TRAVELLING HOME to Portrush from Oxegen 2005 found four Ulstermen a bit worse for wear after the weekend’s revelries. “We were feeling terrible!” admits Rory Friers, during our Thursday morning conversation, but amid the post-festival comedown emerged an inspired idea.
Rory Friers, Johnny Adger, Chris Wee, and Tony Wright were “best buds” who had “all played in bands”, but on the drive home they decided to join forces. This was the genesis of And So I Watch You From Afar.
From their 2007 mini-album This Is Our Machine and Nothing Can Stop It to this year’s magnificent full length album Gangs, the Antrim quartet have grown from promising post-rockers to a group fast leaving that genre behind, breaking new ground with their fusion of heavy metal, dream pop, and alternative rock (“It’s definitely representative of the schizophrenic taste of all of us in the band,” quips Rory ), attracting fans from those genres, and announcing ASIWYFA as an innovative force in instrumental rock.
Start a band
Portrush, on the north Antrim coast, is a popular seaside and recreational resort known for its long sandy beaches and golf course. It was here ASIWYFA’s members grew up. Rory’s parents were “fairly big music fans” and encouraged a love of rock music in their son.
“Some of my earliest memories are of music, such as my father pointing out to me John Bonham’s kick drum in Led Zeppelin’s ‘Good Times Bad Times’,” Rory says. “I grew up listening to prog from the 1970s, Queen, and later Michael Jackson.”
Queen’s Brian May was a particularly seminal influence on Rory, but more for his approach to the guitar, rather than for any ‘traditional guitar heroics’.
“Listening to Brian May, and the tones he has, gave me the feeling, not that I want to be good at the guitar but that I want to be able to have something I can create music with,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of the instrument as such but of what they enable you to do.”
In 2006 they played their first show, only settling on a band name shortly before stepping on-stage.
“And So I Watch You From Afar comes from a misheard lyric from our bassist and we loved the word-play of it,” says Rory. “He gave it to us before our first show and at the time we were into that George Orwell, dystopian, surveillance camera vibe.”
ASIWYFA’s intense live performances and dramatic music soon was the talk of indie circles and the quartet built up a following throughout the country on the strength of their shows. Their rising profile also demanded re-location to Belfast in 2007.
It was fortuitous timing as the city’s music scene, which also features bands like Not Squares, Cashier No 9, Mojo Fury, etc, was the healthiest it has been for years.
“I think there’s a sort of confidence up here, a ‘can do’ sense,” says Rory. “It was different 10 years ago and beyond. There’s a camaraderie between everybody and a vibrancy to what everybody is doing. Bands see what their friends do and they are encouraged to do the same. You don’t have to wait to get a record deal before you can play shows or organise tours in the UK. You can do stuff on your own terms. It’s a nice time to come of age up here.”
Set guitars to kill
While ASIWYFA’s previous releases established them as promising and ‘one to watch’, it was Gangs, released in April, that confirmed them as among, if not the most exciting Irish band at work right now.
This was largely due to the strong influence of heavy metal on their music and a willingness to incorporate its more flamboyant guitar leads into a post-rock approach. Gangs provided a breath of fresh air into a post-rock genre which had become repudiative and stale, with far too many bands merely repeating the kind of motifs that, say The Redneck Manifesto or Mogwai, perfected years ago and have long since left behind.
Rory admits there was also a conscious decision to distance themselves from the tiresome cliché’s of post-rock, and deliver something that steps outside those confines.
“When I hear ‘post-rock’ it conjures up yawny music and there is nothing more mind-numbingly boring than 10 minutes of a going nowhere tune,” he says. “When we started to tour, because we were an instrumental band, we would be put on a bill with post-rock bands, and by the end you’d really be trying not to kill yourself.
“We still feel we are that punk band that started in Portrush. Post-rock is not what I think of. The first band who did it, Slint, were ugly ducklings when they started out and that’s what we want to be as well, we want to do things in our own style and put something we love out in a way that works.”
While Gangs was an attempt to find fresh avenues for instrumental alternative music, it also celebrated the places and people ASIWYFA met during its last two years on the road.
“We though about what we had done from the first record to Gangs and what had taken up those two years in travel and people,” Rory says. “I really liked the notion of these circles and pockets of people we linked into in Ireland, Russia, the UK, and the US, for short periods, and being within these gangs and groups. That’s really all there is to it, groups of friends and people who interact. I also liked the word ‘gangs’, it’s a bad-ass title.”
However only six months after the album came out, and with the band receiving glowing praise from critics and playing to ever larger audiences at festivals across Europe, Tony Wright left. How much of a disappointment was his departure?
“It was sad,” says Rory. “Tony was there from when we started but it’s what he needed to do so in a way there was no other outcome, but we have always really thrived on the big moments in life. When there is big change you really get to re-assess and reinvent. He’s our great friend. It’s sad we don’t get to hang out with him as much, it’s still exciting to be in ASIWYFA as well.”
An ASIWYFA concert is an intense and exhilarating experience and something of an athletic endurance contest for band and audience. Rory and the others relish the stage and the contact it gives them with their fans.
“There’s something exciting about writing the music, and genuinely loving it, and loving the thrill of playing the songs to the crowd who care as much about the tunes as we do,” says Rory. “There’s an expectation that things will occur. When we play the Róisín Dubh, there are 300 people willing you to make it amazing and you are willing them back to reach fever pitch. I just love that and love the show we have now. It’s where the band and audience are one community. It’s brilliant.”
ASIWYFA headline the Róisín Dubh’s New Year’s Eve party. Support is from Daithí Ó Dronaí, Toby Kaar, Enemies, and Sleep Thieves. Doors are at 8pm. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and www.roisindubh.net
