The Quotidian

Music

14 min read

The only experiences I’ve had that are close to the mystical are through music. Mostly these arise when I am myself playing, especially in improvisation, but sometimes when listening to music too. I was not surprised to discover an ancient conception of cosmic order expressed ontologically as the ‘music of the spheres’.

I am not as engaged in musical practice as I once was and am currently a member of no bands or groups. My only recent endeavour is to gain a basic level of skill with the Irish flute. I cannot yet play fast or clean enough to join one of the many trad sessions in local pubs, but I hope to one day.

As a result, this section is more of a historical account from most to least recent, and an opportunity to share some of the projects I’ve been lucky to be part of. Even with my solo stuff as Bitwise Operator I relied on generous community support (as you’ll read). Happily, much of this work, if it interests you, can be listened to for free, so please enjoy.

Gamelan

With In Flow, Gamelan na Gaillimhe, and Bitwise + Madek.

I have been an occasional contributor to In Flow, a Gamelan ensemble based in Galway, Ireland. There is a bit of genealogy here: In Flow is a project of That’s Life, an arts and personal development programme for people with intellectual disability. That’s Life is run by staff at the Brothers of Charity Services, Galway, who support people with intellectual disability in many ways. The BoC are finally funded by the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Irish state health service. I’ve been volunteering with That’s Life for over 15 years in one form or another, including writing bespoke video manipulation software for them (Illuminate) and various events and performances.

I performed with the In Flow players on their 2016 self-titled debut album and several gigs over the years, most recently in the 2024 Galway International Arts Festival. This performance also featured original compositions by Bianca Gannon (one of which I sight-read on the night!) and the improvisation of Galway stalwarts ConTempo Quartet, celebrating their 25th year.

Gamelan is traditional Indonesian music, a tradition which encompasses village folk songs as well as the ‘high’ art of a royal court. It is played in long sessions, often accompanied by dancing and shadow puppet performances. Around 2009, That’s Life commissioned a Gamelan to be made in Java, Indonesia and shipped to Ireland. Members of what would become the community players group of Gamelan na Gaillimhe flew to Java to learn basic playing technique, as arranged by their regional patron closer to home, Dr Peter Smith of Oxford, England. I joined this group around 2010 and learned along with them as we studied with experts from the small pool in Ireland, as well as travelling to participate in the much larger scene in the UK. (Watch our group playing a well-known traditional tune here.)

Long-time collaborator Andrew Madec and I used what we learned of traditional Gamelan and attempted a fusion with our other interests in trip hop and electronic music. This resulted in Gamelan Re-imaginings Vol. 1 under the fused name Bitwise + Madek. At the 2013 London Southbank Centre Gamalanathon, we were permitted to lead an interactive improvised session, attempting to bring some of these electronic aesthetics to a larger audience.

Zinc

Zinc combine hypnotic grooves with gritty textures to bring you on a trip. Exhilarating post-rock, with the roughness of hip-hop and the melodic side of electronica.

This was the blurb we settled on for our press. Zinc was possibly my favourite band, combining deep thinking and musical intellectualising with subconscious abandon and self-surprising improv. This reached its zenith in an hour-long, completely improved set we performed in the Black Gate Cafe in the Summer of 2017, our last performance as it would happen. I remember feeling I was on the precipice of now, tumbling in the ever-present singular Moment, no past or future. As the drummer, when it was my turn to start a new ‘song’, I simply counted in on the sticks, giving the impression there was something sure to come, none of us knowing what that would be.

The other members of our three-piece were Andrew Madec (my most often collaborator) on bass and Aengus Hackett on guitar. Both stringed players used generous arrays of effects pedals in their setup which lead to a sound that implies a fourth or fifth member of the group at time. My instrument was far simpler, a stripped down drum kit, and my task was to keep it all together.

We recorded our debut (and only) record in The Meadow (Studio), Wicklow, Ireland over a wonderful four days on a chilly December. Robert ‘Scan’ Watson documented this on film for a teaser montage of the process:

The year before that we were also very pleased to be invited to the studio of Laura Sheeran, a phenomenal musician, producer, and dancer. Going through several identities over her career, once Laura X, her latest incarnation is as Persona. She promises an album later this year (2025). Ten years ago, Laura recorded this for us:

Andrew and Aengus are incredible musicians and have many other projects, continuing to play today. In fact, they continue to collaborate on In Flow. Andrew collaborated with Alison McD-W in their amazing project VOIDS, and Aengus has his Aengus Hackett Trio neo-jazz band and solo project Penji.

You can listen to the self-titled Zinc album on Bandcamp.

Trenches

“The heaviest band in Ireland.”

We did hear that a lot from people. I joined up with guitarists Gabriel “Peanut” Hielscher and Jonathan “Mayt” Lynch in 2007 to form a three-piece. We added former Captain Spaulding vocalist Kieran Griffin, Garret O’Malley on bass and then a THIRD guitarist, Peter “Monty” Montgomery. Each of these three guitarists had a powerful tube half-stack amp, and add to that bass on another tube half-stack, me smashing away on the drums, and Kieran screaming and growling through a PA.

Gab and Jonathan were the core writers of the group and any spark of genius the band could ever claim originated in their weird brains. I first met Jonathan when he played with easily the most intense local band I had ever seen, Exploded Face from Ballina, Mayo, and shared the stage with them during my time with Captain Spaulding. Jonathan has a talent for haunting aharmonic solo work and a deep understanding of the genre (even if it was a little too much crust at times for me). Gab is some kind of musical savant. I remember him asking me what timing some complicated riff he had developed was in — it was some kind of 11 over 8.

Trenches in Wicklow to record our debut album at The Hive.

Trenches was known for long, slow, deep, and loud tracks that went through 5 to 7 phases in as many minutes. We would change timing, tempo and sometimes style. I recall each track taking about 3 months of weekly development rehearsals to get right.

We played regularly across Ireland during the four or so years that I was part of the group (I left in 2011, replaced by Alan Healy until they broke up about a year after that). We also went on two international tours, one the length of the UK and another across western Europe, mainly Germany and The Netherlands. Like all DIY music, it was a labour of love.

The band left behind a few recordings:

  • An early demo Pig’s Throne
  • Trenches, a self-titled debut
  • Vaccine, an epic 14 minute track, one half of a ‘split’ vinyl with Dubliners Drainland
  • untitled, another demo (2 track) that was to be the start of a never finished album

If you want a more visceral sense of the stage presence of six darkly clad men shouting and blaring at you, watch our performance in Fred Zepplin’s, Cork, Ireland from 2009. People literally had to leave as it was too loud. I have tinnitus to this day.

More information at the Irish Music DB.

Jonathan Lynch in particular is still active in the Irish metal scene today and has a brilliant band now called Grief Eater that are well worth checking out. In it, he continues what he started in Trenches, bringing it to new heights (or, perhaps more aptly, devastating lows…)

Bitwise Operator

Bitwise Operator was a 10 year long study and homage to the electronic music pioneers that blew my young mind. These were chiefly Plaid, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Nine Inch Nails, but also Massive Attack, The Prodigy, and many others.

Electronic music was the style that unified my primary interests at the time of my late teens and into my 20s: music and technology. It was why I would eventually getting an Education in this exact unity, a BA in Music Technology. Ironically, was during my degree that I produced my last works as Bitwise Operator, finally retiring the identity as I graduated.

On the Bitwise Operator Bandcamp page, you will find nine releases (again, as always, freely available) and one conjoined with Andrew Madek AKA Madec:

The list of thanks is huge, but I’ll try for an abridged version here:

  • For musical and artwork production, I couldn’t have gotten far without Jimmy (the Hideous) Penguin, Saibh Egan, James Eager, and David O’Brien
  • Benefactors: Jimmy Penguin (again and always!), Ray Wingnut
  • Major collaborators: Madek AKA Andrew Madec, Sebi C, and Alis AKA Alison McDonnell-White

Andrew M and Alison McD-W also form the two-piece VOIDS.

Captain Spaulding

Captain Spaulding was a punk band named after the murderous clown played by Sig Haig in Rob Zombie’s 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses. The other members were Michael Sherry (guitar, vocals) and Kieran Griffin (bass, vocals). The band was formed while we were still in secondary school, largely on account of being in the same school together and growing up in the same small village. We even played as a band for the Leaving Certificate (final Irish school exam) music practical exam, and received a positive grade!

Kieran would join me in Trenches not too long after we disbanded Captain Spaulding, and Mike went on to play with Violins is not the answer, a classic fun, crowd-centric punk/ska/hardcore band.

It wasn’t just a band though, the first two student houses I lived in were with Mike and Kieran — we even rehearsed at home, much to the consternation of our neighbours. (Incidentally, Trenches was formed in rehearsal in the second of these houses and Kieran likely was enthused to join due to the proximity of the shed to the kitchen.) This led to the nickname “Spauldy House”.

As an eager teenage band, we travelled around to any venue that would put us on, mostly by bus. We played all over, in Ballina, Tuam, Athlone, Slido, Limerick, Cork, Dublin, Bray, Letterfrack, and Virginia (Cavan, not USA), and of course Galway, where we were based. We somehow fell in with old English punks that were part of some kind of commune in the Sligo/Roscommon area and we played a lot of gigs there.

Captain Spaulding at Leitrimfest, ~2007.

There are unfortunately no online recordings of us but we did record a demo that must be floating around somewhere. Kieran and Mike wrote the songs, and in terms of style they were mainly influenced by hardcore punk bands such as Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and so on. My tastes were more grunge than punk at the time and so I did my best to keep up with the speed and mania required. I was much more at home later in the more cerebral, much slower Trenches.

More information at the Irish Music DB — there is a very funny band photo there, I will not reproduce it here but do check it out!

The Moonsonic Project

After the end of my first band, The Vice, I brought band mate Danny Sheeran in on the music production software I was experimenting with at the time. In those days, before high data transfer speeds on the internet, magazines pitched at aspiring producers used to ship of CDs filled with samples, especially looped samples. It was easy to import these files into simple Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) programs and mix and chop them up as you like, adding effects and so on. To this, you could add your own originally recorded material and end up with something not completely dissimilar from professionally produced tracks.

What started off as messing around and experimentation ended up, as often happens, as a more serious project. Over the course of two years, Danny and I created about 20 tracks. Some of them were complete jokes, such as a Bagpuss meets the Moomins psychedelic parody. Others became more genuine such as my heartfelt, melancholic 5 minute solo piano recital “Partially Exposed”. But, overall, most retained an appropriately juvenile tone. My sister Nuala, then aged only 16, sang on two tracks on the album. We would collaborate again on Naso Guanto.

We printed 500 copies of the album on CD and distributed then to local record shops (back when real record shops were still a thing, Napster had collapsed a few years earlier but Spotify was a few years away still). I had a vague notion that if we sent CDs to big record labels, we might, on the extreme off-chance, get ‘signed’. I didn’t really understand what that meant then, as a 17 or 18 year old. So I sent 50 CDs into the void, never to hear a reply.

The Moonsonic Project did, however, garner a favourable review in the Galway Advertiser, the most read paper in Galway (owing largely to the fact it is free and ubiquitously distributed). Sinead McGovern described it as:

…a bass-heavy, Air-esque production, that at times wavers into the cosmic, and others into the classical.

You can listen to this very rough but still somewhat charming album on the Moonsonic Project Bandcamp.

Early projects

Naso Guanto

There is a lost EP of a project I recorded and performed with my sister, Nuala Kenny. We recorded this in Ballina and performed it in The Gaf, a youth music venue in Galway, circa 2005/6.

The reason for the name completely escapes me. We translated “Nose Glove” into Spanish, and “Naso Guanto” is what we got. I’ve asked Spanish speakers if this sounds correct to them and have only ever encountered total confusion.

The Vice

The Vice was my first band. We were a covers band, which was what all the young teenage bands were doing at the time. Crowds of our peers wanted to hear their favourite tunes played back to them, often extremely badly, and many of us wanted to learn the craft by imitating our heroes. It was a good place to start.

The name of the band was an unfortunate choice in Galway, since the most Galway accents typically rendered it as sounding indistinguishable from “The Voice”, a substantially worse and more pretentious name. That sounds like something Bono (of U2) would call himself, similar to fellow band mate calling himself “The Edge”.

There were four members of the band: frontman Eoin Dolan (guitar, vocals), Danny Sheeran (lead guitar), James Casserly (drums) and I, playing bass in that first band. Bass was the first ‘modern’ instrument I played, after learning piano to grade 3 or 4 (of 8) as a young child.

Danny and I in the Scouts hall we used to practice in, young and innocent.

Danny would join me in The Moonsonic Project but as far as I know did not continue with performance music, nor did James. Eoin Dolan though is still very active as a singer-songwriter, and you can find his music on his Bandcamp page.

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