SOULMAN

Northern soul fans are a strange breed. What else makes a person dig through dusty crates of 7” records looking for that obscure 45 made 25 years ago in an American backwater? What inspires them to lose it on the dancefloor of a smelly, drunken basement to a record most wouldn’t bat an eyelid to? Answer: Passion, commitment and, well, soul.

And whatever way you look at it, the lifeblood running through Oisin Lunny is soul music.

Oisin’s introduction to music, came, unsurprisingly, through his father, Donal Lunny, he of Moving Hearts and the Bothy Band fame. Donal brought the young Oisin out on tour with the Bothy Band around the high-roads and by-roads of Ireland as a nipper. In the back of a red transit van. Very rock ’n’ roll.

“Yeah, it was a crazy experience, traveling around with a bunch of folk-crazed hippies,” he says. “I have a very deep place in my heart for that particular era and what he did. In terms of traditional stuff, I didn’t really grow up learning it. I liked it, but I got into other stuff, like pop music when I was a kid, The Specials and stuff like that. It’s music that I love but it’s something I never did.”

Then came the Northern soul thing. “It was my first real obsession,” he admits. “It’s the only music that makes you want to dance and cry at the same time. And then when I heard hip-hop, I was blown away by then possibilities of it, of bringing sounds from different genres together.”

Oisin moved to London and formed Marxman, a left-wing Irish/Bristol hip-hop crew that delivered a ferocious debut in the shape of 33 Revolutions Per Minute, and a decidedly angry single, ‘Sad Affair’, that rallied against the presence of British troops in Northern Ireland. It was, rather unsurprisingly, banned by most radio stations in the UK. Something to do with the inclusion of the lyric “Tiocfaidh Ar La”, no doubt.

“It was a mad experience, I was relatively young when it happened. We got to do some pretty cool things, I’m proud of what we did politically and musically. Musically, I was experimenting a lot with integrating Irish sounds into the music. Politically, we did some stuff with Women’s Aid with ‘All About Eve’, we marched on the British National Party’s headquarters, which was a great moment. Travelling to New York to work with DJ Premier (legendary hip-hop producer) was a top buzz for a 22-year-old hip-hop fan!”

In a way, Marxman were always talked about more for their politics than their music. And for a music fan, things had to change.

“I got quite bored with what we we’re doing. I mean, people liked it and it was successful, but it wasn’t really doing it for me. So I decided to jack it all in and start Firstborn.”

The first rumblings of Firstborn were heard on a relatively anonymous 12” that appeared on Chuillean Records in 1998 called ‘Home Movie’. A collaboration between Oisin and his childhood friend, writer Bennun Murphy, it was a dark, drunken tale of nightlife, heartbreak and ugly street violence.

“We’d planned to collaborate for years, we’d bump into each other at parties in Dublin and we be a bit locked and talk about doing something, so we eventually did. I came over to Dublin and recorded a load of Bennun’s short stories over many beers in his kitchen. I came back to London and put it together.”

Talking to Oisin, it becomes evident that this is the music he’s always really wanted to make, gritty tales of real-life and heartbreak, of soul and real emotions, something more tangible than Marxman’s admirable but lofty ideals.

“It was the most exciting thing I’d been involved in years. I was excited that the lyrics were coming from Bennun as a writer rather than somebody as a rapper. The music was written around Bennun’s vocals. He delivered his stuff acapella and I found the timing in his words. The music was being led around his flow, rather than the standard idea in hip-ho.”

Difficult and dark as ‘Home Movie’ was, the follow-up was an unexpected and quite simply jaw-dropping homage to his youth on Dublin’s dancefloors. A glorious piano-led stomper in the real-sense of the word, ‘The Mood Club’ was a northern soul blast that sounded quite like nothing else at the time. It first surfaced in late 1998, it won praise from DJs as diverse as Norman Cook, David Holmes, Ashley Beedle and, erm, Pete Tong, who stuck it on the soundtrack to the pills ‘n’ thrills movie, Human Traffic. It was that good. On a more local note, it also provided the soundtrack to a New Year’s Eve bash at a packed Dublin night-club.

“I heard about that in London,” enthuses Oisin. “That made my fucking day. At the time I was in a fucked situation in a lot of ways. I had reached a bit of a low point. But that was a big turning point hearing that track got played in Dublin on New Year’s Eve. At the time, the guys in Division One record shop in London were literally hitting people over the head with it, going ‘have you heard this record?’. That’s how I got my deal with Independiente in 1999.”

And the intervening two years of studio work have resulted in the Firstborn album, When It Hits You Feel No Pain. In a way, the album is the link between Oisin’s musical past and present, all given a 21st century re-rub. It encompasses hip-hop, soul, house techno and even traditional Irish music, as Donal features on one of the tracks, ‘Lifeblood’. And despite the moments of respite like ‘The Mood Club’ and ‘I Close My Eyes’, it’s quite a dark record.

“It’s a bit of a jouney through dark, but you come out the other side,” offers Oisin. “As much as there’s darkness in there there’s also redemption. There’s realisation and peace of mind at the end of it. It’s supposed to take you somewhere and out the other side. It’s absolutely looks at all sides of exsitence. It doesn’t paint one picture musically or thematically, it’s about a whole circle of stuff.”

Also on the CD is a rather nifty enhanced section that allows one to download tracks and videoclips from the Firstborn website (www.firstborn.co.uk). And then there’s the new club night at Dublin’s Shelter club in Vicar St., which will feature live collaboration from Bennun Murphy alongside lashings and lashings of good, old fashioned Northern soul.

“I’m quite happy to let the club, the webiste and the enhanced CD to let people know what’s gone into the album. I can stand by it in every respect. It wasn’t made for any niche market or target audience. Every track on the LP is relevant to me in some way – ‘The Mood Club’ is a snapshot of me a teenager in Dublin which was absolutely magical. And ‘Home Movie’ was the starting point of the album.

“It took a long time for me to get there, but I think I can stand by it, and say ‘I’m not bored’. It does everything I wanted it to do.”