Well connected

The Connect Four Orchestra is a name frequently uttered in hushed, respectful tones amongst Dublin’s hip musical cognoscenti, conjuring vague images of an indeterminate number of experimental, instrument-swapping music boffins, tinkering happily with the post-rock palette. My mission is to sort out some of the facts from the mere assumptions over a cup of tea in Whelans, where the band are busy preparing for another of their rather complicated soundchecks.

There are actually five members, Glen, Andy, Joe, Ian and Neil, and each one plays a multiple of instruments. “I suppose the fact that we swap instruments confuses people,” Glen says. “The word ‘Orchestra’ plants the idea that there’s a lot of us in people’s minds. There’s no deep significance to the name – we were once at a party where there was a Connect Four game and people were shaking the pieces to make sounds.”

Not the willfully experimental, highly-accomplished musos one might expect, the band are humble about their skills. “We blag it a lot, people think we’re a lot more proficient than we are,” Andy admits. “We don’t try to invent new instruments or new ways of playing,” Glen says. “And we hardly ever improvise while on stage. The way we structure songs would be unusual, though, and I can see why people might view us as a bit unorthodox – we have a different slant, and we don’t have a vocalist. So we’re not exactly mainstream.”

They’re certainly guilty as charged when it comes to playing their own version of musical chairs on stage. “We usually only change instruments around after every a couple of songs, so it’s not too chaotic – we do a couple of songs in a similar style, and then it’ll change. People would get fed up with us swapping instruments too often, ‘cause we have to stop and retune and so on. And we’d definitely panic.”

The Connect Four Orchestra emerged from the remnants of two different bands about three years ago. Andy and Glen were in a band called Palomine with two girlfriends – “a kind of Abba situation,” as Andy puts it. “My brother Joe, and Neill were in another band called Loreta and we all practiced at my house, so we’d hear each other’s stuff. When the two bands split up, we joined forces.”

The guys have no problems with the inevitable ‘post-rock’ frame of reference or comparisons to its pioneers, Tortoise. As Andy so eloquently phrases, “The term post-rock is not really categorizing the type of music, so much as saying what it comes after, in that it’s moved beyond simple-structured formulaic rock.”

“When The Kids (a music collective set up to promote new bands and artists) put on one of our gigs, the poster read ‘The Connect Four Orchestra (Tortoise are suing, it’s gone beyond the joke!).’ When we went on stage we said, ‘Hi, we’re Tortoise’,” Niall laughs. Joe seeks to differentiate, “Tortoise don’t use really heavy distortion, they don’t rock out as much. We’ve still got a bit of rock in our veins.”

The group is very happy to work with other bands on the independent Dublin scene. Ian explains, “Nearly all the rock bands in Dublin know each other. An idea came up on the Thumped.com forum that everyone should get together and form one umbrella organisation. There’s now a collective called ‘The Things,’ which allows bands to pool their efforts to put on gigs and get records out. The Things website will be a resource for people to learn how to independently record an album, get it pressed, distributed and promoted. We’re going to arrange a Things Tour for a few bands to play in venues and colleges all over the country.”

With numerous side-projects in the works, (check out Andy and Neil’s contributions to Good Time John’s band and future works for electronica promoters Front End Synthetics), the Connect Four Orchestra’s recorded output to date consists of one Road Relish split 7-inch single with Jimmy Behan and a double A-side including the song ‘Chinese Action Hero’ released on Grey Slate, plus an inclusion on the Mango Music compilation. Describing themselves as “itchy” to write some new material as soon as they get an album done, The Connect Four five will be locking themselves into a well-sound-proofed, nicely-acoustic garage-based studio, hopefully emerging with their debut album before the summer.