Stano: In the Place Where You Are

Before this interview began Stano was in a swoon, drooling over a series of programmes on Picasso he’d recently seen on BBC 2. “It was incredible to see how this guy almost single-handedly changed the language of painting overnight,” he said, referring to the shift from pictorial representations of reality to the kind of fragmented perspectives that define post-modernism.
Stano knows enough about music to realise that rock too has finally caught up on the other arts, entering what soul-diva Shara Nelson recently described as it’s “po’mo’(post-modern) phase.” Dance, rap and hip-hop all question notions of fixed space and continuous time in the same way that Joyce redefined the novel with stream-of-consciousness writing and Schoenberg restructured classical music on a system of twelve tones instead of the age old harmonic scales.
Likewise, if Irish rock has recently shifted into a po’ mo’ mode, courtesy of high-profile groups like U2 and Fatima Mansions, there can be little doubt that Stano himself was at the forefront of this movement more than a decade ago, when he released his debut album, the wonderfully titled Content to Write In I Dine Weathercraft.
Sadly, there are many people who treat Stano’s role as an avant-garde artist with scarcely concealed disdain. This particular response normally comes from the kind of rock critic who would rather enshrine a black leather jacket than link the words ‘rock’ and ‘art’ together, if only because they lack the ideological, and analytical tools necessary to evaluate rock from that perspective. This is how Stano rationalises the lack of genuine critical response to his latest album Wreckage, which, he insists “some people have pulled back from reviewing in relation to its music,” and focused instead on the easier subject of his so-called “troubled past with U2 and Mother Records” and the clichéd image of himself as a “difficult, challenging” and even self-consciously pretentious musician. Self-conscious he may be – pretentious he’s not.
“From the beginning,” Stano reflects “when someone wrote an article on me and said I was ‘obviously influenced by Stockhausen’ I didn’t even know who Stockhausen was – though I do now, of course. But with painters, it was different. I’ve always been interested in people like Picasso and Dali and Turner – at least since my late teens. Before that, growing up in a working class area of Dublin you’d be seen as a bit “soft” if you said you’d any interest in art.
“But my original love was for poetry after a teacher in Coolock praised me for my writing when I was 10 or 11 and put one of my poems in the school magazine. But it took punk to rekindle my interest in self-expression at that level. The whole ethos of music then was ‘be what you are, do what you want to do and to hell with anyone who tells you otherwise’.”
Stano admits that his love of music was also influenced by the painterly qualities in Dylan’s work – specifically his Imagist tendency to make random associations and to link non-sequential, overlapping vignettes.
“Dylan is my favourite artist of all time because listening to his best songs is like getting pulled into a painting. If you’re open to the whole experience you really have no control over where he takes you, where you go. And I always loved the way Dylan would layer images upon images upon images until he’d break you down and bring you round to his way of looking at the world.”
Dylan’s critics, on the other hand, also describe his mid 60’s surrealist soundscapes as inaccessible, with imagery that is open to only the author himself. How does Stano respond when he sees similarly derisive criticism of album titles such as Content to Write In I Dine Weathercraft.
“It annoys me, at times, because, to me, like Dylan’s best songs, nature itself is a random force, pulling things together that don’t make ‘sense’ in the normal way,” he argues. “And I love combinations of fun words like ‘I Dine’ and ‘Weathercraft’ which are puns on ‘iodine’ and ‘witchcraft’! But there also is a unifying force underneath, a logic behind it all. That’s why surrealistic art is more real to me than something that looks just like a photograph. And it’s why I love Picasso’s work. When he breaks up a human face and shows it from many angles, that’s far more interesting, and truthful, to me than a straight, figurative drawing.
“It’s the same with regards to music, and not just in relation to the words of a song. The ‘meaning’ often is in the loops, the samples, the guitar lines, the mix. And I often think the only people who will find my work ‘difficult’ are those who think that a song is like a narrative poem and that all it says is what is said in the words. That’s not how I work. And the real thrill of songwriting is knowing what fragments to choose so that you don’t give everything away, don’t ruin the mystery.
“I’m not saying I can’t enjoy straight, narrative songs by the likes of Nirvana, I do. And I sometimes write that way. But I don’t like songs that can be too easily understood. And the bottom line is that whether it is folk, metal, traditional, jazz or rock music, they all come across to me as different colours, fundamentally, and I can do with those colours whatever I choose. That’s just how I work.”
Is there a sense in which Stano’s is making music just for himself and doesn’t give a fuck whether or not people relate to it?
“Well, to be totally honest with you I don’t really care if they relate to it, or not!” he says, laughing. “And I don’t think any real artists create with an eye to the market, or create for the public. I, physically, can’t do that and find the whole idea repulsive. That said, I know my music can be sold and could be quite successful, on its own terms. Maybe more so in places like France and Switzerland and Germany where I have sold a lot of records and built up a following and where they do have sections on me in books on music, and so on, and seem to understand where I’m coming from.
“I think if you go back to people like Joyce and Beckett, the true nature of Irish art is that we are more European than English, or American, though that’s the kind of stuff that obviously sells better here, with regards to music. But, sure, I will happily admit that I don’t think of markets when I’m making music. I do just think of remaining true to myself first and foremost and letting everything else grow from there. That’s why I’m lucky that now, in Hue Records, I’m in partnership with two people who do really understand my music and let me do whatever I want to do. And I really think that the interest already shown in my new album has set me up for the next.
“Most of that interest comes from outside Ireland. We’ve already sold more than was needed to get back the money we put into the project and people in Europe have already expressed an interest in buying five or six times the amount of records I thought I would sell. Germany, again, and places like Austria, have shown great interest in the album. And we’re hoping to do a deal whereby we can release my entire back catalogue on CDs.”
Unfortunately, the Irish media has not shown a similar level of interest in Stano’s latest album, with only Dave Fanning and a few similarly brave, innovative DJs in local radio allotting the songs airspace.
“Dave has gotten behind the album, so have stations such as Radio-Active and Radio Caroline but RTE seem to have fallen for this image of me as someone who just makes difficult, strange music. Maybe that’s why, as I said earlier, people shy away from reviewing the music. And when reviews focus on my past, in terms of Mother and that whole bitter saga, maybe DJs and radio producers simply aren’t inspired to go out and listen to the album itself. Maybe they believe it when people say ‘he’s only got himself to blame, when he releases albums with titles like Content to Write . . .’ etc. That title is eight years ago. The album Wreckage is where I’m at now.
“There’s no doubt,” he adds, “that radio stations like RTE do also tend to get behind the major albums that record companies want them to get behind, rather than independent stuff like this. Maybe, despite all that, I will pick up plays on this album. But what really pisses me off is that this is an Irish album, I’m an Irish artist and all the work was done in Irish studios, with Irish musicians and Irish engineers and yet stations are playing British and American music off the bloody air. I agree with Michael D. Higgins, and think there should be a quota of Irish music that Irish stations are expected to play.
“What I’d like to say to Irish DJs is that when I hear them continually playing an English record by an English musician in the same field I’m in, and not playing my music, it makes me wonder how they would feel if their radio stations replaced them with English DJs? Wouldn’t they kick up a stink? Yet they say Irish artists are just moaning when they raise this point. I’m not moaning. This is my life, my career I’m talking about. The same applies to other musicians. Okay you have Enya, U2, The Cranberries, Van Morrison but there also are thousands of other independent bands out there who deserve air time, like Scheer, Sack – whoever. They should be given airtime. They must be, if rock music in Ireland isn’t to fall apart at the seams.”
So, which of the tracks from his latest album would Stano recommend to DJs and producers who might be reading this now and who may have been alienated by his image as an avant-garde artist?
“Something like ‘Drain Puppet’ which, although it’s heavy is no different than, say, what Therapy? are doing,” he says. “And I think it would work very well alongside Therapy?, who also have that punk undercurrent. And a track like ‘Fire Cough in Rain’. But what I said a moment ago is true. It may seem melodramatic but it’s not. Making music like this is my life. If I wasn’t doing this I don’t know why else I’d bother to get up in the morning. What else would I do? It’s not just a game to me, it’s what I live for. And anyone who knows me will tell you that.
“But then, even despite the problems I encountered over the past five years with Mother and so on, I really wouldn’t want things to be any other way. In fact I think those problems have helped me mature, as a musician and as a person. I’m stronger now than I ever was, ready to take on whatever happens in the future, whether it is good or bad.

The Art of the Matter
Stano takes a stroll through his back catalogue
Content to Write In I Dine Weathercraft:
“This album was done mostly with Michael O’Shea. He’s a guy who made his own instruments and, sadly, died a few years ago. But this was begun in 1981 and finished in 1983 and songs like ‘Seance of Kondalike’ and ‘ A Dead Rose’ have instruments like sitar, African tongue basses, and these square boxes Michael used to make up, with springs and glass on them. On the other hand, ‘Out of the Dark, Into the Dawn’ I did with Roger Doyle on grand piano. ‘Blue Guide’ has a lot of loops and although some of the songs have no verse-chorus structures, they’re pretty accessible. Some are, like, two pages of lyrics that I spoke over the music, which is where a lot of those songs come from.
“I really remember we had so much fun making this. I remember being in a room with Bintii and they were playing the piano and I’d finished reciting my poem and had nothing else to do so I picked up a Christmas tree that was in the studio and fucked it around the room! Bintii was saying ‘go on, go on’ and at the end you hear Vinnie Murphy saying ‘Jesus, me hand is bolloxed, will we stop?’ And I start laughing and walk out the door and close it and that’s how the song ends! Another time, after I’d read a book on singing which said that your forehead, nose and face resonates as you sing, I glued a mic onto my face and got an amazing vocal sound! How’s that for abstract art? (laughs) Maybe it’ll catch on at the Eurovision!
Seducing Decadence in Morning Treecrash:
“This was made in 1984 and released in 1986. There was always that kind of gap between the completion, and the release of my albums. Even Only was made three years before it was released. But Seducing Decadence had songs like my tribute to Charlie Chaplin, who is another one of my idols.
“Musically on this one I pushed the guitar end of it more, and the loops. It’s also got a dance track, as has the first album, though people are now saying I’ve suddenly become interested in dance music! Even on the first album I used the same drum machine that is used in hip-hop now. But when I listen to albums like Seducing Decadence now, particularly tracks like ‘Hayley’ and ‘Cry Across the Sea’, I can hear the evolution of my whole sound, and how it leads directly to Wreckage.”
Daphne Will Be Born Again & ONLY
“I actually started Only a month or so after finishing Daphne, so I definitely see the two albums as interlinked. Daphne is totally instrumental. It was done on the Fairlight, with dub bass, drum machine, Gregorian chants, samples of spoons hitting glasses and screams on it. And a lot of it is influenced by the classical music I was listening to at the time, from Beethoven to Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. I think part of the reason my music confuses some people is that I will work with classical musicians when I’m doing stuff like this, or jazz musicians if I’m doing jazz.
“I used to hate the saxophone because I had this image of it as just a rock instrument playing basic licks. But then I met Richie Buckley and realised he could take it into another realm. As with those painters we spoke about earlier, and other great jazz musicians like Miles Davis, it’s the person’s spirit that defines the quality of the music. And Richie is a classic example of this. And I’d hope that something of my own spirit comes across in all this music.
“Only, was more rock-oriented, working with your basic guitar, bass and drums. But the use of dance, loops, extreme guitar noises, samples is, basically what’s going on in music today and it’s the natural lead-in to the latest album.

Trawling through the WRECKAGE
Stano’s latest album, track by track (almost!)
‘Pearls’: “This started out with a bass line by Mark Young and I basically wrote around that, shaping it into a heavy-duty pop song. The lyric is a love song but I don’t include the lyrics on albums anymore because people isolate the words and reduce the song to what the lyric says, which is not the way I work at all. In ‘Pearls’ what the drum machine and loops and guitars slowed down and played backwards are saying is just as important as the words. That’s what music means to me.
‘Bleeding Horse’: “I did this with Colm O’Cosaigh, from My Bloody Valentine. And, already people have said they never heard a song like this before. Everything you hear is guitar – guitar sampled, slowed-down and played back. If you play that track in clubs it will tear the walls down and that’s the effect we wanted, it’s so heavy. But this is the kind of track that shows how far I’ve moved away from the ‘ethereal Stano sound’, that’s all gone out the window. I got the Hot Press/Smithwicks nomination as Best Producer for the work I did with L on last year’s album Words Mean Nothing... but this is something entirely different again. And I would put this kind of production against anything by Prince, anybody.
‘Red, Blue, Green’: “This is a punk song, which, again, came from Mark’s bass line to begin with, yet ends up with guitar layers that are straight out of Hendrix, who is another big hero of mine. For those who say I’m ‘avant-garde’ and don’t write accessible songs, this has a straightforward verse-chorus-verse structure. But what’s different is that I took off all the Dolby, on the tape machine, and the whole song went brighter, making everything thin and raw. That’s how I work as a producer, really believing that a song is not a finished unit until you produce it. And that song didn’t finally fall into place – despite endless mixes – until the Dolby was removed. Then I got the precise colour I wanted. That, too, is the language of music.”
‘Cage’: “This song is a bit like REM’s ‘Find The River’ but the original idea came from an interview I did last year, when I took that line you used about somebody being ‘dark-hearted’. You’ll get the 10p royalties for the line ‘dark-hearted on the winds of gold’! But that phrase stuck with me for months until I found the right song for it. Phrases can haunt you in that way, until you find a place for them. And, overall, that song is like the painting La Jeune Martyre, by Paul Delaroche, with the woman floating in water, with her hands tied. It’s dark rivers, nooks and crannies and someone in a cage. That’s what I wanted to evoke. And I would hope that some of my songs last as long as that painting, which is a couple of hundred years old. Maybe they will, because they do stand outside fads and fashions.”
‘Land Slips The Mind’: “This came from a song on L’s album, called ‘Night-time’. I brought in a cello player who played eight tracks of cello and I put those tracks on a DAT, took them home, and found that within the four minutes of that song there was actually one and a half seconds of the eight cellos working together. I sampled those eight cellos and put that through eight tracks of distortion and that’s the intro to the songs. That, then is followed by a hip-hop beat, provided by one of Mark’s bass lines played backwards. On top of that I took a scream from an old Hollywood movie and I screamed back at that. That’s why I said at the beginning of this interview that I can’t help but see music in this post-modern state, pulling in fragments from all over the place. That’s the world we live in – or, at least, as I see it.”
‘1000 To Now’: “I wrote this for a film that was shown on RTE and UTV a few years ago and, again, this music comes from the same space as that painting we talked about in relation to ‘Cage’. People said when they heard this music they thought they were floating or flying and the effect came from cellos and flutes played backwards. To me, this is a mood, a modern day piece of classical music.
‘Fire Cough In Rain’: “This is the one I really think RTE can, and should play. The middle section is a bit like something out of Twin Peaks, a crazed Duane Eddy guitar, but done on loops. What really baffles some bass players is the point at which I took Mark’s bass line and halfway through I turned it around, so it’s impossible to learn. But musicians like Mark are perfect in that respect, because the ideas that he can’t use with other bands, I take them.”
‘Brook’: “Another punky, Sonic Youth kind of song, which has a poem I wrote layered across all the music. And listening to that track in particular, with you today, I’d have to say I’m not really much of a singer. I’ve got a voice I can make sound well and I am beginning to sing out, but from the first album onwards I was totally shy about my voice, it was so thin. But now I feel I’m getting more melody into it, finally getting confident about my voice. But that’s taken me more than eleven years. And I’d rather sing as I do than with the kind of poxy, false emotion you hear in too many songs these days.”
‘Mirror Green Tin Wound’: “This has heavy Arabic drums, which was influenced by my girlfriend, Yasmina’s tape of Arabic rhythms and built up with loops. Lyrically, it was written in the studio in about four hours and a record company guy said it’s my ‘evil’ song, my Satan song! It’s not, of course, but I like leaving the meaning of songs open so listeners can interpret them any way they want. So his interpretation is fine! And my illustration on the cover is something people can use to have a seance – if they’re so inclined! It does look something like an oujia board. So if they don’t like the music they can play with that!
‘Joy’: “Influenced by one of my favourite bands of all time – Joy Division. They had incredible moods and atmosphere and Ian Curtis’s lyrics always blew me away. He’s like Scott Walker and Miles Davis in that he paints a picture and invites you in. I listen to Scott, for example, and he sings about a summer in Paris and you’re there, you’re sitting with him in Paris. Same with Hendrix. The power of his spirit, more than anything else, just sucks you into his world. I sometimes wish I could actually paint as well as make music. Sometimes painting with sound is not enough.”
‘Steps Into’: “This has a techno drumbeat which was 120 beats per minute and I slowed it down to 8 beats per minute, the slowest a drum machine can go. In the background we also had an effect unit which the guitar player was playing and every time he took the plug out it would make an electronic noise so all the guitar work on it is us making that noise and pressing different numbers on the effect unit. Also, the keyboards are replicating string figures from Bizet’s ‘Carmen’.”
‘Distance’: “This is another song I did with Colm. Mark – my bass player – can’t physically listen to it. He said it does his head in, and someone else told me the same thing last night. He said it’s the equivalent of Berkoff’s work in the theatre. What you’re hearing there is a trumpet layered, put through the sampler and slowed down. The trumpet is also repeated six, seven times, building up each time, creating different tensions. It’s my favourite track on the album. This kind of music doesn’t exist anywhere else. I’m really proud of that.”
‘Whatever Way You Are’: “This started off with loops and then we got Richie Buckley in to play sax and the whole feeling, I hope, is like 1955 in some jazz club, with Miles Davis. I even sampled the sound saxophone players make just as they are about to blow, and I put that on the background. But what the lyric is saying there is a direct statement, saying that you can’t hide your dreams, that no matter how you try to compress things or pretend things don’t exist, the dreams will keep resurfacing. And that’s a great way to end Wreckage because that’s exactly what’s happened with regards to this album. For a long time there I wondered would I ever get my latest music out to the public again. Now, here it is. That’s my job done for the moment. The rest, really, is up to them.”