It’s difficult to believe that Meljoann’s impeccably produced, woozily electro-influenced R’n’B came from Dublin, but it did. TD tries to find out how it happened.
So you were presented to the world by Nialler9 as influenced by the skweee genre, a mix of spare synth melodies and R’n’B rhythms. Is that fair?
I don’t know if influenced is the word because I think a lot of people came up with a similar idea at the same time. There’s the skweee stuff in Scandinavia, there’s the Glasgow sound, aquacrunk, and then there’s post-Dilla stuff in America. The general idea is coming from hip hop and R ‘n’ B influences and pairing them with electronic or experimental influences.
It seems like the sound came from nowhere. There’s electronic music in Dublin, but not this.
I think I was a bit odd in my tastes. I was into 80s and 90s R‘n’B, really dissecting it. A lot of my mates in Dublin are electronic music producers as well, and they laugh at me, the attention I pay to the exact frequencies in the snare in that track from Bobby Brown or something. It started out with Michael Jackson in the 80s, which is a fairly common thing to be into. There’s so many things you can extrapolate from that. And then doing my own research, and getting into old soul and other things like that.
You put your EP online for free with the option to donate. What was the thinking there?
I’m always pretty broke myself, and I’d just prefer people to have it rather than not be able to afford it. I don’t mind about filesharing or any of that. I think people will support something they’re into at some stage, or most people will.
Words: Karl McDonald
