Interview: Shaun Darcy on Research, FU and his DJ alias Aeron

The Research collective has built a very strong reputation for itself in Dublin over the last few years, how did it all start?

I felt there was a lot of great Irish Techno being produced that was struggling to get put out. With that it was holding back artists and a scene from evolving further. So myself and Doug Cooney sat down and discussed how we could make something happen. In the end the result was Doug releasing with the RLSD label, which is doing some great stuff at the moment and myself with Research.

You've put on gigs in Hangar and District 8, but it seems that 39/40 is the place where Research has been thriving the most? You highly contributed to turning it into a techno haven and I guess a lot more is coming in 2020?

So just to clarify, Index is the name of a night that myself and Subject's Ronan Flynn run, and 39/40 is the club. Since it's the most consistent and popular night in there, people seem to think the club is called Index.

And to answer, we have some pretty massive plans together this year. Something huge is coming, but I can't say too much yet!

With Research, 2020 is going to be our biggest year yet. The addition of Gary Kavanagh (TainT) and Rory Dowling has been huge, and we are coming at 2020 with everything we've got. We have at least 3 releases coming out across the year, and they are seriously strong. Each release has a big focus on Irish artists with some international heavy-hitters in there too.

We've also got loads of great club shows, raves, some big festival collabs planned with Life Festival & Fuinneamh, shows around the country (we'll be in Dali in Cork Feb 7th with the Prospekt crew) and also some nice club collabs with our friends from Belfast DSNT who are absolutely killing it at the moment.

There are also the FU Parties that you launched last November?

Yes, FU is a midweek night catering for solid Techno, House, Garage, Hip-Hop and loads of other more underground sub-genres. It takes place weekly at Farrier & Draper which gives us 3 rooms to work with each night.

I suppose you could say it's almost a revival of nights like Strangeways or Bruce Willis which offered a load of different rooms of music midweek. It gives us more platforms for different artists from around the city to cut their teeth. Plus throwing a huge party in a massive Georgian mansion every week is pretty fun. We kick back of January 29th

As Aeron, your DJ alias you've gotten to play a fantastic closing set at Life Festival last year & supported acclaimed DJs such as Paula Temple. I heard you are now also getting into production?

I am indeed. I had Dj'd for years before, but I stopped to concentrate on running shows and building something there. With Aeron I made a conscious decision that I was ready to pursue Dj'ing again. I put a lot of time into really finding then honing my sound and style.

I've had some amazing sets over the years, Life Festival closing set on the Index Stage, the Anachronica 'rave in the woods' at Electric Picnic, District 8, Index as well as now getting to play shows around the country. It's been great and there are some big things on the horizon this year.

Yep, production is next. I'm working away at the moment, I'm exactly where I want to be with my Dj'ing so it's now time for some productions.

There are also your annual closing sets at Fuinneamh, I guess you have a particular feel for those?

Yeah my first set for the guys was when the festival was called Lunasa. I think the festival had a little over 1000 people at it. I'm really grateful for the guys trusting me with that set. It was when I had just announced I would be doing Aeron so to be giving the closing set of that festival showed serious trust. I approach those sets really meticulously and work extremely hard on them. When people are at a festival they have gone to live in a different world for a few days and then when they come to see me I aim to take them out of that world and into mine. If I have a few hours i try to make it really special.

Yeah the set was meant to be an hour long, but we had no noise complaints so the lads just kept asking if I could play on. I prefer a long set so I was delighted. In the end it was 6 hours or so and it was amazing. The set up, the crowd and the setting was just incredible. To this day and probably forever that stands out as my favourite set.

It kind of propelled me straight away. I've been invited to close every year of Fuinneamh since and now take a much bigger role in the overall festival. Fuinneamh is amazing, it's an incredibly special festival. It's breaking down barriers and becoming a dream festival, you can ask anybody who attended last year's edition. It will be the standout festival of 2020 mark my words