Kevin Murphy: Cork musician on a quest to expand trad with the cello
Kevin Murphy, left, with Rattling Ark.
The cello, an instrument thought to have originated in early 16th-century Italy, is not a sound typically associated with Irish traditional music.
Cumbersome in weight, orchestral in sound and too delicate to leave at the corner of a lock-in, the Venn diagram of both worlds tends to extend apart.
And yet, in the era of genrelessness, second-screening and broad experimentalism, Rattling Ark founder and acclaimed cellist Kevin Murphy poses the question, why not?
Murphy — an acclaimed musician from the bands Slow Moving Clouds and Seti The First, and who has performed with everyone from The National to Bon Iver to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode — grew up in Monkstown, Co Cork, and was trained classically in cello from a young age.
“You realise when you grow up that you’re either a classical family or a trad one; we went to Feis Maitiú while others, completely unbeknownst to me, were winning the Fleadhs.”
At 17, following years of performing anything but his original instrument — heavy metal at the Lee Rowing Club, rock for wherever would have them in Passage — Murphy left for Dublin with the critically acclaimed rock band Interference.
“We were all waiting for our dreams to come true,” he smiles from his home in Dublin. “Then, we all had nervous breakdowns, and real life began.”
At 18, Murphy realised the value of his former instrument, and began the first in a long line of experimentation. “It was the case for me, and maybe it’s a Cork thing, that most musicians I knew were surrounded by trad,” he says. “But no one was really playing it with cello.”
To make this possible, Murphy began reconfiguring his instrument to suit his new chosen genre. “It was definitely a little bit pretentious,” he laughs.
“I mean, I just made the gap between the strings and the fingerboard lower, which allowed me to play trad, and in turn sent me down a nerdy rabbit hole, which I haven't come out of since.”
This rabbit hole led to Rattling Ark, the alternative trad/folk group he founded with Thomas Haugh, Lizzi Murtough and Consuelo Breschi (daughter of musician Antonio Bresci, who mixes Italian and Irish music styles), where producing the unknowable has become something of a speciality.
Rattling Ark’s debut album, sits as an extension of Murphy’s musicality; rooted in traditional forms and shaped by experimental approaches.
Blurring the lines between traditional Irish folk, drone, and avant-garde soundscapes, his work has been likened to the fellow experimental folk superstars of our time — The Gloaming, Lankum — while similarly drawing on dark influences and textures and making use of lesser-known instruments such as zithers, nyckelharpa and violyra. (The latter two are played on by Murphy’s former Slow Moving Clouds bandmate, Aki.)
There’s an argument to be made that there’s never been a more receptive time for music of this style. And indeed, reviews from the album’s launch — pleasant, if combative — confirm that.
“I read a review,” Murphy says. “Where the guy said he couldn't get his head around the album at all, until he listened to it three times. I was delighted to hear that. That he found it a bit of a challenge, and that it's not straight up.
"There's a bit of a buzz to be part of this new approach that doesn’t get too far away from the roots of a music style, but is also still innovative. It requires something of the listener, rather than being bored of the same shite over and over again.”
There is lots of room for experimentation within traditional music, Murphy insists, particularly when you treat it like a living, breathing thing. “I don't have any aspirations to move out of that for now,” he says, thick in the weeds of his process.
As for Rattling Ark’s latest album and upcoming gigs, he remains astutely focused on one thing. “For people to be transported, more than anything,” he says.
“I'm not turned on by too much anymore. I wish I was, but only sometimes do I go to gigs and I'm taken away, or want to cry. I think people crave that kind of communal experience with music, where you can just forget about things and tap into something else.
"I'm not going to pretend I know what that is, and I’m aware of how cheesy this all sounds, but that's the buzz I get, anyway… And I don’t think I’m the only one.”
- Rattling Ark plays the Creative Zone in UCC Boole Library on Thursday, July 23, and Levi’s Corner House in Ballydehob on Friday, July 24. Tickets are available respectively on Eventbrite and directly through Levi’s Corner House
