The Player

Traditionally, most Irish artists will put an album out on CD, tour the bejaysus out of it, cross their fingers and hope for the best. Knocklyon-born musician Greg, however, isn’t taking any chances. Not only is the 34-year old electro soloist a dab hand with the sampling software and Pro Tools, but he is making it his business to be aware of technological changes happening within the music industry that other artists might not notice so keenly.

“Look at it this way,” he says “the market for mobile ringtones is twice as lucrative for the music industry than the pop singles market is right now, but that’s where labels put their money. For the most part, record labels in Ireland are ignoring what’s happening with song downloading, they don’t know about it and they don’t want to know, and if they don’t pick up on these changes and act now they simply won’t be the main distributors of music in the near future.
“When you see someone like Eircom, a telecommunications company, get in on the music downloading business, you know it’s the way forward. Pretty soon, the MP3 player will replace the Walkman and the Discman and MP3s will be the standard format for getting any music. The prices will be driven right down for things like iPods and MP3 files so everyone will be using them as a matter of course, and basically, I just want to get ahead in the game.”
With that in mind, Greg is releasing his oeuvre on two formats – the album, Again, will be released on regular CD format, and rather interestingly, Greg is also releasing the 18 tracks on an MP3 player, which will retail at the princely sum of €79.
“It’s possible to then use the MP3 to download music from kazaa.com, as the player will hold about four albums’ worth of material,” he suggests.
Somewhat predictably, some musical outlets were reluctant to take on the man taking on the music pirates.
“Initially, the stores didn’t like it, although they’re coming round and within about six weeks we’re hoping that most of the music stores will be on board. Tower Records jumped at the chance, and stores like Power City are really into the idea.”
Needless to say, Greg is using his website as his main port of call, and the site is replete with downloads, MP3 files and technological information, as well as links to downloading sites like Earthlink and Yo Ma Ma. “We have set up various links from online radio stations in the US,” he explains, “so at the moment the site is getting over 5,000 hits a month.”
This well-developed sense of creative acumen also helped shape his album, which is a succession of ambient yet organic electronica. On the one hand, the music is surprisingly accessible, yet Greg still manages to flex an innovative muscle or two. As it goes, comparisons to Moby are virtually unavoidable, which is just as well, as Greg appears to be quite the fan.
“Yeah, I listen to Moby quite a lot, and at the moment I’m still kind of going back to the old Doors records,” he muses. “In fact, this afternoon I plan to listen to the new Air album for the first time. The people I work with really admire Moby too, so I guess in a way he would have been an influence, though at the time of writing the album you aren’t really aware that you’re being influenced by anything.”
One of the more notable Moby-ish collaborators on the album turns out to be no less prolific an industry figure than Martin Clancy, who counts Jack L and Las Vegas Basement among his charges. “We had a mutual friend, Peter Blackburn, and we hooked up a couple of years ago. We work well because both of us are relatively strong and decisive, and we both have our own studios set up. We weren’t in each other’s faces all the time, which in a way was a big help…we would meet up every so often with our ideas, and that way we could be objective about the work.”
As for the future, well, it seems as though there may be more writing in the pipeline, yet Greg is wholly dedicated to making his MP3 venture work, so that it becomes a prototype of sorts for other Irish artists.
“I really want to get the MP3 plan up and running, and once that happens, I intend to get out there and play the music live. Because of the nature of the music, the production will have to be reasonably big – hopefully the MP3 thing will go some way towards making it happen.”

Again by Greg.ie is out now in various formats