News Mix #012: I Am The Cosmos

Irish production duo Ross Turner and Cian Murphy are long-term collaborators, with tons of experience in other projects (Ross drums for Lisa Hannigan, for starters), all amounting to the wealth of knowledge that was required for the formation of I Am The Cosmos. Their debut ‘Monochrome’ is one of the year’s most underrated albums, one that’ll surely rise about the average listener’s radar in due time. This exclusive mix put together for Neu isn’t what you’d expect though. In many ways it retains the intimacy, the up-close navigation of ‘Monochrome’ (which in itself couldn’t be a more ironically titled first work), but when you’re mixing Hot Chocolate and Gene Clark you can’t exactly expect a smooth transition. Like Turner and Murphy’s debut however, it carefully segues disparate parts like they were always meant to sit alongside one another.



On ‘Monochrome’ it feels like you’re trying to achieve a balance between so many feelings at once - is that your goal, with the music you write? And how do you go about achieving it without getting distracted?
R: Hearing the tracks now I think there was an unsaid goal of making the songs uplifting while carrying some weight and darkness. That wasn’t scrutinised, it happened naturally each time. Very early on Cian and I figured out that we wanted to make an album.
C: When we started writing, there was no exact plan as to how we wanted the songs to turn out. It’s easy to look back and apply certain meanings to the tracks, but I think at the time we let the songs guide us. We were possibly trying to articulate the mix of emotions we, like anyone, might feel at a given moment while sonically trying to make something interesting and danceable.

Is ‘Monochrome’ an intentionally ironic title for the album, so to speak? There’s so much going on at once, so many varying emotions and depths.
R: It kind of is intentional, hoping that a listener would figure out its not as straight forward as the title suggests. I love simplicity, I wanted to express everything in simple terms. The Yves Klein Monochrome reference comes directly from seeing his work and how deep and dense it was while being a very simple concept.
C: We were able to draw certain parallels between the duality of Yves Klein’s work and the ideas we had for our own music. Most of my favourite music usually benefits from repeated listens - more is revealed to you the more you engage with it.

Ross, when you first started drumming for Lisa Hannigan how much was your head in the world of electronic music, and is this the kind of project you’ve always wanted to pursue?
R: Electronic music has always been a big part of my musical landscape. Before I started with Lisa I did years of recording and touring with the Irish band Jape, which was heavily electronic. When it came to writing or making music, it just seemed very natural to do it with synthesizers or programming. It was really important to retain a natural form and approach tho. My all time favorite band is The Band. I always liked the juxtaposition of the two - electronic and roots music as main influences.

How easy is it for you guys to distract yourself from other projects and focus on I Am The Cosmos as a separate entity?
R: We have an understanding that playing with other projects requires a shift in energy, but it has never effected us, its just a matter of figuring out when can we work on our own thing next. I was away pretty extensively with Lisa Hannigan, so we had to be really diligent with our time recording Monochrome but that helped move it along, there was no hanging around.
C: I play with Ships and we both make up part of the Solar Bears live band, so that distance allows a certain amount of perspective when it comes to our own music. It means we are particularly focused when we return to writing Cosmos stuff, and can review what we’ve done more objectively.

I hear a lot about Ireland, about how hardship has brought forward the good music and how there’s a real sense of community to boot. How much of this is true?
R: Whatever has happened here in the last few years has made life unnecessarily difficult for people. Under these circumstances it seems a basic human instinct kicks in and you bust your ass. This isn’t just music or arts, so many new ventures and ideas have sprung up by people making the most of it. I think Ireland is a great country now but it will emerge as a really, really great country when everything has levelled off again. All the dreamers will be rewarded hopefully. In the music community everyone is on each others side here. People have been very kind to us and we try to support any and all of our peers.
C: I think that statement applies across the board when it comes to the arts - we have close friends and collaborators in other fields, namely our photographer/designer friend Dorje De Burgh among others - who are helping to sustain Ireland’s creative momentum. Every other week there’s a new initiative of some kind, whether that be a zine, an exhibition or even a clothes shop. It’s a great thing to see people pursuing their passions, unafraid of economic constraints.

The remarkable aspect of this record is how up-close and personal it feels. Was that always the intention, to express through electronic means? And how did you go about doing this?
R: I think the nature of synthesis suited the mood we wanted and we both love electronic music that has an emotional pull. The live instrumentation gave us that human element, which was a very important to us also.
C: Personally I feel there’s a really expansive palette available through the use of synthesizers. We’re both players to begin with, so we’ve tried to marry the most interesting elements of acoustic/electric and synthesized instruments.

What’s the next step for you guys? You seem to work well together - do you always think you’ll be making music as a pair?
R: For sure. We’re about to setup a studio in a beautiful, inspiring space in Dublin, its in a pretty historic building too. I think collaborating has always been open to us, like with Dan McAuley on ‘Esque’ - make tracks with people we really like.
C: We’ve spoken casually about the possibility of recording/producing for others - I like the idea of augmenting and improving on other people’s musical ideas. We’ll see what happens.

Mix tracklist - stream exclusively on DIY/Neu below:

1 Wendy Carlos - Concerto No. 3 in G Major - II Adagio
2 Jean Michel Jarre - Arpeggiator
3 Yellow Magic Orchestra - Technopolis
4 Imagination - Changes
5 Skipworth and Turner - Thinking About Your Love
6 Hot Chocolate - Going Through The Motions
7 Savage - A Love Again
8 New Jackson - Hussle Free
9 Gene Clark - No Other

DIY Neu Mix #12 - I Am The Cosmos by Diy on Mixcloud