It’s a love-across-the-barricades thing. Representatives of two tribes who have met up, sensed a spark, and embarked on a relationship that raised eyebrows amongst their peers.
From one camp, I give you Martin Corrigan, wedge-haired, shouty, lake-land rocker; from the other, Phil Kieran, mercurial Belfast DJ, promoter and producer of, what he himself refers to as, “douff-douff tunes”.
It’s a mixed marriage; and judging by Alloy Mental – the first fruit of the union – one that is built to last.
We’re taking advantage of the all-you-can-eat lunch time buffet in a Botanic Avenue curry house, and, between mouthfuls of pilau rice, Phil is describing how the pair hooked up.
“I had been sending out advertisements and e-mails asking for vocalists into things like the Sex Pistols and Pixies and I was getting nowhere,” he says. “It was exhausting. I was going down to singer-songwriter nights, loads of local gigs and there was no-one who I thought was right. I went round to Paul McClean’s (producer of Radio Ulster’s Across The Line) house one night just to listen to a few tunes and he stuck on the Corrigan album and the first track, ‘We’re The Wire’, it just clicked immediately. The penny dropped: he’s the man. I went to see the band and I just thought he was perfect for what I wanted to do.”
Of course, the tendency of dance producers to rope in ‘guest vocalists’, in an effort to broaden their appeal has become so widespread that it barely merits comment now. For Phil however, it’s a subject that rouses strong opinions. Rather than badger a big name into the studio for half an hour of work, he preferred the idea of building a strong, long-term working relationship with his chosen collaborator.
“I can’t stand that whole lazy DJ practice of dragging in some token vocalist who just does the rounds of producers,” he declares. “It never really works, there’s nothing organic about it – there’s no sense of panic to it. I like the idea of working with someone over a few years, worrying with them about money and crap gigs – getting to know them. I wasn’t interested in getting someone in for a couple of days, handing them a backing track and saying ‘sing this’.”
Aided and abetted by Corrigan’s band-mate Danny Todd, Alloy Mental began to take shape during the last months of 2004. Corrigan has claimed that the musical chasm that many outsiders would presume to exist between the indie rock musician and the electronica maestro simply was not there. “Our record collections meet in the middle,” he has said. Phil agrees, citing a shared love of The Stooges, PiL and Pixies and a mutual appreciation of “really severe, but musical, records”, as providing the glue that bonded the band together.
Early live outings have revealed a thrilling, combustible, clued-in, and in-yer-face sound that could potentially woo fans from all kinds of factional camps. At the recent Vital gig in Botanic Gardens, followers of Faithless and The Kings Of Leon united for the duration of a deliriously pile-driving set.
“It was incredible,” Phil admits. “We didn’t expect to get that kind of reception.”
Of equal significance was the reaction of the crowd at Shine (where Phil has been a resident for four years), when Alloy Mental made their Belfast bow at the start of the summer. Dance traitor? Not guilty, it seems.
“It was really good and a big relief because I was really shitting myself going into it,” he laughs. “We must have practiced about 20 times in the days before. There was one day when I felt absolutely terrible. I’d had some dodgy record company news and was listening to us rehearse and just thought to myself, this is shite. What are we doing here? I was hearing problems everywhere, in every part of every song and was convinced that we were going to go out in front of 600 people who would take one look at us and tell us we were shite. But in the end there was nothing to worry about. The crowd were brilliant, really up for it. Although there was one guy who stood in the middle of the crowd, totally still, and gave me the middle finger throughout the entire show. But you need that too. If we make the kind of music we want to make, then it is going to rub some people up the wrong way.”
With an album due to for release before the end of the year, expect friction burns throughout the land.
“I’m convinced we’ve something brilliant in us,” Phil smiles. “When you boil it down, why you do it is to create something that changes the course of music a wee bit. Who knows, we might fluke it.”