Irish electronic producers: 'I didn’t realise how much sanity going to hear live music gave me'
L-R: Tree Threes; Glenn Thomas; Lux Alma; OSH
Jamie Meehan grew up in Mayfield, Cork, and it was the vibrant club scene in his hometown that originally fired his enthusiasm for house music: “I used to go to the Jazz Festival when I was younger and I managed to go to Sir Henry’s once when I was 16, before it closed. After going to Sir Henry’s, DJing and making music pretty much became something I wanted to do.”
A move to London followed where he fine-tuned his skills with music production courses at the renowned Point Blank and Secret Sundaze schools. “Since then it’s become a natural progression to where I am today, I feel I’m getting better with each release.”
Those releases have been coming thick and fast since his breakthrough win, as Tree Threes, of Beatport’s Producer Challenge in 2020. Since then, lockdown time and space have been used wisely: “Creatively it gave me the opportunity to spend time every day really focusing on making music. In the past 18 months, I’ve had EPs released on Nervous, Morris Audio, and Kolour, which is a dream really.”
A new EP is due on August 20th, followed by a remix he’s recently completed for US deep house heavyweight, Demarkus Lewis - “it’s a huge honour to be associated with such a legend.”
Meehan hasn’t been back in front of a live crowd just yet and is realistic about the challenges faced by the club scene: “Look at the model of Berlin, arts and culture is part of their identity and they will always protect it. In England they’ve just announced COVID vaccine certificates for entry to clubs - I think that will be a challenge for the scene. They should give as much support to music and club culture as they do to football.”
www.soundcloud.com/treethreesmusic
Dubliner Glenn Davis was first introduced to music by his two older brothers: “One was into Northern Soul, James Brown, The Jam, The Style Council and early house music, while the other was into Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, Prince, Motown etc. They both thought they were into their own thing but looking back now you can see that they both loved the same thing… black music.”
As his own tastes and record collection expanded, he began DJing around the city as part of the Groovement Soul collective. Early inspiration came from the US house heartlands of Chicago, Detroit and New York and these influences stayed with him when he began producing his own music.
“Like a lot of DJs it was a natural progression. A friend bought an Akai MPC 2000 and that triggered my interest. I bought one and tapped away on it for a couple of years. Fast forward to 2012 and I bought Ableton Live and immersed myself in it.”
Over the following years, Davis developed a jazzy, soulful sound that pays homage to the past while facing the future. His studio apprenticeship started to reap rewards towards the end of the decade when the respected UK label, F*CLR, signed his Body & Soul EP, enlisted Ashley Beedle to remix the title track and picked up plaudits from across the house world.
Two further EPs have followed on F*CLR and a collaboration with Lady T, I Need You, was released in Spring 2021 on Irish label, Deeper Groove.
Glenn’s day job and studio work haven’t been significantly affected by the pandemic and he’s been able to keep his DJ skills in shape with a regular show on London’s MiHouse Radio. Getting back in front of a crowd for the first time in 18 months is still a big deal though:
“I’m playing at the Liverpool Disco Festival so I’m both excited and a little apprehensive. It’s a really well organised event so I’m not going to worry too much and I am just going to try and enjoy the experience, play good sets, have a dance and stay safe in the process.”
https://glenndavismusic.weebly.com
With a background in folk, composition and sound design, Alma Kelliher’s solo project, Lux Alma, mixes elements of each into a sound she describes as “electro-folk”.
Kelliher grew up in a musical household in Tralee. “We'd never sit and play a song together but every car journey was a full Beach Boys singalong with five-part harmonies. I took keyboard lessons as a kid and stuck at it, going to college to study music and then did a Master's in sound design. My sister is also a singer and when I was a teenager she was writing and performing loads, which I very much aspired to.”
The technical side appealed from an early age: "My favourite thing about keyboard class was picking the sounds, programming the beats, seeing how they'd blend together. And then in the last ten years, I've been working a lot on writing music for theatre and film so I've honed my producing chops in that context.”
The first Lux Alma single came out in December 2018 and a steady stream of releases have continued but, as with many other artists, uncertainty in the early stages of the pandemic affected her work.
“Creativity for me needs a calm and stable environment in which to grow, and 2020 was not that. I started a covers series on my Instagram around August 2020 and that got me back into the groove of singing, playing, and producing on the fly.
"2021 has been amazing. I am an associate artist with Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre and have just completed a project with them called To The Sea. In it, I visited every beach and inlet in Kerry (86 in total) and made recordings at each place. I then folded those recordings into a piece of music.”
This new single and video is out now.
www.luxalmamusic.com
Oisín Baber produces dark, percussion-heavy jungle and breaks under the name OSH. After a series of self-released and bootleg singles, his debut EP, Northern Lights, was recently released on Moon Rack.
Currently based in Leeds but with roots in Bristol and Cork, Baber’s parents provided his primary musical influences. “My mum gave me the Motown sound, which is probably where my obsession with a big drum sound comes from. And my dad introduced me to Hendrix and Zeppelin early on, which is probably where the heavy repetitive riffs are from. As far as electronic music I weeded that out myself.”
Later on, his city’s famed music scene added further flavours. Spending time in Bristol it was impossible to escape the low-end dub sound and at the time dubstep was getting really popular. "But then I also had such a soft spot for Chicago house like Frankie Knuckles etc," he says.
Baber fell into production by happy accident: “I always thought I was going to be an instrumentalist, but when I went to secondary school I was lucky enough to play around on Cubase and I didn’t look back, that was it.”
Changes over the last 18 months have been a mixed blessing: “I didn’t realise how much sanity going to hear live, loud music gave me. It balanced the necessary mundane cycles of everyday life.”
It has, however, provided ample time to “explore ideas uninterrupted and focus and be meticulous and emotional in the production.”
Barber has recently been back DJing live again and feels confident that local nightlife will rebound.
“At the centre of the Leeds scene is a DIY attitude, which thrives on community and a love for music and dance. If there’s anything I’ve seen change so far, it’s that people have become more respectful of each other’s boundaries and are chatting away to strangers wanting to enjoy the company of others. Hopefully this continues.”
