The Dublin Community Blog

Sending Letters to the Sea were already introduced in Brandon’s recent post; but I’d like to use the opportunity to feature the two ladies and four gentlemen in this month’s Discovered in Dublin. After a successfull release-show in St. Columba’s Church in Swords last week (were some of the material for the debut album were recorded), Dublinblog spoke to main main and initiator Mark Garry about future plans for the project and the reason to merge visual art and music in this band/collaboration.

Tell us sth. about the band and how you started making music individually, how you write your songs, and maybe a bit about yourself-titled album.
Nina and Karl and I had a band called A=apple, we mainly played improvised music (Guitar and piano based ) in Art galleries such as Project Arts Centre ,The RHA and the Irish Museum of Modern Art; we also played in the Temple bar music centre and Whelans. We released a 10” as part of an exhibition I curated .

About 2 years ago I got a visual arts commission and suggested I would like to make an album of music as part of the commission. After a period of research to try and find an interesting conceptual approach to the project , I decided it might be interesting to make a record about faith but not in an organized religious sense . I asked Nina and Karl and Sean Carpio and Fabien Leseure if they were interested in the project, thankfully they all were . We spent a period of time coming up with ideas that we all brought to a week long recording session in Berlin we also came up with some new ideas during this session . Nina and I also wrote some lyrics that we brought to this session. Fabien then wrote strings and choir parts for a number of the pieces and we recorded a string and choir in a beautiful church in Swords.

Would you consider Sending Letters To The Sea more as an once-off project, or are there any future plans in a band-related enviroment?
It is sort of a once off project, but we are bringing the participants to a Museum called The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania next summer to collaborate with a number of amazing musicians from Pittsburgh and this will culminate in a second release. There are also some film ideas in the pipeline .

Do you think it is an advantage to hail from Dublin (or at least being labelled so)?
I personally think it is an advantage . From an international perspective we are still recognized as a serious musical city and we have all in different ways been part of great Dublin based musical circles and have learned lots through this connection.

How important is the live performance for you?
It is very important to me and we had an amazing performance in the church we recorded in last week , unfortunately we all travel quite a bit with our careers and some of us live abroad (Berlin , Belgium) so it is difficult to play consistently. I think this is why the internet is amazing in terms of spreading the word about the record and we will post a live video and musical recording of this gig in the next week or so.

It seems the visual aspect of music is also important for you – considering your background. Will this be incorporated in the live-performance as well?
Not really. I wanted to keep it as much about the music as possible , but we have some film ideas in the pipeline. Nina has performed live to film in the past and this is something we are interested in .

What do you think about the current discussion about downloading, filesharing and copyrights? Is the web an advantage for new artists/bands (with or without record deal)?
I think in general the web has been amazing for new unsigned bands and I think that downloading & filesharing really only effects the top end (corporate) of the industry, I don’t think it will be much of an issue for us.

Where can we find more information about you? And, is there anything the world needs to know about the project?
We are really proud of it and feel it is beautiful and hopeful record and we hope people enjoy it. Here are some links to my other works:
http://www.kerlin.ie/artists/Garry.aspx
http://www.friezeartfair.com/yearbook_2009/artist/mark_garry1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattressfactory/2533271759/
http://www.mattress.org/index.cFm?event=ShowArtist&eid=86&id=403&c=Past
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1wz1cw6iI

If you are an artist/musician/band/busker who wants to be featured on “Discovered in Dublin”, please send an email to authors@dublinblog.ie