Wait A Minute!
As they prepare to release debut Marcata, Dublin act The Minutes talk about signing to Rubyworks, and declare that some bands just don’t cut the rock mustard
Roisin Dwyer, 02 Jun 2011
“I don’t think there are many real rock bands out there. We have supported loads of bands – bands that are meant to be rock bands and they’re not loud, they’re not rock… I get the feeling some people are faking it.”
The Minutes’ lead singer Mark Austin is pondering the current state of rock and has concluded… well, that it’s not up to much at the moment. The trio are on the verge of releasing their antidote to this sonic quagmire, debut album Marcata. It is, quite simply, a savage aural assault hewn from the legacy of The Yardbirds, Count Five and The 13th Floor Elevators.
The title is taken from the New York studio where the opus was assembled. The trio decamped Stateside due the prohibitive cost of recording to tape in Ireland and their insistence on taking the analogue route.
“For us it’s very important because we’re such a live band,” explains Mark. “There’s something about the three of us playing in a room together looking at each other’s fucking eyeballs and it’s really loud, getting that on tape all at the one time. It harks back to the old days when you just had to be a good band to make a record, you couldn’t fake it. You can fake it so easily now.”
The trio (including Mark’s cousin Shane Kinsella on drums and Tom Cosgrave on bass) have been gigging extensively since 2007 and recorded the album in late 2009. Why the delay
in releasing?
“We only started working with Rubyworks at the end of last year,” says Mark. “We were going to put it out ourselves. Then Shane went for it one day and e-mailed a load of labels and the lads got back to us. Having people that know how to put out a record and how that whole machine works is so much better than pissing it all up against the wall. It happens to a lot of Irish bands. They put out an album themselves and then they disappear. We knew that we needed a record label to put it out. We want to be around for a long time we don’t want to do
it arseways.”
Dublin’s Rubyworks label is a small but accomplished operation, home to Sinéad O’Connor, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Fight Like Apes and Gavin Friday, amongst others.
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