Over the past few years, having escaped the clasp of singer-songwriter monotony, music in Ireland has exploded forth. There’s a lot more to offer and with the ever expanding selection of bands, it’s no longer satisfactory to just promote “Irish music”. For bands to fully benefit, niches must become the focus. ERIC plans to do exactly that, taking all acts who like to blur the line between electronic and rock to the forefront.

 

To find out more I had a chat with ERIC’s Kieran Dold. Kieran also makes music as KaraKara and with Trapped in a Bathtub. Rather than wait for promotion opportunities to come to him, Kieran set forth alongside Rory of Peaks to gather bands together and enable them to promote themselves.

For those who are not familiar with ERIC. Who are you and what’s your manifesto?
ERIC is the Electronic Rock Ireland Collective, an idea I had a while back. Our manifesto is to round up every band in Ireland who combines the two musical styles into one place so that producers and fans of the broad genre could find each other. That’s our most basic and humblest hope, we have much bigger dreams for the collective that will probably take longer to take shape.
Physically though, ERIC is just me and another lad called Rory, both of us from two very different bands, doing whatever needs to be done to make this something worthwhile

What do you have in the works to bring this very specific genre to music fans?
Already we promote the acts we find (or find us) to Irish music blogs, and any event organizers we happen to know personally. The big thing in the works is a mixtape of the musicians who have supported us, our idea and make electronic rock music. My band are currently recording a track specifically for the mixtape. After the mixtape is done we’ll pass it around and start throwing on gigs to promote it, [and] the acts on it to the people of Ireland.
However at the moment our main priority is finding more and more musicians willing to contribute

What would be the best way for bands wanting to get involved to garner your attention?

If you want to be mentioned on our list of bands we do require that you have some music of yours online and nice photo for promotional purposes. If you feel you can offer something specific to our cause or any ideas you’d think we ought to know, please e-mail us.

Or you can come to one of our jam sessions in exchange templebar, the next one should be at the end of July, early August at the latest. Even if you have sent an e-mail to us we’d recommend coming as a face to face meeting is always an easier way to get things done. We’ll be posting details concerning our next jam session via our facebook when its organised.

Electronic Rock is a very niche style of music. Who would be Ireland’s greatest offerings in the field?

Personally find that a hard question to answer, in my opinion a lot can count as electronic rock. Where do we draw the line on rock bands that uses synths on some tracks to a electronic band that uses guitars and drums for live shows. It can be a little hard to define, but then again that ambiguity can be what I love about the genre. If I were to name some Irish acts off the top of my head I would have to say Jape, Le Galaxie and Cloud Castle Lake.

So, as for yourself personally Kieran. What do you have in the works with your own music?

Well I have a electronic solo act and a electro/punk band.
For my solo act, KaraKara, I tend to release any tracks I make/remix as soon as they are ready, and my ASIWYFA remix was quite well received. All that stuff can be found here.
As for my band, Trapped In A Bathtub, all we have online our some demos, we are recording an EP at the moment and we have a gig on the 16th of July downstairs in Fibbers opening for Irish hip-hop act Escape The Deadlights. I am always reluctant to advertise my band and solo work when talking [about] ERIC as I don’t want to give the impression that you have to sound like my music to belong to the collective.

You can find out more about ERIC by visiting them here or following them on twitter.

About Tadgh O'Connor

Tadgh is one of those guys who over thinks everything. Thankfully when it comes to talking about music this is an advantage. Having nothing in the way of qualifications, to make his opinions anyway valid. He expects you to care anyway.