The write stuff
Their music may incorporate snatches of jazz, folk and classical music. But whatever you do, make sure you don’t call Albrecht's Pencil a ‘fusion’ act.
Colin Carberry, 10 Jul 2009
Joel Cathcart reacts to the word fusion, much as a vampire would to the approach of a waved crucifix.
“Oh no,” he grimaces. “Not that. Anything but that. That’s a horrible term.”
Unfortunately, when this “lapsed classical performer” begins to rhyme off the polyglot mesh of influences (from modern classical, contemporary jazz, traditional folk) that contribute to his work (alongside Fionbarr Byrne and Laura McGrogan) as a member of Albrecht’s Pencil, it is the one word that springs immediately (all be it, lazily) to mind.
“How about collision,” he suggests helpfully. “That’s a bit better. It’s maybe a collision of the contemporary and the classical.”
Which, admittedly, does sit much more comfortably. Although if it is a collision – it’s the quietest one you’ve ever heard.
Sharing a coffee with Joel is like engaging in a frantic bout of conversational hop-scotch – one as likely to land on Old Testament ruminations (as part of his soon-to-be-completed Masters in Music, he’s working on a performance piece based on the Tower of Babel), as it is on the post-rehab working methods of Omar Rodriguez Lopez of Mars Volta (“He is intensely creative. He can’t stop. I think he was thirteen or fourteen albums worth of material waiting to be released.”). Add in the forthright opinions on many of his peers (“They write one song every two years and send out a press release”), and his take on the artistic claims of Belfast (“A Jekyll and Hyde town that wants to be a city”) and an hour in the self-taught guitarist’s company is an electrical storm of restless (but always enlightening) chat.
How strange then, that the music of Albrecht’s Pencil is completely free from this kind of distracting static.
For all the heavy subtext at play in the their two EPs to date (there are allusions to the occupation of Iraq, mental illness, agoraphobia) the songs are so light and diaphanous, they could almost have butterfly wings. Which is a worry. There is so much rewarding stuff going on here (their use of instruments such as the cavaquinho, tongue drum, glockenspiel, whipcrack, hang, violoncello, wind up radio, and tam-tam shows how elastic their notion of being an acoustic band is), but – much like Lamchop’s Is A Woman – you’ll need some clear air to pick it out.
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