Are You Avant A Laugh?

Composer, producer, curator, “intermedia” artist, former member of groundbreaking outfits such as The Virgin Prunes and Princess Tinymeat – it’s hard to know where to begin in describing Daniel Figgis. He started at just six years of age as a child actor appearing in movies and TV films including George Schaefer’s Emmy Award-winning A War Of Children for CBS TV (1972), BBC TV’s adventure serial Sleepers On The Hill (1974) and Joseph Strick’s A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.

“That just happened,” he explains. “I did ten years of it and I got every job going. I was on a non-stop rollercoaster. I was a cute kid – I even had my own driver at the time. I don’t know what that does to your head. But it was problematic working with bands over the years. You assume it’s all about you.”
When he grew out of acting, he drifted towards the then burgeoning post-punk environment in Dublin. “I joined Virgin Prunes as an invited interloper,” he says. “I was completely outside of that circuit. I’m from Ranelagh and I’ve no connections to the Northside or to Lypton Village. They wanted someone to direct them towards a record deal and that’s what I did.
“I was the drummer and musical director and did a bit of keyboards and had started tape work. It was very loose. I tightened it up a bit and then we signed to Rough Trade. And then we had a falling out. I wanted to push it further than being a punk band. By the time we parted company they were no longer a punk band.”
He still continues to work with former Prune Dik Evans, brother of U2’s Dave (Edge) Evans.
“He’s on the new solo record that I’m working on at the moment. I include Dik in everything I do. He’s a neural network scientist and doesn’t really work in music much unless I ask him to. He’s a great guitarist, a great lost talent.”
Figgis then initiated the Princess Tinymeat project which was a primarily instrumental collective with three core members: Daniel Figgis (as ‘Binttii’), Tom Rice and Sissy Box (né Ian Rivlin).
“We were ahead of our time. Many in the blogosphere feel that we foreshadowed shoe-gazing and bands like My Bloody Valentine. I never felt that we realised our full potential on disc, which was entirely my fault. But watch this space.”
In 2010 he was appointed Artist in Residence at Pearse Museum, Dublin where he has created and presented ASCENSION in the walled garden at St. Enda’s Park. It was a work for pre-recorded surround-sound, four live performers and a spectacular light installation.
He also worked on a series of ambitious “site-specific” events with his live ensemble including MOTOR for the Kilkenny Arts Festival (2004); TAMPER at the Dublin Fringe Festival (2004) in Marlay Park; THE BANQUET, a multimedia “opera for dancers” built and performed at the National Basketball Arena, Dublin (2006); and AWOL (givinguptheghost), a short film incorporating what he describes as “auto re-composition”, choreography and a hypnotised dancer, which was filmed underwater for DIVERSIONS, Temple Bar (2006).
“I’ve never been so busy,” he says, sitting in his office at Pearse Museum. “I have chosen in recent years to present live events in public spaces as opposed to traditional concert performance spaces. Right now, I’m working on this Crash Ensemble thing, I’m making a new solo record and I’m talking to an agency in London about film soundtrack work. I enjoy the rock ‘n’ roll world to its fullest when that’s appropriate. When I want to create I want to connect with natural growth and decay and not urban growth and decay.”
The Galway Arts Festival commission for the Crash Ensemble entitled dimmerswitch is, he says, a particular honour and one he is looking forward to. “They’d never commissioned an Irish composer to write something for the full 10-piece line-up of the Crash Ensemble. We took the idea a step further and started folding recordings of the piece on top of one another. So there are ten live performers, augmented by a further 14 on tape who, between them, play a further 23 parts including ‘pigbass’, church organ, harmonium, piano, Hammond organ, Mellotron, spatula, processed brass, cello, hi-hat, playground swing, clock, bicycle horn and Moog Taurus 1 bass pedals.”
Clearly he has a good memory!
“Essentially, it’s a dialogue between the ten musicians and a tape piece,” he explains. “What’s on tape cannot be played by human beings but it’s not electronic – it’s processed organic sounds. For example, one of the places where we worked, there was a problem with the plumbing and the noise sounded like a tenor saxophone. So I recorded it and built a chord from the faulty plumbing. It’s an astounding sound, a bit like Ornette Coleman going off on one. It’s all about being aware of your surroundings.”