Part 1

Name: Perlee
Members: Saramai Leech, Cormac O'Keeffe
Nationality: Irish
Current release: Perlee's debut album Speaking From Other Rooms is out via Backseat.
Recommendations: Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
A friend in college recommended this to me and I fell in love with it. I couldn’t believe how someone could put dreams and such magic in words. There was a tone that reminded me of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood and also of C.S. Lewis at the same time. The abundance of descriptions and generosity of imaginings is life affirming in some way.

John Field: Nocturne no. 5 in B flat major
This Irish composer who lived in the 1800s invented the Nocturne before Chopin. He lived in Russia and wrote some of the most beautiful piano pieces. The romantic soft feeling of this nocturne always bowls me over.

If you enjoyed this Perlee interview and would like to stay up to date with the duo and their music, visit the band's official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Cormac: Most of the time not much is happening. As I’ve gotten older the times when a piece of music  completely stops me in my tracks have gotten less frequent. That said, when something does hit it hits hard and that teenage music obsessive reappears.

I had a pretty bad bout of insomnia recently and had tried various over the counter solutions to no avail. My body was so tense and tight with the sleep deprivation and I was frustrated and angry. I then came across an EP by the artist Alabaster DePlume called Visit Croatia. It’s slow, sparse instrumental music.



He plays this melody on the 1st track with a  muted saxophone that is so languid and wise. I was lying on the couch at 4am and it was like I was engulfed with the sleepy ooze of the music. I put the EP on repeat in my headphones and I awoke a few hours later with my face stuck to the couch with the music still playing. It was a glorious and restorative experience.

[Read our Alabaster DePlume interview]

Saramai: Eyes open but when I play I usually always close my eyes. Music has always been visual for me and almost nostalgic for something that hasn’t happened. I feel it in my bones or absorb it like a smell.

I recorded some (to me) incredible pieces of music when I had almost no idea what I was doing. What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

Saramai: I never studied music theory. I did my piano grades and fumbled through theory like Curly Sue spelling a big word.

As time goes by I am less afraid of theory. I always held the mystery of music with such regard that I feared once I pinned the butterfly that I wouldn’t be able to be creative anymore. But I since did a masters with some composition and theory elements I’ve conquered that fear.

I always felt on some gut level that I would chase away something by over analysing or even understanding what I was doing.

It is generally believed that we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between 13-16. Tell me what music meant to you at that age, please – and how its impact has changed since then. 

Saramai: Music at that age was the same as everything else at that age - intense, endless in possibility, frustrating and exciting.

Emotions back then were like landslides and if a piece of music unlocked a feeling then it was visceral and impassable. I would listen over and over to songs or parts of a song that had an effect on me. Like that section of Orff’s Carmina Burana or Dylan’s poem ‘Thoughts on Woodie Guthrie’. I miss it actually. The simplicity of it like a bee with a flower.



Now emotions have become domesticated in a sense and I understand myself more so I rarely get blind sided by a piece of art like I used to. Also when you are that age you have a lot of time and if you are lucky, your own room and a stereo. It’s an age when you want to fly away and music lets you do it.

Now I get that same feeling when we write something new or at a gig when an old song reveals something and I’m off with the magic and the mystery.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and how do you think has working with them shaped your perspective on music?

Cormac: When I started playing guitar, aesthetics were vital.

I had this cream Encore guitar and I slung it real low and learned a few power chords and I was away! I then became a Frusciante acolyte and I sprayed the guitar silver and stuck pieces of broken mirror onto it. Those teenage bands and the friendships within them were so formative and made you realise that music was going to play a bigger part in your life than it would for most people.

As my taste became a bit more refined I started experimenting with guitar pedals and got my first little 8 track recorder. I then found myself in my first serious original band in my early 20s. Our instruments were still pretty basic though and my Dad who has always been incredibly supportive decided he would buy myself and the other guitar player two Telecasters. That really was a game changer. There were no excuses now but to knock our heads together and set sail.

My guitar collection has expanded a bit since and I’m now heavily reliant on a Martin acoustic guitar, a Vox electric and a recently purchased Gretsch baritone. I also have recently been given a long term loan of a Musicman amplifier by a good friend and collaborator which is a wonderful thing. My intention is to start experimenting with stereo amping and to ween myself off the dreaded Thomann / Ebay pedal scroll!
 
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Saramai: It’s probably the same for most songwriters. When I started writing, song writing was a means of working things out. I recently heard a quote from Joni Mitchell that went something like ‘If you can hear you in the song then I’ve done my job. If you can hear me in my songs then I haven’t’.

I think now when I write something it’s an attempt to capture something that is true or that I feel in my bones. It’s less about some kind of therapy, although it is always therapeutic and intensely personal. Once I have the sense of what a song is, and it’s not worked out but more like: ‘If it was a film what would it feel like? Like an overall Gestalt’, then I, or more accurately we, have the roadmap.

Cormac and I write very much together so it could be a few chords or a riff he comes with or vice versa and then at some point it kind of reveals itself or just enough of itself to provide a signpost or two. Or perhaps more accurately of what it’s not meant to be. We use our gut to guide us a lot and we experiment. Sometimes it feels like being blindfolded in a maze and bumping against things until we find the way out.

Paul Simon has been quoted as claiming that “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Cormac: Think it depends on which incarnation of the song you’re listening to.

There’s always a visceral excitement to the voice memo or the selfie video you make of the initial spark of an idea for a half decent song. You marvel at the potential of the idea and become a bit too happy with yourself.

Then the hard work of putting meat on the bones begins and this can be arduous and torturous. You become swamped with a gazillion versions of the thing and eventually you can’t tell if it’s any use at all. At some point you cop yourself on and realise that this is the process of all artistic endeavour and that making something from nothing has a value. There’s a lovely satisfaction when somebody says something nice about a song once it’s out or if you hear it on the radio.

I think our sound is essentially about our 2 voices. I’d like to think there’s a yearning in there for something. Our new record has a kind of dense, thick sound to it I think. It’s definitely gone for both starter and dessert.