Autamata for the people

Tales From Inside A Bubble was to be the original title of Autamata’s debut album My Sanctuary. “I wanted to convey the fact that I wasn’t writing music for a scene, or music to be put in any one category,” says Dubliner Ken McHugh of his first solo project. “Eventually I felt that My Sanctuary conveyed the same message in fewer words.”

The message is an interesting and unusual one. In a musical climate where recapitulation is often favoured over originality, Autamata’s album is astonishingly eclectic. In the broadest sense it is an electronic record, but one listen to the five tracks from the Amnesiac-influenced opener ‘Fragments’ to the orchestral sweep of ‘Little Green Men’, is enough to give any pigeonholer a sleepless night.

“I was definitely conscious of the fact that it has lots of different styles,” concedes McHugh. “I love the freedom of being able to write whatever I want, but sometimes I have to control myself. It didn’t take long to record [the album], but in the mixing stage it took a while to get the whole thing to flow. From the outset I wanted My Sanctuary to be a varied collection so that in future people are aware of what I can do. So there is some method to the madness.”

Naturally, it takes technical expertise as well as creative nous for such a multidisciplinary project to succeed. This McHugh has in spades; over the many years of what he calls his ‘apprenticeship’ in music, he has honed his skills as a producer and film-scorer, working with Creative Controle, The Plague Monkeys, Naimee Coleman and David Kitt.

My Sanctuary benefits greatly from the excellent vocal talents of Carol Keogh and Cathy Davy, Autamata’s two chief collaborators. McHugh met both musicians through his production work, and feels that “they ‘re quite simply two of the best singers in the country.” Remarkably, every track on the album was written as an instrumental, even those which Keogh and Davy have made their own with distinctive vocal performances.

An affable pragmatist, McHugh is aware that the public will need plenty of time to digest a musical meal as complex as My Sanctuary. He has delayed the release of a single until January next year, and, his next task is to get a live act together. “It’s always a challenge to make a good live show out of electronically-originated music,” he says. “But I really think we can do it.” He has already enlisted a drummer, and will start gigging as soon as a full band has been formed.

Outside of Autamata, McHugh continues his ‘behind-the-scenes’ work, having recently worked on the soundtrack to Conor McPherson’s new film The Actors, which stars Michael Caine and Dylan Moran. He is also in negotiations with The Beta Band about producing their next album.