Alan Duggan Borges (The Null Club, Gilla Band): 'I feel like we're in a very privileged position'
An interview with the Gilla Band guitarist about his new project, and collaborating with Elucid, Faris Badwan, and Mandy, Indiana's Val, plus techno, Fontaines, and his 'other' band the Claque
Alan Duggan Borges, guitarist in Gilla Band, released the debut, self-titled EP with his solo project the Null Club on April 4. Comprising three tracks, each features different singers: Elucid (Armand Hammer), Faris Badwan (The Horrors), and Valentine Caulfield (Mandy, Indiana), respectively. It’s a powerful introduction to the Null Club. As Alan tells me, he’s drawn to music that “has an intense noise or abrasion”, something he is able to indulge with this project, which touches on rap and techno while encircled by a symphony of noise. I talked with Alan at his studio in Yellow Door, in Dublin’s East Wall, around the release. We started out by talking about his ‘other’ band, the Claque, with Kate Brady and Paddy Ormond, who released one single in 2019. (Interview has been edited for length and clarity)
Listen to the full interview on TPOE 343:
So the Null Club isn't your first non-Gilla Band project. You had a band called The Claque a couple of years ago. How do you look back on that? Did you see it as a side project back then? Or did you just see it as ideas you wanted to explore that feels like it was more of a band- whereas the Null Club seems very much like just you.
Yeah, the Claque was definitely not a side project. I mean, we took it very seriously, and it was really fun. We wrote a lot of music; writing with Paddy, writing with Kate, was amazing. They're both really, really, really incredible songwriters, but it just ran its course.
You released an EP in 2019 and then I'm guessing the pandemic comes along. It seems like so much either stopped or started around 2020. Is that what happened?
We released a single, an A side and a B side in 2019 but then 2020, yeah, it just disbanded. But that's roughly when the Null Club stuff started, I guess. But I look back on the Claque really fondly, and I really learned a lot from writing with Paddy and Kate because up until that point, I'd only really written music with Dara, Adam and Daniel from from Gilla Band. And also, what was really important - the way the Claque wrote was we wrote using drum machines. So there was this little phone app that we used called FunkBox... that's how we would form the drum element of the tracks that we did, which really informed what I'm doing with the Null Club in terms of using older drum machines and stuff like that.
So how does making a track with Gilla Band compare with the Claque compared to Null Club? Is it guessing Gilla Band is just all of you in the room during a song?
No, no. It used to be, I think when we first started, it was very much all of us in the room. So we would all be down here (Yellow Door). There might be a rough idea for a rhythm or a general direction or something. It's like, 'Oh I was listening to this track. I like what's going on here.' So we might start like that, and then we would all play together. And it was usually just a case of just throwing everything at it and just seeing what sticks. It's a cliche, but it would be that kind of approach, and then you'd chip away at finding where the melodies are, where the hooks are and stuff. That's how we started with Gilla Band. I guess the process of starting with a rhythm or starting with something, that stayed the same, but the idea of all of us having to be in the room, I mean, we haven't really done that since about 2015. So when we started writing The Talkies, and when we were doing Most Normal, a lot of that was recording a drum loop and looping it, and then layering on top and slowly adding things in on top. And we've just done that more and more. With the Claque, that was a bit different, because I think there was scope for people to come in with more fully fledged out ideas; Paddy might come down with a chord progression, and that would be like a jumping off point where it was like, we never have that with Gilla Band - no one would ever come in with like, 'Oh, I have these chords' - well, we don't use chords really, but you know what I mean. So it would never really start like that. So, yeah, that's how the Claque differed. And then with the Null Club, because it's just me as a starting point, it's similar to the Gilla Band approach in the sense of getting a drum loop, or getting some sort of loop, recording that in, and then layering on top and developing it out from there, and then getting it up to a point where I would send it over to somebody to put vocals on. It's a similar approach, in a way. I feel like what I've done in all three projects is a relatively similar thing in terms of just putting ideas on top of what's already there.
Just sticking with the Claque, did you enjoy just getting these new ideas, talking with these new people who you hadn't been making music with for nine or 10 years, however long Gilla Band had been together - is that just a good thing to do, to get refreshed and get new ways of working, maybe, whether that's a drum machine or something else?
I think so. That's not to say that with Gilla Band that we've run out of idea - I'm not saying that you're saying that. With the lads, it's always really easy. I think we're always constantly excited by stuff, and we haven't hit a point yet where we're like, 'Jeez, have no idea what to do.' Of course, you get them moments or whatever, but in terms of fully knowing where to direct a thing, that's always been there. But with the Claque and with this project, it's working with new people. You'll just learn new things. People have different ways of thinking about rhythm or melody or chords or production. And when you work with other people, it lets you, from my experience, flex your muscles a little bit in areas that you might not have been able to, whether that's leaning into a certain aesthetic a bit more or pulling more directly from one influence or another.
Do you think that you accomplished what you wanted to with the Claque, whether that's recording the stuff, getting the ideas down and releasing music and playing live as well? Do you think like, 'Oh we could have done more'? Is there a bit of regret there, or anything, or is it like, 'We ticked that box, we're satisfied'?
I guess it got as far as it was gonna go. I think maybe the three of us might have wanted slightly different things from it. So I think it just logically ran its course. I mean, I don't look back at the project in terms of the music that we made with any regret or anything. I just think it had done its thing.
I got to see you guys live. I saw you in Brussels supporting Fontaines and Gilla Band. Do you remember that gig at all?I don't know if you played with that bill a couple of times on that tour.
No that was the only time that we done that where I played two shows in one night.
You were like, 'Never again'. (laughs)
Yeah I thought it would be a lot more intense than it actually was. It was grand in a way. We've done a good few shows, not loads, but we've definitely done a few. We did a good bit of touring around the UK, a little bit around Ireland - we played in Galway and Derry, and we played down in Cork, some shows around Dublin. So there werea good few shows - not an insane amount of touring.
I remember the Claque just being so loud as a support band. Maybe that's because you're in the main band playing that night as well?
Yeah it was loud. There was a lot of really louder, harsh elements to the Claque. My guitar is very loud and harsh. Paddy's guitar was very loud and bright and harsh as well. That drum machine was quite aggressive as well. So there was a lot of that kind of frequency with it, so it definitely made it loud, for sure. But I don't know, I'm just in loud bands, so I don't really have much of a barometer for that.
What do you remember of Fontaines?, Have you played shows with them much? Six years later or something, it's incredible the level that they've reached. Could you see it that night, that there's something there?
There was just such a fever for people to see them. They were just selling out shows constantly. And that hasn't stopped.
They're playing to 55,000 in London this summer in Finsbury Park.
It's just insane. It's crazy. I first saw them at Other Voices when they were playing one of the bars on the trail to, I dunno, 15 people or something like that, 20 people. And then they played with us in Mayo in 2017 I think. I think they were called the Fontaines at that point. And then I saw them at Hard Working Class Heroes when they played that year. So I'd seen them a good few times, and it was interesting, because I guess the first two times, they were very much like an unknown band at that point, at Other Voices and at the gig that they played with us. They might have had a single out or something, I'm not sure. But you could tell there was something really cool about it. There was definitely something really special about it, I guess. Then it just went and went from there.
It just hasn't stopped either. Even during the pandemic they released their second album (A Hero's Death, which was nominated for a Grammy). It just hasn't stopped for them.
Yeah, it's incredible. It's and they're such a hard-working bond as well. So it's great to see a band be independent, put in all that work and grow to the level that they have. It's phenomenal. And I think that's going to be really, really, really inspirational for a lot of upcoming artists and upcoming bands.
Is it nice to know that you're an inspiration for them as Gilla Band? They would have always cited you back then (as an inspiration). It would have been such a thrill for them to support you guys as well back then. It must just be nice to know that there is that influence there.
That is lovely. I think one of the best compliments you can get is if another band or another musician or another artist, says they're influenced by what you do and it makes them want to do something. I don't think you can get a bigger compliment than that. So, yeah, it's incredible, really, really, really cool. But yeah, it's just, it's mind blowing how big it's gotten. They're huge now, it's great.
So the Claque, it was 2019 when you released that music, Most Normal came out in 2022 and now you're doing the Null Club in 2025. Do you have the idea for the Null Club floating all throughout the past five years, these ideas of what the Null Club would become?
I guess so. Yeah, I think when the Claque finished up, I definitely knew I wanted to keep writing music myself. And like I was saying, with the Claque, something I learned a lot about that was using drum machines. So when the pandemic started, I was quite keen to keep writing by myself and trying stuff out by myself. And I had this loose idea of, like, 'Oh, I could write songs and I could get other vocalists to guests on it, but I have to learn how to do all that'. Because every time with Gilla Band, Foxy, obviously, he's the engineer of the group, he knows how to record. So whenever we'd be doing anything, he'd be the one recording it all. So I never knew how to do any of that stuff. So over the pandemic, I learned how to record. I learned a lot about synthesis, which I knew nothing about.
Synthesis, in terms of...
Like learning how to use synthesisers, I literally knew nothing about that. All I was interested in up until that point was mainly guitar effects, really. So learning about - it's a whole world to get lost in. That was really, really, really eye-opening. So learning about drum machines, learning about recording and learning about synthesis was what I started doing (during the pandemic). And you know the first thing you record, you're like, 'Oh, this is amazing', and it's absolutely terrible. But it was really exciting, because I was like, 'Oh, that's what's happening there.' When I was going to record at home, it wasn't completely unknown to me, because I'd spent so much time in studios or down here (in Yellow Door), just looking at the DAW that Foxy was using, the digital audio workstation, so I was just familiar with how the whole process looked and how it worked, but that was just as a starting point, and then spent the next couple of years learning more and just doing more. With a lot of these tracks that are on this EP, the starting point for them was maybe 2021, maybe 2022. I remember being on the phone to Val in 2021 being like, 'So you're up for doing this?' It just took a long time to get - I guess what I originally wanted to do was release an album worth of material and start it that way. But I think once I got to 2024, I was like, If I wait for that, it's actually never going to happen, because you're completely reliant on other people's timelines; you're chasing people, 'Oh, are you up for this?' 'Yeah'. And then two, three months goes by, four months goes by because everyone's busy. So it just takes a long time to actually get it together. So I was like, if I don't put something out, I may plausibly never put anything out, and that is not something I want to do. So I was like, you know what, I'll put out an EP. And, yeah, it just ended up being these three tracks.
Did you always see it as something where you would collaborate with other people? You obviously have the three tracks, three different singers on each one. Is that how you envision, envisage the Null Club being?
I wouldn't write off the fact that I might release some stuff solely by myself, but never me singing. I'll never sing or anything ike that. I hate the sound of my own voice… I like listening to music that I've made. I hate hearing my own voice, so it would just completely negate it. I can't write lyrics. That's just something - I can't do any of those things, which is cool… I never saw it being a completely instrumental project. I had always imagined that I would be working with other vocalists for the tracks. In terms of the live side of it, I never thought I would do it live. I actually had thought I might set up another name and start releasing techno music under a different name, and maybe just start doing live shows that way. But then I figured out how to bring it all together in a way that I think makes sense.
You mentioned techno there. I was going to ask you about Blawan's 'Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage', which I always feel like it was such a turning point for Gilla Band when you did that track around 2010, 2011. Do you think of that as a turning point?
I think there's definitely truth in that. So that was released in 2013, that was part of the Quarter Inch Collective, which was run by Ian Malaney. So the idea was that bands from Ireland would cover a track from the year just gone. So our friends, they were in a group called Peaks. One of those is actually Jamie. She's in M(h)aol. And Roy Carter. They were like, 'Oh, you should cover Blawan's'Why They Hide Their Bodies'.' We're like, 'Cool, don't actually know that', gave it a listen, 'OK, yeah, that could be fun'. I always felt like the turning point for us as a band was on our first EP. France 98. There's a track called 'You're a Dog'; that was the first track that we wrote that didn't have a chorus. It was just following a vibe or something like that. That was a real turning point for us, because we were like, 'Oh, you don't have to do a verse chorus verse chorus situation, you could just keep going very much like techno music does or also like Krautrock does, which we were listening to a lot at that time. After that, I'm not sure if we had 'Lawman' written at that point or if the Blawan cover was before, I'm not entirely sure which came first there, but they were following a similar path. I think the Blawan cover was the most direct, we leaned into techno as an influence, because it's covering a techno song. So, yeah, it was a turning point. But I always think the real turning point for us was, 'You're a Dog' in France 98 even though it doesn't really maybe sound like that, I know between us when we were writing, it was a real like, 'Whoa, you can just keep doing the same thing'OK, yeah, we don't have to try write a chorus' - which we weren't ever particularly good at doing.
Is that where you get into techno as well?
Kinda, I guess it began around 2011, 2012. I lived in Prague for about half a year in 2012 and I was going to a lot of techno nights around that time, and getting more involved with the culture of it, I guess, so it just became like a big influence in general. And I think for all of those around that time, because we were all about 21, 22, 23, around that age, so we were going out a lot, and when we were going out, that's the music that we wanted to hear.
Do you see the Null Club as techno-ish music? I think that track that you released with Val is probably the closest to it.
It's definitely techno inspired, for sure. It's influenced by that, I would say, quite directly… I'll just naturally gravitate towards stuff that has a bit of a bigger beat, or has a rumble, or has an intense noise or abrasion. I'll just be drawn towards that a bit more. I think, with the Val track, that definitely leans on that a lot more than the other two. But I didn't sit down being like, 'OK, let's write a techno track'.
‘Frameshift’ ft Elucid
It's interesting hearing a rapper work with your music? Had you ever thought that that would work together? Is that something that you would have thought about?
No, I think Elucid is a real bridging gap there. Because I think if you listen to his stuff, and a lot of stuff from the scene that he's from - the whole Backwood Studio in New York, so himself, Billy Woods, or even other artists like Fatboi Sharif - there's a lot of these underground hip hop artists from that scene that rap over very abstract-sounding beats. It's very progressive, it's super strange and really weird. I've always really, really loved hip hop, but I've never seen a way in. I don't know how I could ever make hip hop. It's always really influenced what we've done. With Gilla Band's last record, there's a lot of production stuff there that's directly a big influence from those types of artists; big, heavy-handed production, big filter sweeps over tracks, or pulling them out, or this kind of thing. But that was always as far as I ever thought that could be. I never thought like, 'Hey, I'm in this noise rock band. Do you mind if I produce some hip hop?' I just had never seen how that would ever happen. So him reaching out to us, that was a lightbulb moment for me, or even just this is an incredible opportunity, like he sees a crossover here. So, yeah, I just jumped on that then as a result.
‘14 Hours’ ft Faris Badwan
Are the Horrors a big influence on you, on Gilla Band?
The early stuff, for sure, particularly their second album, Primary Colours. That was a big, big record for me and my friends.
That last track, ‘Sea Within a Sea’…
That Krautrocky... it's just super cool. That was a big influence in my early 20s. I loved that record. You know what I mean, in your group of friends, there might be a band or an artist that all of you are just into at the same time. Like, the Horrors was that band… So similar with [the Elucid track], Faris just reached out to Gilla Band, he was just like, 'Hey, I really like what you guys do, if yis ever want to work together' - I think he was coming from the perspective of if we were looking for a producer. Which we're not, we just do it ourselves. So we're like, 'No, but I'm doing this if you're interested.' And he was into the track, and then that's how that came to be. That was the starting point of that. So that was really cool,.it was like, 'Fucking hell, it's Faris from the Horrors'.
They must be an inspiration, just in terms of, like, he goes off and does different stuff as well. He does solo stuff as well. He collaborates with other people. Then he comes back to the 'day job' and gets back to doing things. That seems like what Gilla Band do - you're all going your own direction, I think you're all doing solo stuff or something else as well. But then you all come back into the same room and it's just like, back to it.
Yeah, I think with Gilla Band, it's one of these things that's going to be forever. I don't really see it stopping. We don't get bored of it. We don't rely on it as a source of income. None of us make our living off of Gilla Band so there's no pressure there to be like, 'Oh, we need to get a record out right now', and that makes it stressful . That's just really not the case. We all have our jobs separate from it, and it allows us to just do what we need to do. I mean, we're Rough Trade. Rough Trade are really supportive and really just allow us to do whatever we want. So it's grand, we just have funding there to release records. So it's just in a really healthy place. With all these tracks that are on the Null Club EP, I showed them to all the lads - like, Foxy mixed them. The 'Frameshift' track, that starts with this long instrumental synth thing. I had always seen that as being the ending of a track. And then I remember I showed it to Dara, and Dara was like, 'That sounds like the start of something to me. 'And I was like, 'Oh, I never thought of that.' That helped me. Everyone's really involved. I've heard stuff that Dara is working on - Dara shows me loads of stuff that he's working on, and we're all just down here (Yellow Door). We just hang out here, you know what I mean? So, yeah, it never stops. I don't think, since we released The Talkies , we've never stopped. It's just continuously writing,
I guess it's disappointing that you're not able to make a living as just Gilla Band, that you do have to have a day job. Is that something that ye had to come to terms with? Or is it a good thing that you don't have the pressure of, 'Oh, this album has to kill, we have to sell X amount of units, or whatever.' Is it a good thing not to be 100% relying on it? You've come to terms with it?
I guess there's pros and cons. I think that if you are fully reliant on something, if you're fully reliant on your art to make your money, you plausibly might make decisions which might help the business side of what you do, but maybe not the artistic side of what you do.
Compromise.
Yeah, right, because so much of it is like, you have to keep relevant, so you have to get music out quicker. Some artists are really able to do that. They're able to put out albums every year. They have that ability. Other artists, maybe not. We certainly cannot, we're very slow, and that's fine. That works for us. But then there's the other side - if we did fully live off it, maybe we would be able to be more prolific. Maybe we'd be able to be down here more and be more in it. It's hard to know. I think you just have to work with this situation that you've got. And what we found with ourselves was that the kind of music that we make and the world that we exist in, if the only real way for us to make a living off this would be heavy touring, that's just not something the band wants to do. The four of us don't want to be out on the road all the time. That's fair. It's really hard. It's really hard for keeping relationships. It's really hard for mental health. It's also really hard for writing. We're not the type of band that can just pull up to a venue and try and soundcheck, work on something. We need lots of time to work on something. Rhere's pros and cons to it. Yeah, it'd be great if we could make more money out of it and live off it a bit higher, but..
You and every other musician in the world!
Yeah, right. I feel like we're in a very privileged position that we're in. This is cool, we're able to make it work. So we're gonna just try to keep making it work until everything turns into a hotel. We have to think about what's next.
(We did discuss ‘Slip Angle’ featuring Valentine Caulfield, but that bit of the chat just sounds better in audio than written out. Here’s what he says about it from the press release, just in case you were wondering: "This would be the most techno inspired track. I tired to mix techno and noise with this one. I first saw Mandy, Indiana in Manchester at the psych fest in 2021. We managed to say hello, and from there I reached out to Val to see if she would be interested in working on the track. Thankfully she was into it. I sent her on the instrumental and she came back with rough vocals using the mic from headphones for phones. We re-recorded the vocals in her home in Manchester in 2021 surrounded by her cats, but actually kept some of the headphone takes in the track.")