Despite existing since their days together in secondary school seven or eight years ago, Dublin three-piece Cloud Castle Lake are only now releasing their first record of their own music (though they had contributed covers of Jacques Greene, Kanye West and Jai Paul to Quarter Inch Records’ Quompilation series) through Max Rocha’s new label Happy Valley. For a while even it seemed like Cloud Castle Lake were becoming an urban myth, destined to never release a record! However thankfully those fears have been allayed with the appearance of Dandelion, this September.
The EP’s side A features a spray of blurred horns and synth strings under which spooked funk grooves scuttle, while the flipside opens into more bucolic pastures, the songs borne on acoustic guitars and a sense of space. It’s thoroughly modern music, seeming rootless but reflective of much around it, all linked together by Dan McAuley’s vocals, destined to be referred in perpetuity to as cooing, searing, soaring, vaulting and the rest. Totally Dublin met with Dan, Brendan William Jenkinson and Rory O’Connor in a city centre pub to find out more.
You’ve been around for so long – where exactly does Cloud Castle Lake starts and as a sub-question, when does the band, as it is now, when does that begin in the chronology?
Brendan: How far do you want to go back? [laughs] I think all that we need to say is that the four of us formed in school, with James [O’Donohoe, former drummer] and then continued it through college with varying levels of success, sort of on and off but without ever really gathering enough momentum to make anything proper. James unfortunately left the band last year, it was just one of those troughs where we weren’t really doing anything and he had a lot of other commitments. So that forced us to examine things and look at our direction. But it had come at time when we had just moved into a new studio so that was a positive thing to look forward to. We just tried working away on some stuff without him and then we got in touch with Max, who is Happy Valley, and lots of stuff has since come out of that.
So at the moment we are a three-piece but we’ve done some things with our friend Ross [Turner, from I Am The Cosmos] over the last number of years. For example For example, Ross drums with Lisa Hannigan and we did some support slots for Lisa Hannigan, Dan sang on I Am The Cosmos’ record, so we’ve been connecting a bit with Ross over the last few years. And just in the last few months when we were void of a drummer, Ross stepped into the breach. It was good timing because he came along for the London show [in Turbine Hall at Tate Modern during Simone Rocha’s show at London Fashion Week] and we sort of planned the recordings around that. One of the tracks of the EP, Mothcloud, James is on. So there are recordings that are stemming over from a couple of years and then the first two tracks on it are new recordings. The last track is also new, but it doesn’t have any drums.
So it’s almost as recent as since James left that a renewed spurt of activity has come about.
Rory: Yeah, James left in December and then we got offered a gig with Max to open for Simone [Rocha]’s fashion show. And then Max was like, “If we do this we should maybe announce a record because I’m going to set up a label” and that happened and there’s just been this momentum going since then.
B: That said, a lot of our ideas and our aesthetic and what we want to do has been building since the last five, six, seven years. So while it is a new version, it’s something that has a legacy.
There’s a video online of you doing Mothcloud two years ago, and A Wolf Howling was on your Breaking Tunes account forever.
B: It’s all coming out now!
It’s just that when I first heard of you, I didn’t know any of your music, because there wasn’t any of it to be consumed. Is that something that you’re happy now that it didn’t happen? Or is there a regret that there’s not more stuff finished and existent?
Dan: I think now I’m pretty happy, because those songs have existed for a long time but I don’t think that we ever had the means to realise them as we wanted until recently, so yeah
B: We were quite satisfied with the songs, their composition so we didn’t want to release them until the production was at the same level.
Were there points then when the momentum was completely gone and you didn’t think that you would keep on doing it?
B: That’s a good question, but I don’t think so.
D: We’ve always been eager, but there were just times where we didn’t really have the motivation to do it.
R: We had a space over the Workman’s Club for a while and then we were kicked out of there – all the bands were – and we were trying to find a space for a while and that’s when James left and there was nothing happening.
B: When we were in a trough and there was no momentum, we didn’t really think about it too much. We just kinda waited for the next thing to happen instead of getting really nervous and thinking, “Oh no, we can’t be in a band any more.”
D: Also when we set our own deadlines, we don’t really pay them enough heed, so with having Max, we had actual if-we-don’t-send-this-the-record-won’t-be-made-in-time type deadlines.
So how far in advance does the future get planned from this point, now that you have a record coming out?
D: We’re kinda starting to put plans together now for when the next release after this is going to be. We’ve maybe a year planned.
B: And also because we have our own studio now and we’re paying rent, we feel like we need to get the most out of it. So it’s a combination of that and Max guiding us with aims and objectives that forces us to work a lot harder. Well maybe not “harder” but more intensely. We always worked hard but maybe not as intensely as we are at the moment.
R: Basically we are more focussed on the music while Max does all the business side, all the scratching at walls and trying to get somewhere.
So what does the future entail? Or are you at liberty to say?
B: Well I’d rather not because I always think that saying things just ties you into a certain tunnel.
D: Well, it won’t be five years until the next release.
An album?
D: We’re working towards that, but we’re playing it by ear a bit, depending on how it goes.
What do you think about the first line of that Pitchfork thing where they were like “Finally someone has worn the influence of Sigur Ros and Radiohead well!”?
B: Well I didn’t get the “name-dropped” thing, what does that mean? We haven’t name-dropped them!
D: That’s what I think he meant though, was that of course they’re not going to name drop them because when was the last time someone said, “We’re influenced by Radiohead” because everyone is. But it generally just means that a band has a synth.
But you’re not afraid of those reference points, you’re happy with the comparison.
B: All the reviews in the press have pretty much mentioned that, then gone on to say that it’s good so, that’s OK.
R: I think Clash in particular mentioned in particular Dan’s vocals being like Wild Beasts, and I didn’t really get it. I know I’m not really a fan.
D: There’s a little bit of it where if there’s a falsetto involved you can name anyone.
R: Did you see what Padraic Moore tweeted about it?
D: He said it was more countertenor than falsetto… but that’s the same thing?
B: No. Countertenor can go way up without going into falsetto.
D: Uh.. I thought countertenor was just falsetto?
Is it not the difference of singing from your front of your throat or the back of your throat?
D: Or like your chest voice and your throat voice. In the falsetto documentary, a lot of it is to do with the countertenor… [pause]… don’t mention that I watched the falsetto documentary!
Is there something that determines what’s going to be Cloud Castle Lake work, or what’s going to be more experimental, more composer-y, more song-y…
R: I think when we get together, we just know what we need to do.
B: In terms of myself, the Low Tide [side-project with drummer David Lacey and cellist Anna Clifford] stuff usually comes out in the practices. I think when you’re working on an idea you just know exactly where it has to go, whether I’m in a Cloud Castle Lake songs format or a Low Tide format.
You were working with people to record this EP, right?
B: So it actually turned out that each track was done in a different studio. So I think we had different engineers for each song, but Alan Kelly who worked in Windmill Lane, he recorded it… Well, the recording of Sync was kind of weird because we had a demo version which we then recorded the brass over and then we kept the brass and kept a lot of the piano and the samples and then we went back and tracked a live band over it. Al recorded the live band and vocals on Sync, Mothcloud and Dandelion. But we were ‘the producer.’
R: What Al did was speed everything up. He set up everything so quickly that the day just flowed so nicely.
B: But it’s more or less the first time that we’ve gone with that approach. We gave ourselves limitations which were great, like – we’re going to do Sync in one day in the studio. Or we went down to Fiachra Trench’s studio in Delgany and we recorded A Wolf Howling there, again just giving ourselves the limitations of one day. And if there were pieces missing afterwards we would fill them in ourselves.
So the process was actually quite short to record this.
D: Relatively yeah, but there are some bits that are old.
B: As well I think, because we’ve been working on those songs for a long time, we’ve become quite sure of the composition. So when you’re really sure about where you’re going and also what you’re working, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done quickly.
Do you ever feel weird adding new bits to old songs just as you are recording?
R: Dan actually did that on Wolf, there was this beautiful old vintage keyboard in the studio, we just took it out and starting playing it and it’s all over Wolf. And it was never really there, I mean there was a synth line, but that sound and that line just came out.
B: I don’t think we’re ever too precious, it’s just about following a vibe. I always just think of Bob Dylan and how much he’s changed his songs in 50 years. I saw him in Kilkenny a few years ago and I didn’t recognise any of the music but I recognised all the words. I really like how he doesn’t give a shit.
Cloud Castle Lake’s debut EP Dandelion is released on Happy Valley Records on Friday 19th September. They play Whelans on Saturday 20th September, tickets are €10.
Words: Ian Lamont / Photos: Dorje De Burgh
