ØXN - CYRM (track by track)
An interview with ØXN (Radie Peat, Katie Kim, Elly Myler and John 'Spud' Murphy about their debut album CYRM
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ØXN are Radie Peat (Lankum), Katie Kim, John 'Spud' Murphy, and Elly Myler (Percolator), who have just released their debut album CYRM via Claddagh Records. They were the guests on this week’s episode of The Point of Everything podcast, TPOE 283, which you can subscribe to here and listen to the episode below. I’ve transcribed most of the interview too for this week’s long read (edited for length and clarity). We talk about how they got together (if you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear Islander’s Jonathan Pearson describe how they began a little more), what it was like making the album when they’re all so busy with their ‘other’ bands, and we talk through the six tracks that make up CYRM, hearing about influences and how they made the songs their own. Buy CYRM here.
Do you want to maybe start by talking about the beginning of ØXN? It sounds like it was Katie and Radie's idea maybe initially back in 2018?
Radie: Yeah, so me and Katie got set up on a date basically, a music date, by Jonathan Pearson as part of Music Town. It was like, 'What if yous did a collab?' I think it was only meant to be on one song or two songs and then we'd do a solo set. I had mostly just collaborated with Lankum and other folk people, so we didn't know what we were gonna find when we started trying to do stuff together. And actually we found it clicked really fast and we got really excited about it. So we instead decided to do a full collaborative show then, so we put together what is essentially the bones of this album now, as ØXN - that's when we selected most of the tracks that are on this album. And we did it twice - we did it once in Dublin and once in Cork but it was very different because it was just me and Katie so it was just two people; more stripped back than what has become ØXN.
Katie: Cormac did feature in the Dublin one.
Radie: Cormac Dermody played with us. There was one track then that was later put on a Lankum album instead. Then during lockdown, we all lived beside each other and me and Elly were already playing. Elly was playing with me on solo material. Because I was meant to be doing solo gigs. That got cancelled. So me and Elly were playing together and Katie and Elly had played together previously. And Spud lived with Katie and was in the next room when we were practising. It made a lot of sense to have everyone just playing together.
What were you talking about when you were playing together? Was it just like, let's go back to that initial set that we did in Cork and Dublin? Were you thinking bigger?
Katie: I think we were just excited to add to it and to build to it. I was saying the last day, it was like, you (Radie) hadn't really worked with building off synthesizer sonics at the time. The songs, we were really happy with the way they were arranged and the way they sounded We were like, 'Oh, I wonder how it would sound if we brought in percussion and brought in some synthesizers and brought in bigger sounds.
Radie: Because they were suited to that as well, although I really like, and I actually still like listening occasionally, to the really pared back versions cos they were a bit more intimate. They were definitely fertile songs for just adding loads and mad textures to. Yeah, as you say, more electronic, like synth. Definitely the drums - as soon as Elly started playing on the tracks, it just changed the whole [thing]. I think both myself and Katie were quite sort of disappointed that - because we put in a huge amount of work to get that show together, you're talking months of work for essentially what was two gigs and no recording. And then life took over: Katie was working and doing her Katie Kim albums and shows and then I was doing Lankum stuff. And was just really hard to even think of getting it together to even do a gig together. And then actually, during the pandemic, because we had time and we lived around the corner from each other, we were like, 'You know what, I've always been disappointed that we didn't continue with that collaboration and bring it to what is I think its logical conclusion, which is fully arranging it, recording it and releasing it as an album.
Katie: Yeah, and it was a case of literally just grabbing the closest people to us, who happened to be also our friends and also people that we really liked working with and that we're really comfortable working with as well. I'm just really comfortable working with Elly and Spud. And I became really comfortable working with Radie over the time that we got working together. So it was just really nice. And we're like, relaxed to be able to just spout out ideas, and run with it.
So Elly and Spud, were you guys there for that first show? Did it take you a while to figure out what you were going to add to Radie and Katie's sound?
Elly: Well, Spud was really familiar with it because he did sound for that Dublin show in the Pepper Canister.
Radie: And for Cork as well actually.
Elly: And I was there, I was in the back row of all women that I'd been out with that day, and we were all holding hands together. Like just really, really feeling it. We were really drunk. But as drunk as we were, it was one of the most memorable gigs I've ever been to and I had no inclination then of ever being a part of that. It was a good while after that I started preparing for Radie's solo stuff. And then the idea of doing that material was actually very exciting because I obviously enjoyed it the first time I heard it
Katie: I remember during lockdown, and I was walking down towards Drumcondra from Phibsboro, and I just saw Radie and Elly walking together and I was like, 'What are you two doing?' 'Nothing! What!?' I was just really excited by the fact that they were starting to do stuff together as well. That was really exciting.
Radie: Even before we decided that Elly should join the me and Katie material, me and Elly were getting together a full set for my solo stuff for gigs that were meant to happen. And there was a bit of crossover there because we played 'Love Henry' as part of a solo, it was done in the National Concert Hall as part of a stream. And as soon as I heard the drums on it, I was like, 'Oh, that really needs those drums, that really knocks into a totally different realm. And I just thought it added so much doom and atmosphere.
Katie: You just took away the question from Spud.
All: Sorry Spud.
Spud: I did sound for the first gig, obviously. But then, when the girls were rehearsing for the NCH gig, when it was Elly and Radie, I was in here mixing something at the time, so I was eavesdropping throughout the day, listening to what they were doing. And you know, had a couple of ideas or whatever. And then when we got together, or when I got added in, it didn't take very long for it to work and gel together and make sense.
Were you thinking of your other projects at all? While you were making the album? Were you thinking ‘we don't want it to sound like Katie Kim, like Lankum, like Percolator’? Are we not thinking about that at all, it was its own thing?
Katie: Didn't even cross my mind.
Radie: I don't think it came to mind. For me as well, it's more like, you're not really thinking about your other projects. For me, it was more like, enjoying the aspects of this collaboration that have no place in my other work, if you know what I mean. Because you're like, 'Oh, let's actually go for this, let's make it sound synthy. What drew me to it was the differences anyway and essentially, what you can do here that you can't do elsewhere. It's a different thing. And I think that's the same for you (Katie).
Katie: For me, working with traditional songs, I had never ever would have approached that before. So working with traditional songs and rearranging them and stuff like that, that was just really interesting to watch that process and watch Radie go through that process, then be involved in it. I'm definitely completely outside of Katie Kim world when I'm involved in that, because I'm just really interested in how that's all working and how the cogs that all work.
Elly: Ah it's totally different to Percolator. You have to just turn that off.
Katie: And I'm sure the way that they work in Percolator is a different format to how we would probably have approached things.
Spud: We shoehorned a Percolator rhythm in laughs}
Radie: But that's the thing, there's a little bit of everything in all of it... if you've never heard anything we've ever done, right, if you heard ØXN first, and then you went and listened to Katie Kim, Lankum, and Percolator, you'd hear the seeds of it in ØXN,
It sounds like you recorded it during the pandemic. And now it's finally coming out at the end of October 2023. Did ye sit on it for a while, was it nice going back and listening to it and getting it ready for release? Did ye have to sit on it for a while before you thought about doing something with it?
Radie: I had a baby, so...
Congratulations.
Radie: We recorded it all before I got pregnant and then I got pregnant. And I have to record a Lankum album, and a soundtrack and try and record my solo album. I didn't manage all of it. And then we mixed when I already had a newborn, I think when we were mixing, and we were mixing remotely, partly and you'se did a lot of the mixing, because these guys all have way better ears than me, basically, for mixing, So that was coming out of pandemic restrictions that I had a newborn baby. We were slow enough with that. And we wanted to get it right. Also, it's just great that we're actually releasing it now, and it's a bit later, we can actually do gigs. I feel like we can give it the proper time now, in 2023.
Katie: Just because post-pandemic, everybody had to start working again, picking up where they left off and trying to gather everything back into the basket again. Once the restrictions were lifted, you did have a lot of shit to do on top of also having a child. But then there was also backlogs of work for you (Spud). There was work for Elly, I was bringing out Hour of the Ox as well. There was loads of different stuff. Lankum were going on a big tour.
Radie: Yeah, we were also mixing False Lankum and we had to bring that out as well. It was a huge amount of stuff.
Was it nice coming back to it?
Radie: I'm really proud of it. I love it. I'm just gonna be that person who says I love the album we've made.
Let's talk through the songs on the album, I suppose maybe first we should talk about - it seems like there's this overarching idea behind the album where it seems like it's reclaiming (maybe reclaiming is the wrong idea); is there an idea linking all of the songs together? It seems like it's about women, female focused and maybe repressed throughout history? Am I on the right path there with that very bad explanation?
Radie: Yeah, and I'm not gonna offer a better sentence than that, really, because it's a bit of a loose idea. And really, the music is meant to speak for itself in that. The original gigs were billed as a night of musical stories. And we did select the narratives of each songs deliberately. So we had a chat about what the world might contain and what kind of an atmosphere and world it is, but there's definitely a vein of strong female narrative, ostracised women as well. baddies as well, villainous women.
Katie: Yeah, that's what we thought was nice. There is oppression there, of course, as is always the case.
Radie: 'Love Henry' though is about...
Katie: Also 'The Trees' - 'The Trees' and 'Love Henry', they're kind of the baddies.
Radie: Yeah, we did deliberately lean towards those narratives. And honestly, I've always had a bit of - that's probably to do with when I'm collecting folk songs, I do find those ones with the strong female narrative and subversive female narratives more appealing than your standard murder ballad where it's just like a man murdered a woman because he got her pregnant or about a woman being really beautiful and having a lovely time. I find it more interesting if they've got a bit of grit.
‘Cruel Mother’
'Cruel Mother' is the opening track on the album, a long one. I'm presuming that this is one of your selections, Radie. Is it a track by Andy the Doorbum, I was trying to find it. I couldn't find the original.
Radie: Yeah, you won't. The only place you can actually listen to Andy the Doorbum's version of it is on a Fire Draw Near episode. And I think he recorded it for Ian. So I heard Andy perform it just in a room in Ireland years ago. Essentially, what he had done was he had adapted the American versions of 'The Cruel Mother'. So he'd taken all that imagery, like the oak, the thorn, the bell, all of that is in the American versions. But he'd put his own arrangement on it in terms of melody and which verses came when and he changed some of the lyrics. And I actually thought that I had been looking for a version of 'The Cruel Mother' that I wanted to sing, like I was well aware of 'The Cruel Mother', I had listened to all of the versions, and I hadn't really found one that I loved. And then I heard Andy's version. And I was like, 'OK, I really love that'. And I asked him, would it be OK if I sang it? And he said, Yeah. And so then I ended up putting a guitar arrangement on it, I think before I was chatting to Katie about doing things, I was thinking of doing it on my own, but I just couldn't figure out what to do with it apart from the guitar arrangement and the melody. And then yeah, brought it to you and then it started to click from there. Obviously when Elly and Spud came on board, it turned into this crazy krautrock odyssey. I just love the trajectory of that: So it goes from me hearing Andy singing it in a tiny room in Limavady outside Derry to the video is the culmination of all of that.
Katie: I think Elly went down a bit of a wormhole as well going into all the symbolism and imagery for that whole thing as well (video).
Radie: The ostrich egg.
There is that moment that you talked about where, I think I have it at seven minutes and 10 seconds, where things really take a turn in this song. Is that the influence of Percolator, or Elly and Spud?
All: Yes, 100%, 100%.
Radie: But also, I think we're channeling a little bit of Beak> there. as well.
Katie: Don't say it!
Radie: I've said it, it's out there now, we all love Beak>.
Katie: OK fine it's the Beak> part!
‘The Trees They Do Grow High’
This is one of your songs, Katie. It sounds like quite a heavy song, lyrically. Where did you get this one?
Katie: It's a traditional song.
Radie: Landless sing a version of this song as well.
Katie: There are loads and loads of different versions of that song... There was a Joan Baez version that I heard that I really liked... I really enjoyed the Joan Baez version of it, just the way that she told the story. When we were going through songs...
Radie: We were rewriting the lyrics. It's something that tends to happen anyway, where we're like, 'This sounds a bit clumsy, what if it's just like this?' So you're kind of rewriting many of the versions you have anyway.
Katie: Yeah, once you start doing it, it ends up just taking on its own form anyway. Two people in the room and two people working on it together then, it does take its own form. Predominantly, we were just putting everything down on the piano anyway, so everything started off with the piano. It sounded right to keep that arrangement with it. It just stemmed from that. It was just a song that I came across Joan Baez doing and just really liked and thought it would suit the theme. But for once, it's this boy dying after getting this woman who's like twice his age pregnant, basically.
Radie: And I actually always loved 'The Trees They Grow High' or 'My Bonny Boy was young, but he's Growing' - there's loads of different versions of it. I love the Landless version. And when we were talking about it, I was also showing you the Martin Carthy version of it. It's an amalgamation of a load of different versions. That's kind of what's happened with pretty much all of the folk songs on this album as well, is that they are taken from - the likes of 'Love Henry' is taken from a Judy Henske version of that song, but then it is changed. You're doing a lot of editing on the lyrics and melody and all that stuff, because you're trying to make it fit into this thing that isn't really - like we're not a folk band so sometimes it needs editing to make it a bit snappier or sometimes versus are getting cut out as well and changed around. So there's a lot of adapting going on, probably even more than happens in Lankum, I would say.
‘Love Henry’
'Love Henry' is the first song that you put out at the start of summer, or the middle of summer. There's so much going on in the track. Was it a hard one to finish off? Was it a lot of fun to work on?
Katie: That was an easy one. 'Love Henry's great craic.
Radie: So much fun. I found that one really enjoyable. I love the trajectory of that as well. Because that originally was me and Katie in Katie's bedroom and we're like, 'What if' - because we were listening to Laurie Anderson - 'O Superman' and we were like, you know that, 'ah ah ah ah'; that happens and we're like, 'let's do something like that'.
Katie: Also because the loop station was just there and I was like, 'well, we have to try and do something with it'.
Radie: Also you're very good at loops.
Katie: So it ended up sounding almost like Laurie Anderson in the end a little bit.
Radie: I'm not sure it sounds anything like it, but that's a good thing.
Katie: Well, I do remember the exact moment when we were working on it. Because originally, I think I had started it and I was like, 'this doesn't sound right at all. I don't think it should be me'.
Radie: Oh yeah, you sang! So Katie sang the melody of it. And it was a little bit more bluesy in the first few goes. It sounded different because obviously, I have my own wonky voice. It sounded a lot smoother and nicer, basically.
Katie: Yeah. But I do remember you were in the kitchen and I was just trying to work something out. It was nice, we were happy with it or whatever. But I do remember you were in the kitchen and then I started like bashing on the piano on really low notes and you just came legging it into the bedroom, you're like, 'What is that?!!?'.
Radie: Where the bass comes in, that was already in it from the first arrangement. And that was so easy to layer up. And as I say, I had done a version of that with Elly for a solo gig and then it was just a total joy adding all the extras. Because it was there - it was obvious what had to happen and it had to be big.
Katie: For me honestly, the drums and the swoopy Moog just really made it.
Radie: I love that Moog solo.
Katie: Very dramatic swoopy Moog. But I still love that, I still love listening to it. And it's really good fun live.
‘The Feast’
'The Feast' is a Katie Kim original adapted from your 2012 double album Cover and Flood. Why did you go back to the song, Katie?
Katie: The story behind it - 'The Feast was partly inspired by this character called Euchrid, that Nick Cave wrote about in his book, The Ass saw the Angel. The whole book has this traditional style history, like in my head. The imagery of it really suited the world that we were creating in the album as well. So I just thought that 'The Feast' - Well, actually, it was you, Radie, that suggested that we do 'The Feast', and I fought for it a little while and then I was like, 'Actually no, out of everything, it fitted the narrative.
Radie: It fitted the world. I love the song, 'The Feast'. I love the imagery in it. And I think we were also talking about how it would be very interesting to revisit one of Katie's songs,
Katie: I was forced to though, I have to say.
Radie: She was forced, she was totally forced. 'I don't like that song' or something like that.
Katie: I didn't know if my songs really should feature at all. I thought it was a nice trajectory of having just traditional songs, at the time, and then Radie insisted when we were originally doing them together.
Radie: I'm very bossy.
Katie: So I was just like, 'Oh OK go on.'
Radie: That's an interesting thing to do, though, as well, is to revisit a song that has had its finish and it's become its own thing and then to revisit it. Because it has to be different to do it, with both of us, and then with all of us. It had to be a different version of it. The thing is, because I'm a folk singer, I'm used to that happening. That there isn't one definitive version of a song. You take it, you remould it, you remould it over and over again. So that seemed like a natural thing to do.
‘The Wife of Michael Cleary’
I know this song really well. It's a Maija Sofia song and a really recent song as well, as in, released only in the past five years. How did you go about making that your own? Was that just a similar thing, Radie, that it just came naturally to you just like singing over it and eventually making it your own?
Radie: I think Maija Sophie is a brilliant songwriter. I think she's just brilliant. And one of the first times I saw her, she performed this song and I was like, 'She's after writing a brilliant song, that is absolutely brilliant'. And then Katie heard it with me - me and Katie were performing with Adrian Crowley for an album launch of his and Maija did support. And Katie had the same experience of the song where she's like 'Jesus Christ, it's such a good song!' The lyrics and the whole story of Bridget Cleary fits in perfectly with what we were talking (about) because we were rehearsing for our gig at the time, we're like, 'Oh my god, that totally fits, would totally fit'. And then the approach is essentially what you tend to do, or what I'm used to doing with folk songs, which is that you strip it down to bare essentials, you take it down to its bones, and then you reassemble it in whatever way feels natural to you and feels like you're not imitating what you've heard before. You need to get it down to its bare bones, think about what it's about and then start assembling a new life for it.
‘Farmer in the City’
'Farmer in the City' is the final one, just about 13 minutes long. It's a cover of Scott Walker song and you make it - 'apocalyptic' is the word that comes to mind. Was that the plan all along, that you were gonna like have this really long outro, just taking this the song and making it apocalyptic?
Katie: The second part of that song we look at almost like a separate song. We had fun, after the the initial part of it, just building on it and building on it and building on it. I love that song, 'Farmer in the City', I'm just in love with it. And I love Scott Walker. And I just thought again at those gigs, when we have to pick solo songs to do together, I just thought, for some reason, and I don't know why, it just really fit the narrative again. It's just a case of it really worked with the guys. Maybe with Katie Kim, I probably couldn't have gone as apocalyptic, I don't think, maybe, but for this, I just thought it really, really suited.