Having recently released their new single The Vine, we met up with Meltybrains? to discuss their talent show beginnings, how quick they can write a song and using Xbox gadgets to make music.

When you listen to a band like Meltybrains? you wonder where their musical origins lay? Perhaps it was with singer/bassist Ben’s first gig to see Aqua in Philadelphia or Donnacha learning & singing all the lyrics to Three Lions, not realising it wasn’t Ireland’s own anthem. Maybe it’s from drummer Micheál realising music was cool when he heard Friend Like Me from Aladdin. Surely it’s got something to do with Brian hearing John Lennon’s Imagine at the end of his dad’s cassette of homemade recordings, that would get played on car journeys, and being led to believe it was his own. “He basically used to always tell me that was his song.”

Whatever it is, the collective, completed with Tadhg on violin, found each other and managed to become one of the most interesting bands in Dublin.

“We all met in Maynooth studying music.” says Ben “We were in real bands before this. This is like the nonsense project on the side that 100% took over. We were all in various different bands we didn't really know each other ‘til we formed the band.”

When it comes to what influences their music, it’s not at all standard fare. “Field sports is a big influence, superheroes, armadillos come quite heavily into it, rain, broken houses and the walk across the college campus.” After some prodding, they admit “Portishead, Gorrilaz, Bjork, James Blake, Snarky Puppy and all the gigs we've seen collectively as well, like Flying Lotus, are a huge influence on us.”

So musically, where did it all begin for the band?

“I sang at the age of four, played clarinet when I was six. I gave that up because you know…" The band breaks into laughter. “I started playing guitar at thirteen. My first guitar was a blue Aria acoustic guitar and my first electric was an Ibanez that I covered in duct tape. I picked up the bass when we started Meltybrains. I play a Fender Jazz bass.”

Micheál describes his experience beginning with “a double bass. I was an eighth the size of it and I climbed a ladder to play it. I did the piano for years and I was like any Irish child playing piano, shite! When I was going to the Artane School of Music, my mam asked me what instrument I wanted to learn. She said they don't teach guitar there, so I just said I guess I'll play the drums."

You would think being a young lad with a drum kit would be a parent’s worst nightmare. “My parents were always really cool about letting me have a drum kit at home.” he adds. Micheál's parents got a friend to set up a kit for him. His dad planned it as a surprise. “He told my brother to distract me, and my brother kept getting a tennis ball, throwing it over the wall and telling me to get it. I'd run, get it and then he'd throw it again and I’m like ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ That went on for half an hour.” The whole band crack up upon hearing this, possibly for the first time.

“I started doing piano lessons when I was six” confirms Brian. “My father played piano so there was a baby grand piano at home. Then I was in marching bands, playing clarinet. Around thirteen or fourteen, when I thought I was cool, I started learning guitar. Then I found out I wasn't cool and went back to the clarinet.”

Donnacha took to the violin and the piano. “I was in an orchestra, I was gonna say the Philharmonic but... it was a little fuckin' toddler orchestra in DIT.” (all laugh) “I took up Trad violin and then one night I went in to my parents and was like ‘I'm doing too many things’ and they said ‘then quit the violin and go back to sleep. I kept the piano up and sung in choirs and here I am.”

Tadhg took it up violin at the age of six “and a bit of guitar for when I thought I wanted to be in a band and thought I couldn't be in one with violin. I was in loads of orchestras with violin but I never thought you could bring one in to a band set up. I decided to stick to one instrument & just get really good at playing all different kinds of things on the violin. I started using pedals in college.”

Their first practice was over four years ago. What did that sound like?

Ben remembers it fondly “Oh man it was so much fun. We learned a song we were going to play at a song competition in college and we went to Micheál's attic in Drumcondra, playing a shitty Yamaha keyboard, his brother's bass guitar and Tadhg’s electric violin, and Brian wasn’t even in the band.”

Micheál adds “After the lads went home I asked my mam ‘What did you think of the music?’ and, because I was playing in another normal band at the time, she was like Are you sure that's a song?”

Ben cuts in “The first gig was two days after that and it was eh… (all laugh) we basically had that practice because we got that gig.”

Tadhg sheepishly giggles, “It was a song contest with all these single people strumming guitars with songs, and ours was not even what you'd call a song compared.” Donnacha adds, “It sorta sounded like a Russian folk song with a bit of hip hop/rap.”

Donnacha and Ben wrote their rap, based on a can of deodorant, on the train from Maynooth to Drumcondra. Donnacha's memory is of “being on stage and the only thing I could really see was darkness and the crowd, but the only face I remember was Brian up against the wall, just standing there like Ahahahaha."

“Then we trashed the stage afterwards,” says Tadhg: “and we had to go back on and get told how good our song was, like X Factor.”

“I'm pretty sure we were laughing at them while they were staring at us.” says Ben “In college we decided to move to Dublin and said let's never, ever play Maynooth ever again."

“But that failed.” Tadhg confirms.

How does the writing process work?

“We write the song digitally before we ever bring it to a room to play.” Says Ben with Brian adding, “We kind of sit around the laptop shouting at each other till something comes out.”

“Someone will play their bit and then the next person will get their headphones and play along to it, then Ben sort of arranges it.” Says Micheál “We all just sit around to listen to it and then we've to try and figure it out with our instruments and do it like that.”

“Who starts a song changes every time. Like last week Ben started cause he had to leave in five minutes. So he was like 'mmmm hmmmm, here's the bass line, bye!’, then Tadhg did his part 'cause he had to go and then the three of us stayed a few more hours and at the end of it there’s a song there.”

“We've done a song in a half hour before, that's the quickest” says Ben. “But then it comes to the song you put up on Soundcloud, months of work goes into that generally” adds Micheál

 “That half an hour song we did was because we were down in Mayo with Connor Walsh," says Donnacha "he was giving us a space to write in and was like ‘lads I'll take ye in next door to the pub owner’ and then were like ‘okay we've got half an hour, let's bang out a song’ and then went to the pub.”

What are they all using to achieve their sound?

Donnacha uses a Roland SH201 Synthesizer & Yamaha DX11. "I was given them both. I don't own any of my gear.” Also his, but not his, is an out of tune glockenspiel, which Micheál’s great grandfather played in a marching band.

For Ben the core live set up consists of reverb, delay and distortion. His assorted pedals include a Boss SYB-5 Synthesiser & a copy of a Rat, bought for €20. "It's really, really crap, but I really like it cause it's dirty and it feedbacks all the time." This is completed by a Line 6 Delay. "I love turning the feedback up all the way so it makes these horrendous alien noises. It sounds great." Synth wise he uses the Bass Station. His laptop “has loads of effects going through Ableton Live that affects the vocals and things."

Brian uses Ableton Live on his workstation along with an APC40 midi controller. "The screen is mapped out to it so you don't have to use your mouse, you can just press buttons for all of them. I felt a bit limited with using a keyboard, it's great for pitched sounds but for weird sounds it's not the best controller, so I have a tether which a friend of mine hacked a video game golf controller to trigger sounds, which is great fun.”

Using video game equipment doesn’t stop there, extending to borrowing from his X-Box. “I have my Kinnect which I'm trying to work into things a bit more. There's a great crack for it so it can map all your body movements to Ableton to trigger sound, volumes, pans and things. The web cam motion sensor is mapped to 64 squares of vision and then I can play notes on that.”

Tadhg’s violin of choice is made by Ted Brewer. “It's the Vivo2. I have the exact same one but with 5 strings.” As for pedal power “the Memory Man is the one I probably use on nearly everything. I like to pick one setting and try and find every sound imaginable. The phaser is only used for one song at the moment, a new song.”

Micheál got his kit when he was fifteen. “I don't know if I'll ever change it.” he says “My parents said ‘rather than get you a starter kit we'll get you a kit that will last’ . Most sound engineers, when I play live, said it's the best kick drum they’d ever checked, but for recording it doesn’t sound that good.”

“I don't own a cymbal that's not cracked. Once I started breaking cymbals I realised I couldn't use them much anymore but then I noticed once you put them on top of each other it didn't matter. I collect broken cymbals off people, so I've a bag here of ones with different weights have different cool sounds.”

“Before Meltybrains I wouldn't have listened to a lot of electronic music. The drums in electronic music aren't like normal music so I've been trying to figure out little ways to make interesting sounds out of the drums.”

What’s can we expect next?

Brian confirms they are “doing a lot of writing. We're aiming to have a lot of new music out by next year. I think an album is something we're working towards but we'd like to be in the right situation before that happens.”

“An album is a big deal so if we are going to do one we're definitely not gonna rush it.” Adds Tadhg “When we do put it out it's going to feel perfect among the five of us, it'll be exactly the way we want it to be.”