Decal, the solo project of Dublin electronic music pioneer Alan O’Boyle, released The Echoes Are Decoys recently, via Dublin-based label Front End Synthetics. This marks Decal’s first full-length album in nearly two decades. The 13-track release showcases a range of styles, from melodic electro to synth-pop and Detroit-influenced techno and is a welcome return to the fray.
You revisited some unreleased work from your Trama Industries label releasing it in early 2024 on Intrinsic Rhythm. How did you find that process?
That’s probably what led me to this Album (The Echoes Are Decoys). I’d been dipping my toes back into making music of my own again and I did a bunch of stuff for a Front End Synthetics and as Of One, and I started digging through all the old Decal bits, and around the same time Sunil Sharpe asked me for a track for a compilation that he had done on his label Earwiggle. So, when digging that out, I found all the old Trama stuff and I took it all out and put it all up on my Soundcloud, for free, basically. Eddie (Tr One) just grabbed me and was like “I’ll put out an EP of that and whatever else you have as a mini album for download”. Doing it with Eddie was actually really nice, it was very simple. He just picked the tracks that he wanted and there were a few tracks that I liked and that was kind of it.
But it kind of sparked something in my head, definitely in terms of there was a bit of unfinished business. I had some inspiration from the stuff from the archive plus stuff that I wanted to do again. Then I had a listen around and I wasn’t quite hearing anything in that style at the moment. So I just sat down. I guess that whole thing with Eddie kicked off this run of music and I’m very grateful to him for putting it out and taking a chance on them because that’s really rare. Eddie’s a great guy. He’s putting out some of the best music of his career at the moment. The last EP is exceptional and the new one he has with David Kitt is amazing.
Having seen you DJ, you’re quite happy to span the genres but from a production standpoint you’re synonymous with the world of Electro. On this release there’s been a definite shift in focus with half the tracks being demonstrably techno. Can you explain this diversification?
So that’s interesting because the clue is in the name of the album. I did a bunch of techno stuff on D1 recordings as Decoy and the title is a reference to that. Originally when I wrote this stuff, it was very definitely techno, so it was going to be a Decoy album, but as I was going through it, it wasn’t in that style. Decoy was a very Detroit style, where this had more of a technicolour feel to it. The Detroit thing has got a very definite sound to it but it was more in line with the colour palette of the Brightest Star album on Rotter’s Golf Club, even the techno side of it. So, with that in mind I started doing a few electro tracks.
I stopped doing electro because I ran out of inspiration in it. In 2006 I was sitting on a lot of stuff that was retreading and basically I thought what’s the point in releasing this? This new stuff all fit with the album. I think the way the album runs is techno into electro, but the style of techno moves into an electro-y style of techno.
We’ve always done techno. The first thing I did on Rotter’s Golf Club was for a compilation, Machine Funk Specialists and there were two Decal tracks, one was techno and one was electro. So it’s always been part of the same thing.
In my own head the electro that I write is not really the purest electro. There’s elements of it, but it’s definitely not your standard robot style in awe of Kraftwerk. It’s got more of a bass influence and a techno influence to it.
Within 20 seconds of playing ‘Freekin Failures’ I was transported back in time to The Funnel circa 1998. Just something about the way the bass drum hit I experienced a deep sense of nostalgia. Any thoughts?
That track is interesting because again, in the title, it’s made up of samples from Freekin’ Empires on Rotter’s Golf Club, which was a decent track at the time. It was very fast so it didn’t hit a lot of people, but DJ Stingray from Detroit used to play it out all the time and was on a bunch of his mixes. The idea was to try and do a techno track that had the same feeling as that.
Freekin’ Empires is similar, its got big epic sad strings, a very ravey melancholy feel to it, but also very uplifting. It was always the intention to do a techno track in that way. I tried many times and it didn’t work, but I think I got it. It was about trying to get the chords right to get that feeling. It was definitely trying to do something old, but with a modern edge to it, and that’s why it felt nostalgic and probably because the influence comes from electro again.
How about your creative process, has that evolved over the years?
Ah totally yeah. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that I work quickly and finish stuff. I’d rarely let a track live on the equipment for longer than a day. If I don’t have a sense of it within four hours I’d turn everything off and get rid of it and that’s always been the way that I’ve worked. Typically I would start something in the evening and finish it by the time I’ve gone to bed, put a mix down, listen to it in the morning, then adjust it, mix it down again, and that’s it, it’s done. The one thing that has changed dramatically. I spend a lot more time tweaking stuff to move over time, automatically, so tweaking synths and LFO’s so they evolve as they move on. I guess the way I do it hasn’t really changed, I’ve just got better at it, faster. That’s all using hardware.
I’ve tried using laptops for a long time and never really gelled with it and despite the endless limitations, I prefer the constraints. The bulk of this album was written with just the sampler and a little Juno synth, basically playing sounds, resampling them to free up the synth to have another sound on it and so on. You end up with everything in a sampler and self contained at the end of it all. So it has its advantages, but I’ve always been that way, never had a load of gear; I was too poor.
I mentioned seeing you DJing before and it was in The Funnel. It holds a very special place in the hearts of those who went week in week out. Did you share the affection for the venue?
Yeah, it was a really interesting place. The people who ran it, who owned it were music lovers. They picked the people to put stuff on there that suited what they wanted to do.
It came at just the right time where a lot of clubs in Dublin were starting to bed in. Switch and The Kitchen were doing great things and great gigs week in week out but it had settled. You had techno on Thursday, drum and bass on Friday, house music on a Saturday. So I think The Funnel gave a home to the types of music that weren’t being represented anywhere else. Drum and Bass had a weekly thing and the Detroit stuff and the electronica and a bit of everything. I think a lot of people who are making music now, still, all met back then in those places. It was a good time and I think it lasted just about long enough. Like it was only two years.
There’s a lot of rose tinted memories about it because people say “oh it was brilliant” but it was empty most of the time. A lot of nights were very sparsely attended, but there would have been an exceptional act playing. Then look at all the labels that sprung up, came from there, came from people meeting there and sharing ideas and going “here, I’m putting out a record, I’m putting out a CD” and “this is how you do it”. A very interesting coming together of people and we all still know each other today. Like the whole Front End Synthetics came out of that. Definitely a different time and it was right at the point when The Funnel was sold to become an office block, that’s when the whole city started to go that way and the point at which Dublin changed and its closing was like a foreshadowing of what was coming.
Any thoughts on the Give Us The Night campaign?
Yeah, I mean, good luck to them. I still have my original Give Us The Night T-shirt that someone gave me back in the very early 2000’s. Dublin 100% needs the staggered closing, nothing happens after a certain point and it’s always been the way. It’s a massive negative.
It’s the usual crap. It’s vested interests and it’s hard to fight against it in this country and there’s certainly not the political will to change it. Plus there’s not really the illegal after hours party scene that would force change. If you had a massive warehouse scene where every weekend the police were shutting down things going on from 3pm until 8am. Someone, somewhere would eventually go, “well, there’s a market here”. Whereas now people just don’t care and there is a massive opportunity. These days people don’t go out until late. You’d love to see it happen, I mean we call ourselves a modern European city.
I have to hand it to Sunil sticking with it for so long, an absolute trooper. He’s been such a force for good in music in Dublin and Ireland as an ambassador for techno. He’s absolutely brilliant getting up there in the news and he got treated really badly, horrendously and he got through it and more power to him. He’s definitely robust in that way. He means it as well. He’s doing it because it’s the right thing.
How in tune are you with the Irish electronic scene?
I stay in touch with Tim Smith, Takeover Recordings. I check out DeFeKT stuff, brilliant and Sunil’s label Earwiggle. Whirling Wall of Knives is one of the best acts out there, right down my street, industrial techno. I don’t really follow it as such, just dip in and out of it and along with techno, Rustell is really good. New guys running around include Breakdata who did a remix of an old track for me, a remake of a track from Rotter’s Golf Club days but it’s getting time to find the stuff.
Words: David Carr
Decal’s album The Echoes Are Decoys is available on frontendsynthetics.bandcamp.com
