Aidan’s ship comes in with launch of new EP

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Singer/songwriter Aidan Breen launches his debut EP The Cub upstairs in Róisín Dubh this Saturday, October 10. Currently doing a postgraduate course in artificial intelligence, Aidan’s final year project involved writing a program that would manage the gates at Galway Harbour. This led to him getting to know harbourmaster Capt Brian Sheridan.

As fortune would have it, this friendship let to a promotional opportunity for the young musician. You may recently have spotted the artwork for The Cub on a large billboard on Galway Docks. The idea came to Aidan when the harbourmaster commented on a video he’d put up on Facebook, and Aidan acted quickly.

“I knew he was in a good mood by the comment he made. I just had a brainwave, and thought ‘if I could only get that’,” Brian says. “I did a quick photoshop of what it might look like and I sent it to him. He said ‘yeah, whatever you want, nobody’s using it for the next month. So if you want to use it, you can have it’.

“I got a friend, a heap of ladders and a projector. We projected the image up on the wall from distance and we just painted in the black bits. When we stood away and turned off the projector it was all good. We were lucky with the weather as well, because we were painting it by hand, so it was kind of tricky!”

The Cub was recorded by Will O’Connor, who is also a part of the atmospheric and impressive duo Grounds For Invasion.

“I met Will through playing the Open Mic in the Róisín Dubh, and a lot of people suggested that I get in contact with him,” Aidan says. “I met him one night and pitched the idea and he said ‘yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do it’.

“I’d been writing the EP since I finished my tour of the 32 counties two years ago,” Aidan says. “I was looking to record it for a long time. I didn’t want to overproduce it. It was meant to be a sort of demo EP. Making music in Galway, no one really overproduces it. It’s not the style, I don’t think.  It’s nice to keep it a little bit more honest.”

Aidan enjoyed working with Will, and the pair built up a good dynamic in the studio.

“He’s very easy to get on with,” Aidan says. “But also, when he’s recording he’s not afraid to say ‘you need to do that bit again’ or ‘that’s really good, but we need to move over here and concentrate on this.’ We were able to get five tracks done in three days, which in my experience is pretty good. Especially with the quality I got.”

That 32 county tour is not the recollection of on overly romantic musician – Aidan Breen did actually play in every county in Ireland, over 32 days, two years ago.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.