Interview: O Emperor

This is the story of how O Emperor nearly went all ‘Axel F.’ on us. With creative time and freedom comes great responsibility – to reign in your cheesy ‘80s urges. Fans of the gifted Cork-by-way-of-Waterford quintet might have felt like the wait for 2010 debut Hither Thither was a lengthy one, but apparently the band had a mere a month to record it. Charged with the task of following up that Choice-nominated record, twin vocalists Paul Savage and Phil Christie explain how they were in no rush. “I think we were ready to take it fairly handy,” Christie begins.

Savage nods in agreement. “It definitely did take us awhile. We built a studio around January 2012. Even from then, it was about nine months recording. I think we needed that time to deviate, go through different things and then arrive at what was the finished album.”
The studio of which they speak is their new Big Skin band HQ, constructed from scratch with a lot of help from their aul fellas.
“Our dads are the opposite to us, they’re very speedy workers!” laughs Savage. “We’d been recording with (Mick Flannery drummer) Christian Best, the guy who eventually mixed the album. We did a session with him in November 2011. When we were listening back we thought maybe if we tried it ourselves at our own pace, it would work out better. So then we suggested to our dads that we should make the band flat into a studio. Within three days they were up with all their tools, and wood, and started building it! We were like, ‘Okay, I guess this is what’s happening!’”
Unbeknownst to the wider world, O Emperor spent much of 2012 making an almighty racket in the very centre of Cork city. You’d think the neighbours would be wary of a “studio” being constructed in a nearby flat...
“Well we built rooms within rooms and it’s isolated enough,” says Savage. “It is in the centre of Cork but thankfully there’s not too much spillage. We were able to record late into the night. There’s even a couple of bands around Cork calling us to use it. We didn’t know what we were doing. We just stuck a load of duvets up on the walls!”
Needless to say, the band soon got lost in their new sonic wonderland.
“When you’re on your own you can just spend a day or two dicking around. The only downside is that you do have to keep yourself motivated.”
Christie grins. “We were ready to indulge ourselves.”
“We started out saying that we were going to make a big prog rock album,” remembers Savage. “There was talk of a double album at one stage. Ironically enough, it ends up being a half-hour and all the songs are three-and-a-half minutes long. It’s probably turned out to be more commercial than the first one!”
Vitreous certainly occupies a narrower bandwidth, with the expansive atmospherics of the debut being funnelled into a thrilling, synth-and-guitar laser beam. They’ve toured Germany quite a bit in recent years thanks to their deal with K&F and some of that nation’s sounds have seeped into the fibre of Vitreous. You can pick up bits of Kraftwerk, some droning krautrock, Berlin-period Bowie...
“It’s funny you mention the Bowie thing,” says Savage. “We did come dangerously close to putting some Eddie Murphy-style Beverly Hills Cop drums on ‘Contact’! We were laughing so much that it came dangerously close to ‘should we actually put this on the record?!’”
According to Christie, they “tried saxophone solos on almost every song.”
Somehow, the end result is a fine balance. A case in point is the perfect segue into new single ‘Contact’ that marks the album’s midway point. It’s a sonic leap that’s symbolic of their new sense of adventure.
“That synth line you’re talking about was Brendan (Fennessy),” Savage points out. “He was left there late at night in the studio and that was his overindulgence, to put that at the end of ‘Brainchild’. When we heard it first we thought it was absolutely ridiculous but in a funny way, it lead well into ‘Contact’.”
So no internal conflict here. Friends since they were five years of age, O Emperor have often talked about their telepathic connection.
“Even when we recorded questionable parts that people wouldn’t agree with, they’d sit there for a while and think. After a time, the communal brain would decide if the part would stay or go. There was nobody in a hurry to naysay things.”
One of the working album titles was indeed Communal Brain. Naming the record was actually the one contentious point. “We went through a lot of joke titles. We actually have a long list we’re threatening to publish one day of all the titles that could have been.”
We’re going to have to push for examples...
“Oh god!” Christie mock-groans. “One that came very close was... Ablum. One particular member of the group was strongly campaigning for it. Rather ridiculous. Some of them are too unsavoury. What other ones were there?”
Savage smiles weakly. “There’s a lot but I’m not sure if we should even mention them!”

Vitreous is out on June 14. O Emperor play Whelan's, Dublin on June 21.