AC does it

Sometimes the most astonishing things come from the most unlikely of beginnings. Take the Afro Celt Sound System, for instance, a band born from the happy accident of a Real World recording week in 1995, a gathering where the global music community come together, throw ideas at the wall and see which one sticks. In this particular instance it was the notion that the combination of African, Irish and electronic music might just work. At the time, Englishman Simon Emmerson had no real idea of where this particular journey would take him.

Seven years down the line, is this how he imagined it would all turn out? “No way, not at all,” he explains. “At that point I didn’t know whether to stand back and let other people come in as producers, go for the cottage industry approach to making albums or go full on with the band. It was James, Iarla and Ronan (Browne, the band’s original piper) who said this is too good to let go, this could be absolutely massive. I’d spent years making great records that got great reviews and absolutely terrible sales but the prophecy came true. I never ever expect anything other than moderate success”.

Although such a unique experience can only occur once in a lifetime, it has given the band a benchmark to which to strive. “We still search for the magic that happened that week”, agrees James McNally. Simon picks up the thread. “You’re never going to get that shock factor, that was like a child discovering a new set of toys. I think that there’s enough creative input in this band to keep the surprises coming. I don’t think we’ve explored all the avenues”.

That exploration process has reached a natural point with Seed, their fourth album, which sees them not only introducing a live rhythm section but also losing the sound system part of their name, an indication of the new spirit surrounding the band.

“These past seven years and three albums have shown what we can do together and given us the next phase of our careers and our lives and how we can adapt the music”, James enthuses. “This album starts that process”.

Perhaps the most notable indication of their progress on the album comes on in the form of ‘Ayub’s Song’, a beautiful fusion of the African and Irish tradition featuring, amongst others, Martin Hayes and Red Snapper’s Ali Friend on double bass. And not an electronic instrument in sight.

James smiles. “A lot of people didn’t think we could do that, but that’s where we came from. But we love electronica as well, we love experimenting with it and trying to find the right balance. It turns me on as a whistle player, what I can do with the electronics. We hadn’t been interested in doing anything else until that particular moment and that particular song, where it just seemed to be the time. That has to be done here. There’s no need for any electronica because we now feel that we can write song or go into any culture or genre of music and discover new things to connect with”.

Despite the name and musical remit, the Afro Celts are essentially a very British band, as Simon agrees. “You have to have come from that whole English multi-cultural thing to really get that. A lot of people have said that we could only have happened in London at that time. I think now that music has really moved on, there’s lots of urban global fusionists. It’s almost become a musical idiom but the Whirl-y-Gig started in East London, there was the whole scene with Transglobal Underground, we had our studio in Hackney”.

“There were the three elements to the Afro Celts. There was the Irish, there was the African and there was London. People say how the hell did the band happen, but if you look into all our individual histories it sort of makes perfect sense. There was a ten year period where people were meeting and exchanging ideas. Someone was going to do it.”

They may have taken a few knocks over the years, perhaps more than most would realise, but the mood of this particular Afro Celts is infectiously buoyant, proud of what they have achieved but desperate to take it further.

“We’ve had to deal with so many expectations from people”, says James, “with them liking some bits but not liking others. Wherever we went, we either didn’t belong or we weren’t quite the complete thing because there was something they didn’t like. There was always a criticism coming. I feel that we’ve managed to move beyond that”.

“With this line up, we have a connection with what people conceive to be a proper band. That’s not us saying that, we’ve always felt that we were a proper band, but because people perceive that you have to have a drummer and a bass player. They need to connect with the human element of the rhythms. The sound system worked wonderfully for us, but now it’s time to mature and go out and show what we can really do. This is just the beginning for us”.