorgeous mellotron, and that voice lends a huge dollop of world weary heartache to the whole puzzle.

Opener Halfmast declares that 'Part of me was a sea shanty' and 'I'm as empty as pockets' before settling into an utterly intoxicating coda of sound, and the feeling that you're listening to something a little special doesn't let up til you get to the closing Now Here. References to the likes of The Notwist and Pinback can be sloppily bandied about but the longer this record plays out the cheaper such comparisons seem to become. A superb first offering.

Hot Press Magazine - August 8 2002

Three Times Lucky
Ex-Plague Monkeys Donal O'Mahony and Carol Keogh, and Jimmy Cake multi-instrumentalist Diarmuid Mac Diarmada, form new power trio The Tycho Brahe.

Carol Keogh and Donal O'Mahony demonstrate that there's life after The Plague Monkeys with The Tycho Brahe, a three-piece outfit which also features David Kitt and Jimmy Cake man Diarmuid Mac Diarmada.

Fresh from working on Up The Country - a multimedia project with Donal Dineen that featured last month at the Galway Arts Festival - the not-at-all-workshy Dubliners have already released their debut album. This Is The Tycho Brahe is available from both Road and Tower Records, as well as from their own website.

Hot Press Magazine - September 9 2002

The Tycho Brahe
This Is The Tycho Brahe
(Konstantin Records)

I love the gutsy assertiveness of a “This Is...” title. Face it, it’s a damn sight better than the boring old “Introducing...” tag for a debut album, and far more preferable to the common cop out of going eponymous.

The Tycho Brahe are the latest Dublin ensemble of marvellous mavericks, who number former Plague Monkeys Donal O’Mahony and Carol Keogh in their ranks alongside the noted multi-instrumentalist in David Kitt’s band, Diarmuid MacDiarmada. Daniel Figgis and our own Kim Porcelli also contribute some “processed” harmonium and cello respectively – so perhaps that should read Kim Porcellist! (Kaboum! Sorry Kim.)

It’s a joy to hear this miniature cast of local luminaries weave such a wonderful web of avant-pop. The performances are delicate yet assuringly confident and brilliantly produced, mixed and mastered by O’Mahony and MacDiarmada. Carol’s voice is the crowning ace in a strong pack. ‘Your House From Mine’ reminds me of Kristen Hersh, not so much in style but for its full-bodied, unmistakable distinctiveness.

The lyrical standard is also impressively high (eg, “The history of love has not been written/Just the history of its thieves/That is history’s brief” – ‘Tycho Brahe’) and the packaging and cover art are suitably elegant and minimally ornate.

I’d imagine the Danish astronomer from whom they lift their name is smiling down from the heavens approvingly.

Eamon Sweeney
Rating: 9/12

Hot Press Magazine - July 30 2002

Is This It? Yes!
Listen to three exclusive tracks from This Is, debut album from Dublin band The Tycho Brahe.

Before Donal O'Mahony and Carol Keogh were in now-defunct No Disco favourites The Plague Monkeys, and before multi-instrumentalist Diarmuid Mac Diarmada was in The Jimmy Cake and the David Kitt band, the three had a wee musical project called The Low Babies. Then, loads of things happened. Now, older, wiser and all musically accomplished in their own rights, the three are together again, this time as brand-spanking-new group The Tycho Brahe.

Based in their collective hometown of Dublin and named for the mathematician infamous for having a metal nose (no we don't think it's necessarily musically relevant since you ask), their debut album This Is, lovingly home-recorded entirely in Donal's flat, is characterised more than anything by its diversity: there's everything from loud city-noise post-hip-hop to electronic string-laden sea songs to Bacharach-inspired swingies with eh, weird vocals that sound like monkeys. Neat!

This Is: well, see what you think it is yourself... by listening to three exclusive tracks, below:

Listless regular quality high quality

Halfmast regular quality high quality

Hoogachaka regular quality high quality

To find out more, watch a video or buy a copy of This Is, go to www.thetychobrahe.com

Hot Press Magazine - July 17 2002

Sound And Vision
Donal Dineen launches his latest exhibition at the Galway Arts Festival this month. as we've come to expect from the DJ, TV presenter, filmmaker and photographer, music plays a big part in the new work.

Today FM DJ/photographer/filmmaker Donal Dineen continues his adventures in audio-visual symbiosis at the forthcoming Galway Arts Festival with an event entitled Up The Country, a combination of live music and images that will take place on the afternoon of Sunday, July 21 in the Town Hall Theatre. 

The music comes from three sources: Scottish singer-songwriter James Yorkston, plus Irish acts The Tycho Brahe and The Uptown Racket Club, while the visuals are the result of some six months of hunter-gathering by Dineen.

“Effectively it’s just going to be scenery for a music show,” Dineen explains. “The Tycho Brahe is (former Plague Monkeys) Carol Keogh and Donal O’ Mahony’s new project along with Diarmuid Mac Diarmada, and the Uptown Racket Club is Donnacha Costello, David Donahue, Stephen Quinn and John Dermody, very much guitar based. With both of those acts it was basically a case of, having heard demos, I just thought this was music I could really work with – there’s lots of space to play around with and visualise. They’ll be playing along to pictures that I’m going to put on the big screen. The Uptown Racket Club will be matching it pretty closely, but with The Tycho Brahe it is improvised, there’s no script as such.”

Up The Country is essentially the third in a trilogy of Arts Festival exhibitions by Dineen, the first two having taken place as far back as 1993/4.

“I was meant to go back in 1995 to finish the third part,” he explains, “but I never got to do that, so it’s unfinished business in a way. The country theme really is about the fact that the chance to take photographs or do some filming is usually associated with the chance to leave the city, finding space to do something. Very often the camera is an excuse to go somewhere, it encourages you to observe the world, and when you do that you probably understand it a bit better. I think the reason why I want to keep taking pictures is it somehow makes sense of the things around you. And the fact that music is so involved in that process means it’s natural enough to align the two in a show. It’s an area that I feel very comfortable in, and in this case I’ve found that the music has been particularly inspiring.”

Peter Murphy

The Lobby Bar profile - January 2003

What do you get when you combine the startling intelligence and pop sensibility of the former Plague Monkeys with the wayward eclecticism of the nation's best-known multi-instrumentalist? You get This Is, the tuneful, intelligent, high-spirited, staggeringly unpredictable debut from Dublin three-piece The Tycho Brahe. The Tycho Brahe are Donal O Mahony, Carol Keogh (The Plague Monkeys) and Diarmuid Mac Diarmada (David Kitt, The Jimmy Cake). What looks on paper like the latest Dublin supergroup, however, is in fact a continuation of a musical conversation begun years ago, when the three first worked together as The Low Babies in 1995. It was when Diarmuid moved to Cork that the remaining pair formed the critically revered The Plague Monkeys. They released two albums over three years (Surface Tension and The Sunburn Index) as well as the score and soundtrack for Conor MacPherson's film Saltwater.

Meanwhile, Diarmuid went on to plaudits bringing his singular sensibility to working with beloved beatbox-songwriter David Kitt and avant-rock iconoclasts The Jimmy Cake. Donal, Carol and Diarmuid only decided to musically reconvene as The Tycho Brahe as recently as February 2002, but once the decision was made, ideas tumbled together very rapidly.

Self-assured without being chilly or exclusive, accomplished and brainy yet hugely engaging, and the most unpredictable debut you will hear this year. More significantly perhaps, it also resulted in the album's fearless eclecticism - a rare quality in a band these days - as their worry-free imaginations ran to post-hip-hop tunefulness (the tragicomic, acutely observed 'Listless'); rolling string-laden sea shanties (the swollen ebb-tide of 'Half Mast'); small, cherishable instrumentals that find melodies and surreptitiously-recorded found noises knitted gently together ('Emily Is Going'); Bacharach-meets-Fleetwood Mac toe-tappers (the deranged yet perfect pop of 'Hooga Chaka'); and more.

Guest musicians/co-conspirators on the album include Daniel Figgis (on processed harmonium) and string-player-about-town Kim Porcelli (on cellos and double bass).

 When Donal, Carol and Diarmuid decided to form The Tycho Brahe - named after a Danish astronomer who lost his nose duelling over a scientific principle - they decided they would make a record that was completely for themselves - that is, purely for the joy of making, and then listening to, their music. It shows.

Project Arts Centre - October 2002

"Engrossing, beguiling and blissful drone-pop from Donal & Carol (Plague Monkeys) and Dee Dermody (Jimmy Cake)".

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