Electronica meets trad in the music of Philip Fogarty
Galway City Tribune
Electronica has grown from being a genre with a cult following to one of the most influential musical movements of the past decade. It played a pivotal part in Radiohead's "Kid A" reinvention and has found its way onto daytime radio through people like Timbaland. Fusing this genre with elements of Irish traditional music may sound bizarre, but it works in Philip Fogarty's bold, disarming music.
The Galway based Clare man and his band will play in Tuam's Synod Hall on Sunday August 26th, as part of the Earwig festival. Next month they make a welcome return to St. Nicholas's church, on Thursday, September 13.
Fogarty had been playing in various cover bands before deciding, in the early 1990s, to pursue his own music. "It took me three years before I was happy that I had enough material to make up a set and go for it," he says.
Finding suitable venues for Fogarty's subtle music proved difficult. "We'd be going on stage at maybe 12.30," he remembers, "and at that point of the night, on a Friday in a nightclub somewhere in the country, you could be anybody. The crowd may not be there to listen; they may have other things on their mind - it's Friday night and the bar is closing!"
This was not the ideal climate in which to connect with an audience so Fogarty decided to take stock of things and see where his music was going.
"After a couple of years of doing that, I just stopped," he says. "I got very unhappy with it. I said 'I'm either changing what I'm doing or I'm just leaving it altogether'. But I was still writing, I couldn't stop anyway!"
After a brief hiatus, Fogarty and his band drew up a new game plan. "When we went back to do it again, I decided 'let's play different venues for a start'," he recalls. "I began to realise how important that is."
Explaining why he sought out spaces like St. Nicholas's Church, Fogarty says: "I began to toy with an idea: what if you take all this music - I used to go for really big sounds - and put all of that in a matchbox and have the audience almost kneeling down to see inside. A bit like a flea circus!"
"It's been very liberating to step out of the pub and club circuit," he adds. "When people walk in to a venue that they don't normally go to see music in, they're in a different mindset themselves. It's almost like the venue become the introduction."
Fogarty has been able to realise this idiosyncratic vision thanks to the inventive musicians in his band. His wife, Anna Lardi, plays an integral part.
"Anna is the most prolific in terms of instruments," he says. "She handles keyboards, sequences, violin, accordion, melodica, some drums during the set and also does a lot of the mixing and effects."
Fogarty's soundscapes are underpinned by the fluid bass playing of Eddie Dee (who also plays some percussion in the set). He and Anna met while doing some session playing. "Eddie's primarily funk, that's where he comes from," says Fogarty. "I ask him to do stuff and he just laughs! But he never says 'no I'm not doing that' or 'that's impossible' - he'll always try it. He's in no way reverential about his instrument at all, which makes him a stronger player as far as I'm concerned."
The line-up is completed by Angeline O' Connell on violin. "She's the only still part in the set, the only element that remains constant," says Fogarty. "Instead of revolving around the vocals we revolve around the violin."
Philip Fogarty has several releases to his name, the most recent being the album "Lambs". All of his albums are available to download from his website (www.philipfogarty.com). "It's not a heavy website in terms of graphics - there's nothing there except the music," he says.
The changing landscape of the music business is making the Clare man think about how he releases his work. "I've really been wondering is the CD dying out?" he muses. "I don't know if it is or not but I just thought wouldn't it be nicer if I could just distribute music itself without having to shift all the packaging with it."
However, Fogarty is not forsaking the compact disc completely. "The St. Nicholas Mix" (a selection of his studio recordings) was only available to buy at shows during his last tour in February and March and people are still asking him for it. There are tentative plans to release a live recording and there is a studio album in the offing too.
Modern technology has meant that Fogarty doesn't have to run to a mixing desk when he gets an idea. "My latest weapon is using the record facility in my mobile phone," he enthuses. "Then you go back and you try to put down what you thought it was you heard in your head."
"It can be a frustrating enough process," he continues, "you finish a piece of music only to turn against it and bin it. You think, 'great, I just spent three weeks working on that.' It's more a process of editing; the problem is not writing it's knowing what not to include."
Fogarty certainly made the right decision by including the haunting "What's Left" on Lambs. The song is unsettling, but not depressing; it goes to some dark places but doesn't give in to them. Fogarty explains how he came to write it. "Dealing with darker aspects of life, I don't want to make people feel suicidal but I don't want to pretend that stuff doesn't happen," he says. ""What's Left" was a reaction to various events in my life. There's been deaths in my family down through the years, some of them I've never gotten used to even though they're in the natural scheme of things. There's no point pretending you're not cut up about something if you are. But you carry your darkness with you and to quote Jung 'you learn to own your shadow'."
Music may be a cathartic thing for Fogarty, but he also gets an unabashed enjoyment from it.
"At a certain point I did sit down and ask myself 'ok, why am I doing this?'," he says. "And the answer is a stupid one - 'because I can!' It feeds me, it's good for me and, unless I'm very much mistaken, it's good for other people too. I know that the musicians enjoy it and the audience are not exactly writhing in agony. At least some of them aren't!"
Far from it - a Philip Fogarty gig is a unique experience, one of style and substance. His upcoming shows are not to be missed.
Philip Fogarty plays in Tuam's Synod Hall on Sunday August 26, in St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church, Galway 8pm on Thursday September 13 and in Clifden's Church of Ireland on Sunday, September 23.
Jimi McDonnell
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