EMPIRE STATE (made in) IRELAND

Ireland is known as a country of beer, football and Catholic religion. Could it become a land of space flight and electronic music?

Ireland’s also produced the likes of The Virgin Prunes, Morrissey (The Smiths), The Undertones and possibly the worlds leading rock band U2, so it can cough up the odd exception to the rule. We’re that exception. Empire State Human are Ireland’s only existing electro-pop band, so we certainly are unique in that regard. It’s also fair to say that ESH are better known outside of Ireland, in market places such as North America< and parts of the EU and because of this, we work within the international underground electro scene as opposed to solely within Ireland. We offer Irish audiences a different musical choice or option, if they so choose to come to one of our gigs or buy one of our CDs via Internet. 

What helps you create 'a bit leftfield electro-pop'? Is it that strong 80-ies vibe? 

Our primary motivation to create electro-pop music is quite simple: it’s the type of music closest to our joined tastes within the band. We love the complexity, the sound manipulation side of things. Electronic music is always exciting and pulsating; the 4/4 or 3/4 dance beats, the sequences, vocal harmonies and escapist lyrics are all totally addictive to us. We try and develop our sound with every CD we make and it’s our aim to be perceived as a contemporary band and not one derivative of the 80’s sound or to be pigeon holed as an 80’s sounding band either. We respect where we’ve come from, but pay more attention to where we’re going instead of where we’ve been. When we release a CD it’s history, we then move on and are only excited about the next one.

What do you think of an idea to make an album of 80-ies hits covers?

We can’t think of a more unattractive or pointless album for us to make than that one, sorry. An 80’s covers CD would set us back years, musically. We obviously have nothing against a covers album per se, as we’ve recorded our fair share ourselves over the years and will continue to do so in the future, but we’ve only ever recorded and released one song from the 80’s (Yazoo’s ‘Bad Connection’) and that was a very unsatisfactory experience for us, as we felt we worked only on 60% motivation for it, for various reasons and it really showed in the end. Contemporary song based Electro-pop needs plenty of clear distance from the 80’s, to exist on its own in today’s contemporary market place, or it will only remain a genre that 300 people worldwide love.
We have recently completed a totally wicked cover of ‘The Witch’ by The Cult and it is to feature on a compilation called “Electro-Cuted-A Tribute to Gods of Metal/Rock”, on Kiss My Asterix Records early next year. ‘The Witch’ featured on the movie soundtrack album ‘Cool World’ in the 90’s and is a brilliant, but not that well-known The Cult track, that’s well worth checking out. We always try and add something of ourselves to every cover we do and for that particular track we totally rearranged the song to give it a ‘single edit’ feel, bringing in a bridge section as a chorus and so on.

If you were to compare your sound to some band from the 80ies, which one would it be?

It would probably be a hybrid of a couple of bands together, sort of somewhere between The Beloved, Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell, Sparks, Dead Or Alive, Madonna, Giorgio Moroder, Bronski Beat, Bobby Orlando and Kraftwerk. We’re still searching for a definitive sound that we can say is ours, so that’s something we’re very aware of.

How would you compare your sound and music from German electro-pop bands?  

We’re certainly more ‘pop’ or ‘song’ orientated and Aidan’s vocals give us a different edge, as he sings in a higher key than found in German electro... (continues on next page)