Decal playing Solo. Image used without permission.

Based in Dublin city, Ireland, Decal has been making electronic music since 1993. Originally a duo, Decal released their debut album ‘Ultramack 004′ on their own Ultramack label in 1994. Since their debut Decal have released an impressive catalogue of music on a whole host of labels including Rotters Golf Club, Planet Mu, Satamile, Ultramack,Trama Industries, Leaf, Law & Auder, Lo Recordings, D1 Recordings and many others.

To you, what is music, what does music do for people, what do people get from it and what is it’s function?

I’ve no idea what it means to everyone else but music is something I just can’t do without. No other medium has the same emotional affect on me. I need it.

When you first starting recording music, what were your expectations, realistic or not, about your future as a band?

When I first started playing in bands circa 1988, the only thing I wanted was to play gigs. Then it was to put out a record. Then it was to put out a record on an English label etc. Simple things that I ended up achieving.

Now that you’re further down the line, in terms of age, experience and so on, how has that changed? Have your motivations changed?

No – all I ever really want is to be making music and for a small amount of people to like it. I think I deliberately fall into niche genres so the possibility of anything big happening or any external expectations being put upon me is really small. I don’t like the idea that I should have to continue doing something specific because that’s all that people want to hear from me. I guess my motivation is to stop that ever happening by bailing out of things just as they start to pick up steam. Funnily enough by the time things do pick up steam you’re generally past the innovation phase and into the repeating yourself phase. that’s kinda why I haven’t written electro in a couple of years. Electro was always my domain and I got everything I wanted to do out of my system. No point releasing any more until I have a new angle to it – like I did on the early Trama Industries releases. They were pretty unique records in a genre that never really thrived on inovation. I locked myself into the studio for a year getting that stuff down and it was probably the most satisfying thing I ever did because it was singularly instrumental in getting Decal known outside of Ireland.

What was your experience of making and releasing of 404 Not Found from a business point of view?

There was no real business point of view to it. Mike (Paradinas) liked it and wanted to put it out. Planet Mu was a much smaller label at the time so there wasn’t as much focus on it. Somehow or other the press never got done in the UK so the album never really did anything for us outside of Ireland. We did the press here ourselves and the album got a lot of coverage. In Ireland it’s perceived as a success cos people saw a lot of press but outside of Ireland the next two albums did way better in terms of press coverage, sales and raising peoples awareness of Decal. It’s a shame really cos it was a great record. Some of it sounded really unique and it deserved wider recognition.

When this album was released, how did you feel it was received in terms of reaching wider audiences, opening up new opportunities for you both as a band, and you personally as a musician?

Like I said above it did nothing in terms of opening us up to new audiences outside of Ireland. The album itself gave us the opportunity to try a few things out in the studio which was really cool. We sat down and tried everything we’d always said we’d love to try. It was written pretty quickly from what I remember. I think it came out the same week as BOC’s (Boards of Canada) Geogaddi, so I think it was somewhat overshadowed.

How much of these positive and negative aspects were enhanced or hindered further by being on a label?

The only thing that hindered it was the failure of the PR company to get any reviews. If we had done the PR ourselves it might have been a different story.

How does that differ for you now, releasing your own music for free?

There are two reasons for me putting stuff out for free at the moment even though the website doesn’t make that clear. The first is that I’m archiving tracks that came out on compilations and weird little bits and pieces that appear in the discography that very few people have ever heard. The second reason applies to the actual Decal-Artifacts mp3 releases and something i mentioned earlier. I think music is really stale at the moment. Electronic music in particular. The decal-artifacts releases are tracks that I’ve done that I consider to be as good as anything I’ve commercially released but which I don’t think advance the cause of my music. I’m not gonna put out another ‘real’ record until it’s something I think people really need to hear. That’s the kind of value I’m trying to put on my music these days. There’s no point in putting out records just because you can. That’s one of the things that has the music industry fucked at the moment. The digital releases on the site have had a lot of coverage, ‘Little Sketches’ in particular, and they are good releases but I really want the next ‘real’ album to be really special.

Quite a few musicians these days feel that there is very little money, for the artists at least, in sales. Most money is to be made from touring and merchandising. In terms of making a “day job” as a musician, what do you feel you have learned over the last few years?

I work 9-5 and pretty much always have. Like I said earlier I always seem to fall into niche genres where there is no fear of ever making any money from records. I don’t tour and I play very few gigs these days. When we were playing gigs and getting a bit of money we were renting a studio which cost way more than we ever earned from gigs. Money from music has never been a factor for me and I don’t really pay all that much attention to it. One problem with it is that, in order to make it a career, in almost all cases, you have to make serious concessions to your own music. The other reason is that there is such a limited lifespan for music these days that, even if you don’t compromise your music, the chances of you making a real living out of it for longer than a couple of years are slim to none.

With the emergence of iTunes and free labels such as ourselves, do you feel there is a need for physical formats these days?

I love physical formats. I have absolutely no time for files but I understand the need for them and that people find them useful. I like having a CD or record with artwork in my hands because it feels like it comes directly from the artist themselves. You can almost see the time that went into the creation of the body of music inside and the thought that went into choosing artwork to best represent the music within. I have no such attachment to files.

What are your feelings on DRM?

It’s obviously ridiculous.

Do issues such as environmental impact have any bearing on your activities?

I cycle to work.

I find my tolerance for what I value as ‘good’ music has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. When I bought my first CD’s, I would listen to them over and over again; these days, I will go through and album once when I get it first, and if I don’t feel a vibe then I disregard it. I’m not sure if that relates to my tastes changing or being spoilt for choice. Do you think most people value music as much when they get it for free?

If you’re like me, then you know when you first listen to stuff if you hear something that will make it worth persevering with something that doesn’t grab you immediately. I still try to give records a chance even if I don’t like them first time. I listen to music on different levels though – as a fan, a composer, an engineer, a producer – so some records I love for what could be considered to be the wrong reasons i.e. I love the snare sound.

People don’t value music they get for free – fact. If you try to sell a cd in a shop for €5 a huge percentage of people won’t buy it because they think that there must be something wrong with it because it’s cheap. If people have that attitude to cheap music, what must they think of free music? People might value music that they download/steal from P2P or torrents because they know what they are doing is piracy. But if you gave someone the same music for free will they have the same respect for it? Personally, I doubt it.

Good music is hugely valuable and we should be fighting to give it value by encouraging people to make it by buying their records and giving them something back.

With the recent well-publicised activities of Radiohead and the release of ‘In Rainbows‘, it has been proved that a major band can turn out a profitable album without a major label to back it? Do you think it’s possible for an emerging artist to do likewise or is it because of Radiohead’s previous commercial success and solid fanbase that allowed them the freedom to take this leap?

It’s because it’s Radiohead. It won’t work again. They got ‘first blood’ on that type of publicity so it’s unlikely to generate headlines again. It is a good way to make sure a high profile band can get a little bit of cash by effectively leaking their album themselves though.

Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, recently promised to ‘leak’ tracks from his upcoming ‘Year Zero Remix‘ album himself, which seems to me to be a statement directed at fans as well as the labels, in terms of their (our?) willingness to ‘pirate’ music on any level, from mass downloading to sharing tracks amongst friends. This term was also used by Radiohead. How do you feel about ‘piracy’ as an umbrella term for sharing music, and indeed any other content, in this era?

Well Trent has been proved wrong on his opinions with the whole Saul Williams fiasco :)

What do you think would happen to the Britney’s and Justin’s if they experimented with the same model; surely Pop music needs the strength of the major labels to succeed on the scale we experience today?

The model can’t work for them. They need the machine that is the music industry. Without the complete package of cd, pr, video, posters, pluggers, etc they’d never have any impact. It’s because they’re a complete package. The song only holds value when you combine it with the video and pr power of the major labels. If Britney left her label and tried to release a download only record I doubt if anyone would even notice…

• Decal Videos by Video by Tim Redfern (http://www.eclectronics.org/)

Thanks to Alan O’Boyle for his input. Interviewed by Piratio

• Decal’s Website
• Last.FM
• MySpace