The talented musician Malojian speaks to Jenny McFarlane for éist

Stevie Scullion a.k.a Malojian at a recent gig

Solas Nua is excited to introduce Malojian to our Eist blog! Malojian is an Indie folk musician from Northern Ireland. He’s a rising star, who was recently featured in Q Magazine, Hot Press, AU Magazine, BBC among many other publications for his art of songwriting and dreamily intense lyrics. BBC’s Across The Line stated that ‘it’s only a matter of time before the collective conscience stumbles upon ‘that tune’’ or rather any of Malojian’s melodic & fresh tunes ‘and the secret is out.’

Hello and welcome Stevie Scullion a.k.a Malojian!

Jenny: So for those of us who aren’t familiar with your music, who is Malojian?

Stevie: My name’s Stevie Scullion. I’ve been writing songs since I was about 14 or 15. Malojian is where I’m at, at the minute.

Jenny: How would you describe your sound?

Stevie: I’m not sure. I’ve always felt like the songs I write are band songs. So even though I’m a “singer-songwriter” or whatever, the songs aren’t really.

Jenny: You just finished your debut EP ‘The Broken Deer’ recently. Are there any updates on the release date for our audience and can you tell us a little about the tracks on it?

Stevie: The EP has actually just been released. You can order a cd from my website or download it from my Bandcamp page. There are 4 songs on it. 2 upbeat and 2 slower ones. I didn’t have any master plan when choosing the tracks or anything, they were just the ones I was into at the time.

Jenny: ‘All I Need’ is my favorite track I’ve listened to so far and also, I read in Q Magazine that it’s also Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol’s favorite as well. How did it feel to be complimented so highly by one of Northern Ireland’s greatest exports and have you any plans to meet and possibly record with the man himself?! We want the scoop!

Stevie: Mr. Lightbody has been very kind to me over the last 2 or 3 years, writing nice things about my music and giving my old band support slots. I met him once, after we supported Snow Patrol in Dublin and he was sound, a real gentleman.

Jenny: Which musicians inspire you the most?

Stevie: Probably Neil Young & Bob Dylan. The masters! I love The Beatles too!

Jenny: How do you come up with the lyrics for your songs? Would you say you write from personal experience or do outside influences affect your songwriting?

Stevie: Bits and pieces of everything I suppose. Sometimes I’ll think a song’s lyrics through for ages and other times the song just seems to spill out onto the page. It’s weird.

Jenny: Best Gig so far?

Stevie: Mmmm? It’d be easier to answer “Worst gig so far?” but I won’t. Haha!

Jenny:  Who are you listening to at the moment?

Stevie: My wee girl singing in the bath. She’s 4 and a half and is the coolest person ever!

Jenny: That’s so lovely! I’m sure she’s a great wee singer! I read you’re going on tour in Austria and Budapest, playing lots of gigs around the area! That’ll be such a great tour. I imagine you have a large fan base there. Have you any further plans to tour Europe or further afield?

Stevie: I toured Austria in 2010 with my old band and it was an unbelievable experience. Really class people. I loved it. The promoter has been kind enough to bring me back so I can’t wait! I would love to tour everywhere but I’m still managing myself and haven’t quite opened all the right doors yet.

Jenny: Will you be playing any festivals this year too?

Stevie: I’m looking for an agent at the minute to try and get on the festival circuit. I’m playing with a full band now and I can feel the songs starting to take off live. Hopefully we can get on the road and start building the fan base.

Jenny: I read that the title track from your earlier EP “Life Rolls On” was used for a Vodafone ad campaign in Feb’ ’07.  How did this collaboration come about and how did it feel to hear your music on the telly? I’m sure you were very proud!

Stevie: We released the “Life Rolls On EP” around the same time Myspace was taking off in the UK. It was all over the news etc. I made a page and put the songs on it and almost immediately we got contacted by a synch company in London. I think we were just lucky. Right place, right time. A few months later they rang me at work and said Vodafone wanted to use the song. I thought we’d made it and was about to quit but alas it was actually only a radio campaign! Haha! Onwards and upwards I suppose!

Jenny: Have you any future collaborations of this nature, in the pipeline?

Stevie: I’m talking to a company at the minute about a possible deal which I think your readers/listeners would like. If it works out I’ll let you know what it is.

Jenny: Finally, what can we expect from Malojian in the not-so-distant future?

Stevie: I’m in the studio at the minute working on finishing the album. I’m not 100% yet if I’m gonna release another EP first or go straight to the full record but there’ll definitely be more new music coming soon.

Jenny: Thanks for speaking with me Stevie and I look forward to hearing more from the fantastic Malojian.

Stevie: Cheers Jenny!

Check out http://www.malojian.com for more info on Malojian’s music, latest gigs and blog.

Northern Irish band, And So I Watch You From Afar talks with éist’s Jenny McFarlane

ASIWYFA's second album cover for 'Gangs'

And So I Watch You From Afar are a three-piece rock band from Belfast, Northern Ireland. The band consists of Rory Friers on guitar, Johnny Adger on bass and Chris Wee on drums. They wrote and released two albums and two EPs as a four-piece with former member Tony Wright. Over the last number of years, they have received huge success and play across the world to packed theaters. They supported Them Crooked Vultures recently after being invited to do so by Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters). They are signed to Richter Collective, and in 2011, announced a deal in North America with management and record label Sargent House. Here, Rory Friers from the band talks with éist.

Jenny: Hi Rory! So, for those of us who are not familiar with your music, who are And So I Watch You from Afar?

Rory from ASIWYFA: We’re from Ireland, we tour lots, we play music we love, we’re best experienced live, I think.

Jenny: How would you describe your sound?

Rory from ASIWYFA: I guess it changes from record to record, song to song, but generally it pretty high octane, high energy, honest, loveliness and usually a bit shy on the vocal side, a lot of our songs are just instruments. But it’s cool, it’s the best fun music to play for us, we love it.

Jenny: Tell us a little about your current album, ‘Gangs’.

Rory from ASIWYFA: It’s our second record, it’s 8 tracks, it took 6 weeks or so to record with our producer Rocky O’Reilly in Belfast. We wrote it in like 8 weeks after scraping a years worth of material, it was exciting and it worked out in the end. It’s a bit of a tip of the hat to all the people and places we’ve seen whilst touring. I guess that’s it’s theme, people and travel. We’re stoked on it, it definitely felt like we nailed a good record out, it feels like an album, like its meant to be in that order all together. In comparison to our first it feels a lot more grown up.

Jenny: What was it like supporting Them Crooked Vultures and possibly, more importantly, being personally invited by Dave Grohl to do it?!

Rory from ASIWYFA: That was a pretty amazing couple of weeks, I was worried we might implode with excitement nerves or just vomit all over John Paul Jones when we met him, but we kept it cool, played great shows in front of a billion people and generally had the time of our lives. We blagged all our mates to come with us too, we were like, yeah we have 4 guitar tecks, 2 merch dudes and this guy needs to be here to tell us nice things before we go on stage, so it was basically us and all our friends partying with Dave Grohl, JPJ and Josh Homme round Europe every night, it was amazing. To have been invited by Dave was amazing and then to be invited back again for a special last show of the tour in London again was a dream, although I drank loads of red wine mixed with cola and got sick.

Jenny: Well worth it, though, probably! Which new artists/bands are currently influencing you the most?

Rory from ASIWYFA: I’m listening to a lot of electronic stuff, Hudson Mohawke, Gold Panda, Toby Kaar, Rustie, Mike Slott, Flying Lotus but also lots of other stuff too, loving The Dodos, all our Sargent House label buddies, Antlered Man, Deafdeaf from Russia, Axis of from NI, there’s too much stuff to put in here but its all gold, really excited by a lot of stuff at the moment, want to squash it into smoothy and drink it or something. I guess everything we listen to influences us in some way, it all seeps in and we try and just make sure its all the best stuff get through into our songs. But we’re just home from 2 weeks in Russia and Ukraine and that trip alone has inspired us hugely

Jenny: How did it feel to win Best EP at the Digital Socket Awards in Dublin last year? I’m sure you were ecstatic!

Rory from ASIWYFA: Yeah it was amazing, unfortunately we were out touring so couldn’t actually pick it up, but yeah a great one for the mantle piece for sure.

Jenny: I read that you performed the longest tour a Western band has ever undergone in Russia. That is pretty amazing! How did touring the continent come about and what was it like?

Rory from ASIWYFA: I heard that, I hope its true, we just got a hook up with this new booking agency who had got in touch with our booking agent and they were like, come to Russia there’s loads of kids out here who love your band, so we just set about putting the wheels in motion for it, we went last year and we’re just home again from another tour this year, and this time it was through the roof. I wanna go back tomorrow. We have a piece of our hearts out there now, the people who come out and make those shows what they are – gold, pure, honest, passionate, legends.

Jenny: You teamed with Tim Wheeler from Ash a while ago in London, covering songs by The Pixies. Being a fellow Northern Irish act, would you say his success with Ash spurred you on to keep playing and writing over the years?

Rory from ASIWYFA: Yeah, I remember going to see Ash play in the Ulster Hall when I was a kid and being totally blown away that they were Irish and could fill such a huge venue, so ten years later to be headlining the same place was really special and then to be playing Pixies songs on TV was brilliant, a real fan boy dream type thing. Those guys are just so super cool, it was a pleasure to hang out with them and become friends, it was like a joining of generations.

Jenny: One of your band members left recently to pursue his own musical aspirations. I’m sure it was a sad day for you all. What has it been like to jam without him?

Rory from ASIWYFA: Yeah that was super sad, but with all big changes comes new energy and a good chance to evaluate everything. We’ve been jamming and writing loads and of course its different in many ways, but its exciting and it’s still us. It’s a new chapter for the band. But yeah we’ll always miss Tony. He was there from day 1.

Jenny: Taking the interview back to Northern Ireland for a second, who would you say is one of the best N.I. bands you’ve seen play recently (other than yourselves of course!)?

Rory from ASIWYFA: There are a few really good bands playing right now. Our buddies Not Squares, Mojo Fury, Axis Of and LaFaro are amazing, great albums out and all touring at the minute. But the new bands I’m loving right now in NI are bands like Dog Will Hunt, Eaten By Bears, Fucking Road Trip, Lantern for A Gale, Empty Lungs, there’s loads!

Jenny: I know you guys perform at a lot of festivals during the summer months. Do you reckon you’ll make it to America for any festivals this year?

Rory from ASIWYFA: I don’t know, we hope so, we’ve been doing festivals in Europe 2 years in a row now, (or is it 3?) so we’re probably going to give Europe a break this summer which leaves us plenty of time to have fun in the US, but we’ll see. It’s still very early days for us over there. We need to get a few tours under our belt first maybe, but I’d sacrifice a ball to play Coachella this year though for obvious reasons.

Jenny: Ha,ha. We really hope you make it to Coachella! Finally, what can we expect from ASIWYFA in the not-so-distant future?

Rory from ASIWYFA: Well, we’re just home from Russia so still need to defrost, but in a few weeks we’ll be at SXSW and play some shows round there, then it’s some south European shows and we’re probably gonna be making an announcement soon about some more US stuff. But we have a couple of exciting bits of news we’re announcing next month, I think so its all good in the hood. It’s going to be a good year.

Fantastic. I can’t wait to hear that exciting news soon! Thanks for speaking with us Rory and we look forward to hearing more from ASIWYFA this side of the pond.

Check out more from ASIWYFA on their Myspace or Facebook

éist: a retrospective

After eighteen months of exclusive interviews and music updates, Éist offers you a selection of highlights in this month’s ‘Éist Retrospective’.

Featuring chat and music from Gemma Hayes, The Coronas, Jinx Lennon, Caoimhín O Raghallaigh, The Saw Doctors, HAL, Valerie Francis and The Flaws.

All podcasts available at www.irishpodcast.com

* Éist on ITunes: http://ht.ly/1FONx

* Éist on Facebook: http://bit.ly/bndwFH

2 Door Cinema Club for NME Awards

County Down band Two Door Cinema Club have been nominated for a second NME award which will see them face the likes of Arcade Fire and Crystal Castles in their quest for the ‘best album’ title this month. The Northern Irish trio are also up for ‘best new band’ following a year jam packed with success stories surrounding the release of their debut album ‘Tourist History’. The awards ceremony will take place on February 23rd but in the meantime, here is a little something from the groups earlier repertoire.

Anne

éist chats with republic of loose!

This month Éist chats with incomparable lead-singer Mick Pyro, from Republic of Loose!

Republic of Loose are an Irish funk/soul band, based in Dublin. They formed in 2001, and have since achieved the status of third most-played Irish band on the nation’s airwaves, behind U2 and Bell X1.

Mick Pyro is the band’s enigmatic lead singer. While Mick may be a man of few words, in this podcast we gain an insight into the band’s formation, musical style and their methods, and the background to some of their most famous songs. As well as three previous hits, we’ve also got two great songs from Republic of Loose’s most recent album, ‘Bounce At The Devil’!

Songs featured:

1. Comeback Girl

2. The Steady Song

3. We People (Who Are Darker Than Blue) ft. Sinead O’ Connor

4. The Lamp

5. What Kind Of Man Would I Be?

 

* Artist’s Website: http://www.republicofloose.com/

* Éist on ITunes: http://ht.ly/1FONx

* Éist on Facebook: http://bit.ly/bndwFH

Go Steady With It!

“The Steady Song” is a single from “Volume IV: Johnny pyro and the dance of evil.” It reached number 12 on the charts. It is one of the bands more subdued songs.

Don’t forget to download éist’s exclusive interview with mick pyro of Republic of Loose on Tuesday 1 February!

“Bounce at the Devil” hits #1 on the national independent chart!!!

The Sunday times described the single “99”  from “bounce at the devil” as “vintage prince”.  Listen to it for yourself here and decide if you rather party like it’s 99, or groove to republic of loose’s “99”