Evan Kennedy: "It’s nice to feel like I’m not hiding behind any other groups"

It’s been over six months since Evan Kennedy introduced himself as a fully-fledged solo artist with his debut single ‘Francis.’

A groundbreaking producer and engineer in his own right, this project sees the Dubliner turning over a new sonic leaf. With his first EP You Will Never Live This Down, the ambitious beatmaker explores a new side of his craft.

“In a production space, this new era has seen me slowly moving towards other genres,” he tells me, calling from a London café. “I wanted to use this EP as a clear indicator that I do a lot more stuff than hip-hop and dance music.”

You Will Never Live This Down has been in the works since 2018. Kennedy has taken his foot off the accelerator with collaborations, in pursuit of honing his individual craft. Each song embraces a different sensibility, and what emerges is an eclectic body of work that’s both sky-reaching and grounded.

Kennedy has incorporated a myriad of influences, musical and non-musical, with an eye to broadening his aesthetic horizons. Among the main inspirations were James Blake, Grimes, Joni Mitchell and Caroline Polachek.

“I’ve been slowly trying to manoeuvre my process to be less personal, and more observational,” Evan remarks. “I’ve spent a lot of time reading classic stuff and poetry, trying to get a little bit better with words. Just picking as much broad inspiration as I possibly can, in terms of the structure and small details.”

Working with the likes of Versatile and Synk, Evan’s learned a lot as an artist, acquiring the discipline and confidence to throw himself headlong into the deep end of solo work.

“Very early on, Versatile taught me to not sit on things for too long, and how to really finish the file,” he says. “A lot of stuff I’m making now couldn’t be further from Versatile, it’s probably the exact opposite. But I guess, in a way, that is the inspiration with this work, in that I wanted to do completely the opposite of what I did before.

“There’s an absence of clear genre lines with the newest stuff. It’s cool to construct everything the opposite way around and try to parse things out as best I can. I just wanted to open it up to looser production techniques. Not trying to chop up and manipulate vocals, instead of just having things there, is something I’ve been doing a lot lately.”

In the past six months, since dropping ‘Francis,’ the artist has charted a course away from past material, leaving himself space for new ideas. Having performed his first solo gig – in Killarney’s Gleneagle INEC Arena – for Damien Dempsey’s New Year’s Eve celebration, Evan embraces the discomfort of playing alone.

“It is a strange feeling going out and having to take the attention of a room, in one motion, completely by myself,” he says. “I kind of set it up like that, to scare the shit out of myself a little bit and get used to it.” You Will Never Live This Down impressively showcases road-tested production techniques and newfangled approaches. In creating it, Kennedy wanted to forge his own path.

“I wanted to make something of my own and build confidence in my identity,” he says. “It’s nice to feel like I’m not hiding behind any other groups. I get to slowly shift out of the shadows and be myself, loudly.”

• You Will Never Live This Down is out now. 

Check out Evan Kennedy's interview in our February issue of Hot Press: