HAUSU – Mike McGrath-Bryan

Leeside music has always benefited from community and common goals, but never before has the importance of pulling together been so evident, than in the post-recession environment. In part one of a two-part special, Mike McGrath-Bryan talks to some of Cork’s electronic music collectives about how they joined forces, and what’s been happening since.

“The process is natural. I was on the bus from Cork to Limerick once, and I was listening to a guy from Charleville speak to a man from Nigeria. I overhead the (latter) state, in his beautiful accent, that ‘a drop of water makes a mighty ocean’. I don’t know why that stuck with me, but that is what it is like. We collectively become something more ocean-like, something larger than ourselves.” No more articulate a man to convey the virtues of collaboration, and sum up the current climate in Cork’s music community, than Humans of the Sesh man Brown Sauce.

The past few years have seen profound change for music on multiple levels. As macro-level changes like the transition to streaming have affected how artists release music and garner wider attention, Cork city’s venue situation has been in flux, amid the churn of the property boom and the usual attrition to which small venues have been subject over the years. Three years, DJ and record-slinger Justin O’Donnell, better known as JusMe, took notice of the changes affecting Cork hip-hop, and set about co-founding the Cuttin’ Heads Collective with other like minds, identifying the needs of genre enthusiasts in the city and the people best-positioned to play a role in addressing them. “I think it was borne out of necessity for us. Running gigs on your own is difficult. You need help, just from a practical standpoint. Cuttin’ Heads came together fairly organically. It’s just a group of mates, really, mostly people I’d worked with on other projects, over the years.”

Celebrating three years together last week, the collective set about running gigs, but also weekly club nights, workshops and a supportive online presence for the genre, providing non-commercial hip-hop with an infrastructure to build upon. On the topic of online presences, social media magnates Humans of the Sesh were brought together by a mutual love of electronic music and its culture. It wouldn’t be long at all, then, until the people behind it leveraged their numbers into SESHFM, an online platform and label run and curated collectively. Brown Sauce explains the rationale behind creating the entity, and its support of leftfield electronica. “We are a collection of people that are aware that our singular efforts are not enough to make an impact in a country like Ireland. Because of a general lack of support, we must support ourselves by collectively promoting SESHFM. It’s the raft that (we have) all chipped in on. When we started building the raft, it was made out of wood, now it’s made out of carbon fibre and has a spoiler, and on this daycent raft we’ll trail the sea of the internet, fishing for venue bookings and more shipwrecked artists.”

Rallying their efforts around a short-notice release and finding their roles as the need arose, HAUSU Records has quickly established itself as a port of call for electronic pop in the city, platforming polymaths like Ghostking is Dead, Automatic Blue and Mothra, among others. With an emphasis on consistent branding and accessibility of material, the collective set out to shoulder a shared burden, according to PRO Colm Cahalane. “When Ghostking is Dead was getting ready to finish Sweet Boy, and with releases coming up from Actualacid, Automatic Blue and (label band) Repeater, we were all really conscious that there was going to be a lot of repetitive work in branding, designing, reaching out to press etc. We knew that by making each of the release phases a group effort, we’d learn something every step, and over time we’d have a process and a shared set of press contacts and such. The idea behind Hausu’s a bit bigger than that – we want to do more events, share more of our process with the public and give more opportunities to our visual artists and designers – but it started with needing to get the music we have to the audience it deserves.”

Working together on a shared goal makes sense, especially with a paucity of resources and a city still smarting from the loss of community arts centres and more eclectic small rooms over the course of the recession. The day-to-day experience of running a collective, accentuating individual strengths and moving forward with like-minded people, has driven the phenomenon to prominence locally, but also benefited individuals hugely, allowing them to expand on their abilities and experiences, such as the case of SESHFM’s DJ Numbertheory. “I’m a lot more of an organizer, and someone with an eye for detail when it comes to piecing a project together. I can contact a very disparate community of musicians, engage them with the idea and get them involved, preaching to them the vision of what’s to come. I can then hand some of the creative reins to Brown Sauce to whip up some aesthetic choices, and come up with some mad tale for promo. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Along with (SESHFM members) Papa Floral and Grand Feen, we all offer different perspectives and come from various musical and philosophical backgrounds so it meshes well. Although I do have to crack the whip sometimes (laughs).”

Where artists and producers are involved, having a skeleton crew of people together to bring coherence to different releases not only makes sense, but is a support system that provides help and feedback at every turn, according to Cahalane. “It’s definitely brought the whole process forward in a new way. Mostly we record together, we post drafts for feedback, mix and master in-house, go through those masters on different speakers and verify them. Every artist has creative space, but everyone chimes in about the way our press is written, our social media is run, our design, the way the music is progressing. We’ve seen a bit of a rise in how press and radio interacts with our work, and it’s given us a banner to use for events and online stuff; we want to step beyond that and get our designers more of that spotlight too.”

The benefits of collaboration are only beginning to make themselves apparent in the larger scheme of things, with collective infrastructure acting as a measure of independence, a means of circumventing restrictions, and fostering a sense of community. For JusMe, the impact of these moves can be seen in the changes in city-centre events. “A lot of the most exciting things happening in Cork at the moment are definitely coming from bigger crews like the Garden Collective, or the metal scene, bands like Bailer, God Alone, Worn Out, etc., who essentially work as a collective. The huge team that make Quarter Block Party possible, that’s a collective. I think it’s the way forward.”

For Brown Sauce, as well as much of the city’s younger musical cohort, working together is not just a boon to the scene, but a lifeline in the face of the legacy of the crash, and the impersonal nature of the city’s impending expansion. “Collective endeavour will save this city from its capitalistic tourist-based hell. Every collective we know, as well as being a group themselves, reach out to other groups from day one. It’s necessary to stay alive. One group might have an issue, another might have a solution. The role of individuals such as Stevie G in knitting these collectives together, and promoting us all as having the one goal, is indispensable as well. Up and down the country, we’ve collaborated on almost all of our projects. (Other groups like) Wriggle, Glacial Industries, Flood – it’s a small scene, and we definitely need each other to come up with creative ways of bringing the people of Cork, and Ireland, this music.”

Next week, we take a look at how collectives have benefited indie, metal and experimental music in the city, and talk about how organisation has helped artists adjust to the current housing and practice-space situation.

Collectivisation and co-operation is the name of the game in a Cork music scene ever more affected by precarity and gentrification. Amid all the uncertainty, some of Cork’s young musicians and music professionals are sticking together, with a collective, label and creative working arrangement known simply as HAUSU. Mike McGrath-Bryan speaks with some of the people involved.

The narrative in the city right now is of one generation coming of age creatively, post-recession: bands and musicians that have gutted out the “bad times” are perpetually set for bigger and better things. Having reorganised, focused and garnered resolve from formative periods spent garnering resources and connections without much in the way of formal help, they rightly stand centre-stage and place Cork firmly at the centre of the national music picture. But the seismic impact of DIY music on the city’s culture has left its fingerprint on a wave of younger musicians and facilitators that have witnessed change for themselves, and subsequent grown up with wider skillsets and changed expectations out of necessity. Against this background comes Hausu (pronounced ‘how-soo’), a collective of musicians, designers and press professionals based in Cork, emerging from various backgrounds but sharing a commonality of coming up through local music schools and programmes like the YMCA Groundfloor studio and student media.

Bands comprised of collective members, like Repeater and Ghostking is Dead, as well as solo projects, like spoken-word outlet Mothra (aka Hassan Baker, pictured) and electronic pop prospect Automatic Blue, provide a verdant creative offering musically for the group’s label aspect, while a team of young designers and student music journos-turned-DIY press relations people furnish the project with a unique visual identity. Repeater man Hassan Baker details how the collective initially rallied around. “We’d always talked about this while working on (first EP) ‘Who Sold It To Ya?’. We talked to other talented buds of ours, and planned on a more planned launch of it all. But then things fell into place when Ghostking is Dead wanted to release ‘Sweet Boy’ under our banner. This lit a fire under our collective asses, that just became a very Hausu way of doing things. Basically when something is going down, it’s all hands on deck, to chip in and to spread the word.” Intervening to help the artists organise were a number of volunteers, among them journalist and former college radio host Colm Cahalane, whose ‘Tapes’ radio shows had garnered something of a cult following locally. “It landed when we realised we had a lot of individual bodies of work coming up; debuts, follow-ups, singles, remixes etc – and we’d benefit from sharing support and resources every step from recording to releasing. At the start, I kind of pushed this attempt at a professional image of Hausu Records as a label; but lately I’ve been more honest about calling it what it is; a collective, a group of friends, something local and independent.”

In just over a year, the label has come to represent cohesion between younger artists in the city, something that, as mentioned, has become necessary in the absence of structure. They’re not the only ones, of course, and the lads are more than cognisant of the place of their efforts in the city’s wider musical landscape. For Cahalane, it’s arguably a Venn diagram of time, place and necessity. “I have a lot of time and respect for the shift towards collectives in Ireland as a whole. We’ve seen what people like Cuttin’ Heads and Outsiders are doing for Cork hip-hop, Anomaly taking that momentum to Waterford, what SESH FM are bringing to dance music in a national and even global sense, how Soft Boy Records are carving a niche for themselves in Dublin. We want to become a part of that scene for real and collaborate with them. I grew up on some of this stuff, going to Feel Good Lost gigs as a teen and through college to see acts like Talos and Young Wonder find their feet.” Lofty ambitions aside, it adds to the practicality of running musical projects that may be adjacent to each other regardless, to which Baker can attest. “It’s very important. We all have our own skills and experience. I spent some time in student journalism, so it helps knowing the process of journalists and bloggers. Then, for example, (collective members) Tadhg (McNealy), Emer (Kiely) and Neil (O’Sullivan-Greene) know the design world. They see trends, and formulate them into things us philistines can then understand. This helps us form our own system for traversing the Irish music scene.”

Matt Corrigan, operating under the nom-de-guerre of Ghostking is Dead, has been haunting the city in a few forms from a very young age, a preternaturally gifted musician with a tremendous flair for drama and/or sarcasm, as the mood takes him. The label this year released his most recent series of singles, and overseen a transition to full-band gigging, effectively providing him with everything necessary to expand on his vision. “Hausu has been a dramatic accelerant to my work. The force at which such ambitious and talented company drives one forward is like being pulled behind a car on a skateboard. I have come dangerously close to burning out a number of times, but the near-familial support and relationships keep me locked in. My drive is perpetually reinforced by how taken I am with the tremendous work of my friends and peers. Hausu makes me want to be better. It makes me excited to be a musician.”

Corrigan’s cousin Jack, creating music on the label as Actualacid, is drawn to the collective by the mutual supports shown among members, and how it’s benefited himself and others. “I think seeing Matt’s progress is like watching a superhero movie where they gradually begin to realize the extent of their powers. Everything he’s turned his hand to thus far, he’s been good at. He’s an inherently talented guy, same with Drew. Watching my two young cousins develop and getting to collaborate with them on the way has been the highlight of all of this so far. Hausu is a collective, a DIY label, a dangerous, dysfunctional co-dependency, but it’s family business for me. I’m just happy to be making things with the best people I know.”

Drew Linehan has been releasing steadily on the label under the Automatic Blue pseudonym, an initial aside to his role in Repeater, foreshadowing an electronic-informed indie/pop strain that draws on the likes of FlyLo and the Internet. The creative process behind the singles we’ve heard so far is a look at the ambition and greater reach to accessibility within the group’s electronic parish. “I recorded most of (debut) “Baby” in the background to everything I was doing in Repeater, and the formation of Hausu, which was more for fun without any thoughts about releasing the songs. I think I was embarrassed a bit by how poppy some tracks were. I’ve always loved melody and a good hook, and with Automatic Blue melody comes first, which is a relief now because melodies have always been the most rewarding aspect to write for me. Once I have the song though, I’m in the studio, trying to imagine what could be happening behind that melody and with the chords. I’m working on a new EP called “Junk” which has kept me in nearly complete solitude this summer. It’s gotten a bit obsessive but hopefully that’s lead to some more developed and creative songs.”

Baker himself has recently begun spoken-word work under the name Mothra, including a performance at Electric Picnic this month. Within the Hausu arrangement laid the freedom to pursue performance poetry, and transition from more boisterous punk-rock rhetoric into hip-hop. “I’ve been been writing poetry since I was young, as a writing exercise. I did open mics at (weekly night) Ó Bhéal, as a way to workshop lyrics or other ideas, and even did the odd closed mic gig. The focus was always on the music. The poems fed into the music pretty easily. It’s a lot easier to shout poetry in a punk song than to actually sing. Moving away from shouting and screaming myself hoarse, and into rap sounded like it was more suitable for my skill set.”

With a sense of community now firmly entrenched among its members and artists, the idea is to proceed with collaborative efforts. Whether it’s the fundamentals of DIY music infrastructure being extended to new venues and artists, or capitalising on the advance of the cloud and collaborative working tools, the group has an eye firmly fixed on the future, as Cahalane outlines. “Our number-one focus, even more than our next slate of releases, is getting events happening in Cork. Nights we’re playing and curating, using to support local talent, and collaborate with others outside our own reach; especially with other collectives, as I’ve said before. Hopefully we’ll do a listening party for our upcoming stuff, get proper live debuts for Automatic Blue, Mothra, Actualacid and Repeater, and showcase some other local bands while we’re on it. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be extending the lessons we’ve learned with Hausu to a national framework; running off a new Discord server or something of the sort. My own background is in software, so we’re going to try and build a community where we hold weekly demo critique and review sessions, share advice, resources and contacts, and give new artists everywhere the things that aren’t easy or obvious to find. Groups like First Music Contact have been vital for us, but we want to create a peer-to-peer environment for that too.”

Hausu releases, as well more artist and collective info, are available at hausurecords.com. Individual singles and releases are available for streaming on Spotify, and other streaming services.