Autumns Interview

Christian Donaghey embodies Autumns, a solo project in which the Northern Irish artist exhibits a degraded style that combines new textures with archaic treatments, and primitive textures with innovative treatments, a sum of conditions that optimises Donaghey’s ability to create a style that he has been polishing over the last 5 years. We talked to Christian about this and more.

Hello Christian, first and foremost, I want to thank you for your time and ask you about the origin of Atumuns, was there artistic life before Autumns, or was this your first project?

Thank you for wanting to interview me and I hope the answers are satisfactory.

I played drums in a band as a teenager just for fun, it was as serious as any teenager band goes. But Autumns is my first proper project and it came about when I took a gap year instead of going to university straight away. Then within five months of putting my first songs online, I got contacted by Karl O’Connor (Regis) to release the songs on his label Downwards. The rest is history as they say. 

Autumns is a project that bases its ideals on an evolved post-punk style, what have been your influences?

I don’t know what directly influences or subconsciously influences me, so that’s hard for me to say. But I would say recently my biggest influences have been bands like Swell Maps and pretty much any of the weird shit on the On-U Sound label. Environment and situations etc don’t really influence me, it’s more about the attitude than anything else.

Nowadays we can recognize you with your sound, the bass-lines that you usually use give you away, but in your first years it was all very different, everything sounded dirtier., do you plan to recover this sound?

Well, I still think my sound still has some of that lo-fi style of recording anyway, but I’m pretty ambitious so I don’t want to return to anything I’ve done before. So I don’t plan to recover this sound anytime soon.

Do you think that nowadays the public is more tolerant with the most eccentric styles?

It does seem that people are becoming more open to eccentric styles of music. But Unfortunately, I think people are mostly only tolerant of whatever music is currently trending or whatever music will provide them with a certain type of self-image.

Does your style fit well in your city, or is it complicated?

I don’t fit in with my city’s music scene and I don’t have a complicated relationship with it. If you want to write pop songs, be in a rock band or be in a cover band you can do pretty well here, and that’s totally cool. I’m happy enough just to stick in my own world.

You recently published a release on Soil Records, this label operates independently regardless of fashions and mainstream, are you one of those who thinks that this way of acting adds value to a project?

No, I don’t. Ultimately the music just has to be good. It’s that simple.

What are your performances like, what machines do you usually use?

I only use about four pieces of gear live so it’s pretty minimal, and I just try to give it stacks and get involved when I’m playing.

Can you anticipate any new release you plan to publish?

My new album “Shortly After Nothing” will be coming out on Oliver Ho’s (Broken English Club) label Death & Leisure early May. It’s the fucking business.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to get to know Autumns better, congratulations on your career, from Industrial Complexx we wish you the best.

Ximo Noguera