WORDS LIAM MAHER
Terriers are a new presence on the Irish music scene and are quickly making a name for themselves with their low-key, sultry productions — a sound that the band describe themselves as “afterhours haus”. This is an apt description of their music as the duo tend to focus on atmospherics, instead of crowding their productions with too many elements. Musically, they tend to be “more influenced by what is going on around us at the time when making a song,” said Peter Ward. The task the two set themselves is to “capture the feelings around those situations and show them musically, or at least our version of it,” something that is illustrated well by their latest single 13/13 which was recently featured on the XLR8R website.
Having come together after meeting in college at a stage when the two were both getting into production, Ward and Ronan Downing decided after a night out to form Terriers. A week later they convened in Ward’s shed and made Truant, a haunting production that features vocal samples flitting on top of an oscillating synth line and some atmospheric pads. A steady 4/4 drum and snare pattern anchor the song and help to achieve its hypnotic quality. Downing admitted that “it just came together so easily that we knew that we would work really well together. We decided to make an E.P. and that was it.”
From such an easy beginning the band have expanded their sound and incorporated some new ideas into their respective musical palettes. The two prefer to work together and jam out ideas rather than working on things individually; and focus more on using hardware and analogue forms of recording in order to achieve the warmth and “hiss” of the old recordings from the 80s. They have admitted to “turning into synth nerds over the past two years,” incorporating “old Korg bits and bobs and some junkie old Roland synths which are nearly broken but suit our sound down to a tee”. They revealed to me that the Terriers synth is the Korg Polly 800, a keytar from the 80s that has recently become their “new favourite toy”. On top of this, the two have been focusing on recording onto VHS and cassette tapes. It is obvious that the hardware utilised is an important element of not only the Terriers sound, but also their composition process. Downing elaborated, “we feel that the hardware gives off a more ‘real’ vibe than the ‘in the box’ stuff. You can feel it a lot more when you’re playing the stuff in and using real filters, it’s just really nice.” Their sound, Downing admitted “came from nothing” in that rather than sitting down with any musical style in mind, they just started to jam. From then on their music evolved naturally, stemming from the sounds they like and the equipment they utilise in order to achieve these sounds, which seem “to do their own thing”.
Unlike a lot of Irish producers at the minute, Terriers prefer doing live shows rather than DJing as “they represent us a lot better”. They admit to not coming from a DJing background but rather one of performance, some of their formative musical influences being guitar bands such as The Pixies, Tears For Fears and Barbara Mason. Readers can expect to witness this live show more regularly in the New Year when the two release a new E.P., currently in progress.
