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“I think it’s fair to say that we were one of the first.”

Back when Basic were ploughing a lone electronic furrow in the Northern scene Eamonn Creen had no doubts about the musical direction he had chosen to follow. When he looks at the sheer weight of talented electronic acts in Belfast today, surely he must feel some sense of vindication.

“People were making that kind of music four or five years ago,” says Eamonn, “ but they weren’t going into Lavery’s back bar and playing it. That was cool, but it was doubly cool when crowds started coming to watch us.

“Then came the likes of Solaris and it was just joy upon rapture that others were doing something in a different style but with such a similar set-up. Now you have the likes of Hedrock Valley Beats and Welt and Jupiter Ace and I just think it’s something to be pretty proud of because the barriers have been broken down.

“The standard of electronic music is far higher here than the standard of guitar music. It’s all so individualistic. Like, there’s no-one making music here like Jupiter Ace, no-one making music like Welt, and no-one making music like Basic. It feels healthy and it’s good to be part of it.”

It is important to note here that, in regards to what his outfit has to offer, Eamonn is speaking very much in the present tense, because, given that for the guts of four years Basic was very much a partnership between him and David Foley, there were those that doubted it would or could continue after David’s departure at the turn of the year. So what happened?

“He jumped rather than being pushed. He just wanted to do something else. It’s hard to talk about it without it seeming to be boringly amicable, but I’m afraid it was all completely smooth. The point came when he had to make a decision to sign up for four albums and make a long term commitment to Basic at a time when he just wasn’t happy with where he was and what he was doing, or to go off, have a think about things and do his own thing. So he wished me all the best and left. To be honest, it wasn’t that much of a shock. There had been rumblings for quite a while that David wasn’t happy.”

The creative chemistry that exists within bands is so volatile that it’s often impossible to predict the effect that one member leaving will have on the organism as a whole (who’d have thought the absence of the two Ringos, Guigsy and Bonehead, would have wounded Oasis so mortally?). So it’s easy to understand that, when he found himself the sole member of a collaborative duo, Eamonn had to overcome many initial doubts to continue with Basic.

“A lot of times I was acquiescent when it came to making decisions in the band. I’d have my say but, for a quiet life, I’d pretty much run with the general consensus. It took me a long time to get to grips with doing it on my own – making those small decisions when it came to writing material – but I did it, and I feel a whole lot better now for it. One of the things David said to me when he left was, ‘now you can stop censoring yourself’. There were things that both of us knew the other wouldn’t like and we’d edit the hell out of them to make them more palatable. It was a dynamic. With that missing, on one hand I don’t have anyone to say, ‘that’s no good’. But on the other I can run with my own ideas. But I have to admit, for the first few months, it was very much a phantom limb kind of situation.”

Now, though, Eamonn seems fully prepared to start doing things on his own and, after signing to Reverb, Basic plan to release the C404 EP in September, with a full album expected to follow sometime early next year.

“We’ve probably demoed about four different albums for four different labels over the years,” he says, “but I wouldn’t have been 100 percent happy with any of them. But now feels like a good time to start doing it properly.”

Basic play ‘Hard Light’ @ The Kitchen on 13th July. www.audiobasic.com