Don’t fear the bleeper!

Over the last ten years, Dublin act Decal have managed to touch most electronic bases. From the blissed out soundscapes of their debut album, 004, Dennis McNulty and Alan O’Boyle have put out frenetic drum’n’bass – on Leaf and Law & Auder – off beat techno on Andrew Weatherall’s former Sabrettes label and the beautifully wispy ambience of their last album, 404 Not Found for Planet Mu. Along the way, Decal also followed the eclectic route with their second album, Lo Lite, and explored sensuous deep house with the Phunk City EP.

However, Decal now look poised to attain the international recognition they’ve always deserved with their more recent exploration of electro. Releases on their own Trama Industries and New York’s Satamile imprint won them support and acclaim among the growing global electro community and showed Decal had mapped out their own pacy, dancefloor based take on the sound.

Meanwhile, the act’s most recent EP - Freakin’ Empires on Weatherall’s Rotters’ Golf Club label – was championed by underground heavyweights like Dave Clarke, Billy Nasty and, naturally enough, Weatherall himself.

With a new album, Brightest Star, due out next month on RGC, it seems like a strange time for one of Decal, Dennis McNulty, to leave the group.

“Dennis did a music technology course and had set his mind on making art-based music. He’d been talking about it for a while, so it’s not a surprise to the people who are close to him,” Alan O’Boyle explains. “He’d got sick of playing in clubs and knew that for the foreseeable future, Decal would be about dancefloor electro. There’ll be a follow up to the Planet Mu album and I also plan to put out some deep techno for D1, but electro is what Decal will be about for the time being,” Alan adds.

Listening to Brightest Star, it’s not hard to see why O’Boyle continues to explore the fast, furious and funky sound. Indeed, apart from The Advent and Weatherall and studio partner Keith Teniswood’s machine funk experiments, there are few producers making this music.

“It’s funny because there’s a lot of media hype at the moment about electro, but I’m hard pushed to find a few good new records every week to play out,” Alan maintains. “So I made a dancefloor album with the intention of getting DJs to play it out – and some techno DJs are dropping electro in their sets – or at least claiming that they are! Having to listen to a whole night of fast dancefloor electro or any other style would be boring.”

O’Boyle thinks it’ll take time to convert clubbers and DJs - weaned on house and techno - to the less subtle bass kicks of his electro style, but is confident that interest in the music is growing.

“I’ve played at nights that have been pure electro from start to finish and I’ve cleared the floor at techno nights,” he laughs, “but sales of the music I make and that Rotters’ put out is growing. It’ll happen on a gradual level. Sure, I’d be happy if Decal crossed over and it’s in the back of the mind when I make music, but it would take a seismic shift in tastes for Decal material to have mass appeal,” Alan reasons.

Ten years after his first Decal release, it seems like O’Boyle is in no rush. Some of the tracks on Star are nearly four years old and the remainder of the album was recorded at the start of 2003. However, the Dublin DJ/producer believes electro still affords room to explore new directions and possibilities. It’s evident on his new album, where punk, techno, dub and drum’n’bass influences from Alan’s musical past run through the relentless rhythms and hyper-paced breaks.

“I was trying to bring these elements in to give the music a fresh angle,” he says. “The retro synth sound in electro has been done to death. Although it’s OK to listen to at home, to be honest, it does my head in. The aim with the album was to keep it varied but dancefloor friendly. You get DJs who usually make dancefloor music trying to make ‘serious’ artist albums and it just sounds wrong,” Alan adds. “I was toying with the idea of putting a few down tempo tracks on Star but I’ve done ambient and eclectic albums in the past and I felt that electro hasn’t been explored properly.”

With live dates lined up in New York and London and plans to revive the Trama label – with EPs from Decal and Americhord – interest in Alan O’Boyle’s individualistic electro keeps growing. Like his RGC label mates Keith Tenniswood and Andrew Weatherall, Decal’s unpredictable take on club music is part of its appeal.

“It isn’t tied or limited to one sound,” Alan says about his music. “Like the RGC label, there’s some intelligent stuff, but a lot of it is fast electro music for raves!”