Fish Go Deep: Cork dance music duo on their new album
Fish Go Deep: Greg Dowling and Shane Johnson.
We’ve a catalogue of dozens and dozens of EPs and 12-inches and we felt it was more exciting for us, more fulfilling, to put a record, a long player together, one that all the tracks made sense as a piece. Not to say we won’t go back to releasing dancefloor bangers next year but for the moment, it’s just more exciting, the album format.
But I think we were probably heading in that direction and I think the pandemic, when clubs were shut and the need for dancefloor-specific music was a little bit less, maybe a lot of artists got to explore making music for listening, for want of a better word. You know, just for sitting on the sofa and taking it in rather than the more functional dance music that’s largely designed for dancing to.”
After previous album This Bit of Earth, were there particular things you wanted to continue to explore on What I Mean by Beautiful?
Over the course of the previous album, there were no four-to-the-floor house grooves on it. This one, as we went on, a few of those started to creep back in. That’s probably more what we’d been known for. I definitely see these two albums as a pair but they kind of end up in different places, I think.”
Greg plays some guitar. He’s managed to squeeze in his melodica on this album as well, on the first track at the very end. It really slotted in beautifully. If you listen very, very carefully I’m singing on one of the songs, just kind of backing up the sample vocals with my vocal. We have a microphone available in the studio and if you want to shake something against it or you want to clap your hands it’s nice to get that different texture. When you’re working with mainly electronic sources to get an organic texture in can really make the track stand out. Particularly in house music.
We also put in a lot of field recordings. I’m always on my phone. If you’re passing a stream that has an interesting gurgling sound, record it - you might be able to slot it in. Voices on a street with cars passing, there’s some of that on the album buried deep down but it adds a texture. You might only notice the tenth time you’ve heard the song, but then it really makes an impact.
“It’s a line from a John Coltrane interview from the early ‘60s, which we’ve sampled a couple of times before because it’s just beautiful. His kinda drawl and his dreamy voice is just so alluring. But he’s talking about in his playing what he means by beautiful.
When we met with John MacMonagle, who made the artwork for the album, we were going through titles. We still hadn’t settled on one. And John underlined that one. He said it was very poetic.
It can mean a lot of different things. But the more general sense that I take is just the personal, the ‘I’ bit. We all see the world through a different lens. What you see of a situation could be completely different to what I see of a situation and it doesn’t necessarily make one of us right or wrong. You should be aware of that when you’re dealing with everyone. It’s what I mean. The world is a subjective place.”
Our history with John goes right back to the beginnings of Sir Henry’s. He designed some of the original posters for Sweat Dance. In fact, I’m looking at one of them in front of my desk at the moment. The very first one for Sweat. It’s a painting by John’s wife, Billie Moloney. It’s really beautiful.
John, in recent years, has been making art himself. He presented us with dozens and dozens of his art works and said pick out a bunch. And what turned out to be the final cover image, it’s not something you look at and say it’s beautiful. But it relates to the title and it can be seen as beautiful, or some people can see it as beautiful.
- What I Mean By Beautiful is available now in digital formats or on vinyl. See https://fishgodeep.bandcamp.com/ Guest voices include Lisa McInerney and Hillary Rose
