motel void

MOTEL VOID: You originally come from Dublin but right now you live in London. Why and when did you decide to move to England?

CRUMPLE: I moved to London right after college. I decided to move because it was right after college, I had nothing keeping me in Dublin and I had a friend’s band that needed a bass player so I jumped on a beautiful tour that set me up in London and introduced me to all the people that would end up being my life there. It was very serendipitous. But I actually just left, after twelve years in London I moved to Paris last year, trying to maintain serendipity in my life.

MOTEL VOID: Could you compare those two local music scenes?

CRUMPLE: Dublin is great and has an amazing music scene but growing up in it pre-social media you only see the bits of it that you’re exposed to. So I grew up with all sorts of confused ideas about it being cliquey and exclusive and so I never really engaged. London was the opposite, it attracts a lot of people from outside it, so it feels like no one owns it, so it felt super open by comparison and so I did engage. But again, that’s probably just chance and the rivers I was lucky enough to float down.

MOTEL VOID: Could your recommend some of your favorite local bands and local venues?

CRUMPLE: My favourite Dublin band of all time is Estel and my current hot contemporary tips are the Deadlians and Mhaol, two quite different punks bands doing two things I have always loved and I’m so happy to see being done in new ways by new bands. As far as I’m aware all the venues I loved closed down, the Workman’s Club is the still going though. Fav London band? Too many to choose so I’m gonna scan through my Spotify and find the last one I played: George Vallack, my pal who used to drum in a sick guitar band and now is producing this spacey electronic music that I really love. The best venue would have the seats, toilets and sound of the Barbican hall, the vibe of Cafe OTO but probably the programme at the Lexington.

MOTEL VOID: Could you tell us more about your recording and writing process?

CRUMPLE: I do a lot of writing for ads and co-writing with other people where you’re beholden to a brief or to the politics of collaboration. Crumple is the project where I get to empty my brain into a song without filtering it or worrying about it selling the yoghurt brand or having parts that people enjoy playing. The writing process is: fumble through my day, have a melodic/lyrical idea or a concept, write it down/voice memo it, then whenever I sit down and I have Crumple time I take out the notes and collage them into shape.

Sometimes it’s nothing like that but that’s how it goes for most of it. Inspiration small doses that then get organised later. The recording process is more often than not multitracked with me playing most of the instruments and getting my more handsome and talented friends to play the things I can’t play well (flutes, strings, drums etc). Next EP I’m gonna do it live (or mostly live) in a studio, for a change.

MOTEL VOID: You cooperate with a lot of people. Do they help you with songwriting as well?

CRUMPLE: Everyone that plays on a song gives it something it wouldn’t have otherwise cos they’ll never play it the way you would, so in that respect yes. But in terms of lyrics/concept I’m very picky with this project. I don’t do any co-writing (having said that, there is one track, Life After God that a poet friend wrote some words for).

Having the space to express your own cryptic/internal vision is rare and I think I want to protect that, in a selfish way. No matter how much you love someone or vibe about the same influences, there’s always the chance that they’ll completely misunderstand what you’re aiming for, or that they just won’t like it before it’s framed in a finished piece of work. So I’d rather have at least one project that’s purist in that regard, even if it only makes sense to me in the end.

MOTEL VOID: What are your plans for the rest of 2023? Any live shows/festivals ahead?

CRUMPLE: With what’s left of 2023 I’m putting out a four track EP that I think is called A Thousand Bees, a couple of unrelated singles before and after, some remixes (I think). Nothing live in the pipeline for Crumple (standard) but Atlanta Dream Season (who I do some of the guitar/singing with) are gonna play in London after the summer.