Staying grounded when all is up in the air
GIVEN the name, it’s apt that it has taken 10 years for Rarely Seen Above Ground to release Chroma, the first full album from the dance act since 2010’s Be It Right Or Wrong.
Jeremy Hickey is the frontman, in fact, the only person visible on stage at gigs, pounding the drums, singing lyrics written with co-conspirator Jamie Walsh over backing tracks of Hickey playing guitar, bass and keyboards.
Screens project images of Hickey in silhouette, or just showing his hands playing each instrument. Intrinsic to this singular stage presentation is his fellow Kilkenny man, Paul Mahon, who works on the visuals. Hickey decided after years of attempting to make the typical band dynamic work that ultimately if he was going to bring his tunes to the masses, he would have to do it in his own fashion. ‘It wasn’t that I was a control freak, I just realised that it would be better if I did as much as possible myself. I began to write songs at 16 or 17 and got my first four-track recorder and it moved on from there.’ It is, he
concedes, an unusual modus operandi. ‘When I started I hadn’t a clue how I was going to do it. Sometimes I think to this day, “what the hell possessed me to do it this way?”,’ he says with a laugh.
He recorded an album called
Rarely Seen Above Ground in 2007 and made ‘about 200’ cassette copies which were snapped up. Then copies of copies began circulating, which helped build up a word-of-mouth following.
‘That’s when I began to believe it was possible to do it all on my own. But I thought, “how am I going to do this live, who am I going to get to play with me?”,’ he says. ‘My friend DJ Shadow (the American DJ and producer) was doing a tour. He brought this cinematic kind of show and when I saw that, I was blown away by it. That was a real influence on me, really believing I could do it all on stage myself.’ His first proper album Organic
Sampler in 2008 earned him a Choice Music Prize nomination and he followed it in 2010 with
Be It Right Or Wrong. He has clocked up performances at Electric Picnic and at festivals all over Europe. The decision to go it alone, in a live sense at least, has been vindicated.
‘The longer I’ve gone on, the fewer comments I’ve got from people asking would I add people or get a band,’ he says. ‘Bands are breaking up because they can’t afford to even tour any more. I always had it in mind that if I could limit the amount of people involved, I could make a living out of it.’
The new album is best appreciated in one sitting. You go with the ebb and flow of dramatic and urgent tracks such as Jungle and previous single Leave A
Light On and more meditative pieces such as Morning Star and
Weather The Storm. His wife Rosie sings backing vocals on the tracks Hollow and Focus. It is hardly ideal though that, after a 10-year gap, he releases an album into an environment impossible to imagine just months ago.
‘There was a thought about holding off. It was all recorded before any of this actually happened,’ he says.
‘I was looking forward to doing the songs live but no one knows for sure what’s happening with that. There is talk of starting with small shows and building it up from there. I brought out my first album at the time of the economic crash and now I’m bringing this one out during the pandemic. I have a good sense of timing all right.’
‘Bands are breaking up because they can’t afford to even tour any more’
■ Chroma, by Rarely Seen Above Ground is out now