Rocket From The Encrypt

Codes’ Daragh Anderson doesn’t know whether to be deeply flattered or faintly insulted. “I can understand why people would compare us to Sigur Ros and Muse,” says the singer. “I certainly don’t think we sound like those bands. I mean, we’ve also had Keane comparisons. Okay, we use a piano. Aside from that, I honestly don’t see it.”

He won’t thank us for saying so but you can see why people, rummaging for a reference point for the Dubliners’ sky-scraping sound, might end up reaching for Muse and Sigur Ros. Like Muse, their music is almost preposterously epic – you can easily imagine it sound-tracking a Stanley Kubrick movie or an IMAX documentary about weird looking fish or the mysteries of deep space. Plus, Anderson’s vocals have the same hairdryer falsetto quality as Muse’s Matt Bellamy and Sigur Ros’ “Jónsi” Birgisson.
“In our position we’re flattered that we’re being compared to such greats,” the singer allows. “Undoubtedly Sigur Ros would be a big influence. We certainly don’t sound like them but maybe there are textures in there. As to Keane and Muse... well if you sing in a higher register you’ll get that. We’ve gotten Jeff Buckley comparisons too. And, like a lot of musicians, there’s some Radiohead in our DNA. “
Of course, unlike all of those bands, Codes aren’t anywhere near filling arenas yet (though they played the O2 as support act to Keane earlier this year). Signed to the Irish division of EMI, Codes are what you might call a slow burn project – they’ve spent this past 18 months touring their asses off and, following the release of debut album Trees Dream In Algebra are starting to gain momentum, both at home and in the UK. No, you probably won’t hear them on radio – but that goes for the territory with an experimental band, says Anderson.
“We are play-listed on Today FM at the moment. Generally, radio is slow to pick up on new bands. People want to hear stuff they know. We’re making inroads. The label isn’t disappointed. They know better than assume a band like us would be instantly successful. We don’t go for the jugular too much. It’s more of a grower thing.”
Is radio in Ireland less willing to take a chance on something new and edgy than their equivalent in, say, the UK? He nods. “Yeah absolutely – there’s a simple, straight answer.”
Perhaps the biggest anomaly is that Codes’ are even hitched to a major in the first place. Aren’t we supposed to be living in an era of artistic empowerment, in which bands cast off the shackles of the corporate music business and bravely forge their own path?
“Well, it’s a one album deal,” says Daragh. “That’s probably as reflective of the economy as of their faith in our music. It’s kind of on a rolling basis. Labels don’t have as much money as they used to. Nobody is giving out development deals to bands anymore. It’s funny – a few years ago, all of these Irish bands had development deals. That’s a big risk for a label nowadays. So we had our album finished before we went looking for someone to put it out.”
More than one major was clamoring for their signature, he reveals. What convinced them to sign to EMI was the fact that the label was willing to grant them artistic freedom – which couldn’t be said of some of their rivals: “They liked the album and they weren’t looking for changes. Other labels were saying, ‘We’ll release it but we want you to change this or that.’”
And if the LP isn’t as successful as EMI had hoped for and they decide not to renew their relationship with Codes , it won’t knock the band off course, the singer insists. “I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t release our second album with EMI,” he says. “If they don’t, well we’ll still be making music. We’ll keep on anyway.”
Anderson admits that playing the support artist circuit in Ireland can sometimes be a thankless task (although they did get to face off against Keane in a soccer match on the floor of the O2 arena). Sometimes, however, the drudgery of opening for an international group can yield unexpected rewards.
“We were playing with an American band called Airborne Toxic Event. They said they liked us and wanted us to open for them in the UK, because they weren't crazy about their British support. You hear this a lot and normally you get an email months later saying, ‘Sorry, it won’t be happening’. We said yes and they said ‘great – the next gig is tomorrow.’ So we packed ours stuff and 24 hours later we were playing Koko in London. It was amazing. Apologies to whoever was supposed to be supporting them.”
Though there are a lots of synths and vintage electronics in Codes’ music, the band are wary of being seen as clambering aboard the electro-pop (perhaps that should be ‘electro-fop’) bandwagon. Certainly they blanch at being described as a contemporary of La Roux et al.
“Often when bands are described as electronic, you find they’re actually an indie band with synths. Whereas we write the songs electronically,” says Daragh. “At the start of making our album we sat down and thought, ‘Where do we want to fit in?’ A lot of bands don’t think about it and let it happen more naturally. For us, it was always a conscious thing: ‘Let’s not go to synth heavy because that seems like it might be the cusp of a trend.’ That was something we wanted to avoid.”
For those intrigued by Trees Dream In Algebra’s Philip K Dick-esque title, Anderson has a long, if rather convoluted explanation. “It’s a bit early to get deep but I”m going to anyway,” he laughs. “It came from a physics lecture I saw a couple of years ago on the internet. The speaker was a scientist discussion the patterns of number crunching in nature. On some basic level, even plants and trees have a degree of sentience to them – there are cellular things going on that we take for granted. There is so much number crunching in nature... all of this math going on behind the scenes.”

Trees Dream In Algebra is out now on EMI.