Day Five at Other Voices 8 - Morning & Afternoon

The morning interviews started with Mercury Music Prize winning Speech Debelle and our lovely Annie sitting in a currach sculpture at the end of Dingle Marina. Speech chatted with Annie about life over the last twelve months and that she is heading to Australia to record her new album soon. Speech has just been touring with Basement Jaxx and has had an amazing time with them. They discussed the songwriting process and how she likes to emulate her musical heroes in her writing and recording. Speech also shared with Annie that her birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day! She is looking forward to catching The xx later tonight. When asked about 2009, Speech replied ‘Two thousand and mine!’ which we thought summed it all up perfectly!

Next up was the wonderful Adrian Crowley at The Percussion Workshop, which is run by Martin Schärer. Adrian told Annie how he managed to record his new album in two weeks and writes as he goes, so over the year had managed to collect enough material for two albums! The new album, Season of the Sparks, was released worldwide at the end of November. Adrian said that he was incredibly excited about playing St. James’ Church and had played the Other Room on his last visit to Dingle.

Fionn Regan was next up and he performed an acoustic version of ‘The Shadow of an Empire’ in Dick Mac’s Bar. The song is the title track of his forthcoming new album, which releases in February. He spoke with Annie about touring America and how he found the huge distances they travelled quite daunting. He also talked about how having a band with him has been great and that he feels that the level of expectation on a solo artist is lessened when there is a band to share the experience with.

The xx were interviewed in a teeny tiny bedroom! We couldn’t get near, because it was too small, so no insider gossip from that one! We will all have to wait for the TV shows to see what deep dark secrets they shared with Annie!