DUBLIN 1999 - 2004
OVERVIEW
In a perfect world Ten Speed Racer would come from a place no-one could put a name to and would have met as strangers, at the behest of a philanthropist svengali who wanted to create a brilliant, free imagination rock group, with classic songs and zero tolerance for the limitations of cyclical fashion. It would then be possible to start talking about Ten Speed Racer without offering the misleading facts that they're a five piece from Ireland, and three of them are brothers.

Two and a half years ago, as the band gradually took shape in Dublin, it might have been significant that frontman vocalist/guitarist Dermot Barrett and guitarist/vocalist John were from the same family of music fans, and that their elder brother Pat, along with drummer Terry Cullen and guitarist Joe Chester had all been playing in bands in and around the Dublin scene before joining. Maybe back then, from the vocal harmonies that graced even their earliest songs, a theory could have been constructed explaining the band as part of a heritage of great musically attuned sibling groups.

But now, at the start of 2003 Ten Speed Racer are ready to release a first fully formed album, which entirely eclipses the bare facts of their roots. 'Ten Speed Racer' presents a band who long ago slashed the ropes anchoring them to anything that might be expected of Irish rock or mere brotherly cohesion. Its a record by a band who have found a key to a huge atmospheric playroom where they can be heard reveling in the realization that they can go anywhere with their scintillant rush of harmonies and riffs, soundcraft and songwriting.

You might have to conclude, on the recorded evidence now before us, that Ten Speed Racer have entirely left their bodily, grounded form behind, and taken new shape, as five velocity boys, drunk on subtle new emotions, summoning up a delicious, shaded form of rock music which is driven and adrenenalised, but never fake or pseudo dumb or just in love with the past. Having named themselves after a form of two wheeled transport that every kid wanted, and which took you where you wanted to go, at high speed, it now sounds like they have arrived in style at the very place they always wanted to be.

Its no co-incidence that an album of such sublime originality came together in a phase of the band's life where they had deliberately removed themselves from the interferences of city life. In early 2002 Pat Barrett decided Dublin was getting too much for him and when he moved out to a remote farmhouse in the South East of Ireland, outside Wexford, the rest of the band joined him.

Set in 94 acres of land, the house allowed each band member to create with home studio gear in their own rooms, and then pool ideas. It also allowed room for a 24 channel analogue desk, enough CDs to fill an average bathroom, around ten feet of vinyl and a lot of books, videos and instruments. In the huge main room the band could set up and play, with views through the windows going out to woods and orchards. Free from advice, opinions and distractions, they gradually worked on a set of songs that are a thorough vindication for the decision to step out of the Dublin scene.

"The decision to move away affected things hugely," says Dermot." You can't play what you're doing to your friends immediately and you can't get anyone's opinion, so no-one had heard any of the demos of any of the songs before we went to record them. When you're away from people it is just down to the five of you and I think that's way better. I think that helps a huge amount with it being harder to immediately recognize."

Ten Speed Racer may have perfected the art of brilliant singularity on this album but from the start, they were making music, which spilled out of one-dimensional categories. In reactions to the bands early Irish released singles, critics cast the net wide. By the time the band followed introductory songs like - 'The Ballad Of Greedy Man' and 'Death To Disco' with a swiftly recorded initial album 'Eskimo Beach Boy' they'd been compared to a flattering but contradictory array of bands ranging from The Byrds to My Bloody Valentine and REM to The Dandy Warhols. "You have to laugh at it," says Dermot. "Because most of the people named are all really good. If they were comparing us to somebody that we hated then we'd worry. "

In anything in the band's initial phase they were suffering from an over-abundance of knowledge and possibilities. Dermot, John and Pat had gone their separate ways since living together as teenage metal fans, and all of them brought their experiences with other groups to the band.

Dermot had worked for a while as a sound engineer and stage manager for bands including traditional and folk artists. Unfulfilled by traveling the world with other groups, he slowed down enough to get a flat in Dublin in 98/99. John was meanwhile working in an instrument shop and after hours Dermot would drop by and they'd play together. By 99 the seeds of Ten Speed were to be witnessed gigging the smaller Dublin venues. One night at what was then the Mean Fiddler, Pat checked them out.

"It was one of those things where I was stood at the back of the venue and it was like 'I want a bit of this'," he recalls.

Almost without thinking the brothers were suddenly in a rehearsal room together, and with the eventual addition of Terry and Joe, the line up was perfected.

While 'Eskimo Beach Boy' was well received and began to make waves for the band in the US, picking up college radio support, they knew that in terms of sound they hadn't fulfilled their potential. They also knew that even though the Dublin rock scene was enjoyable, it wasn't good to get caught in it. They'd rather create their own scene , within the grooves of their own record, than attach themselves to something else.

"When you question the scene all the time you're not really ever going to part of it," says Dermot. "We just seem to want to stay away from anything that's suddenly fashionable. Most of those things do end up being fads and we know too many people that have been caught up in that kind of thing, just through our own personal knowledge of people that we knew that had been famous, so it made us a bit more wary."

Through late 2001 and early 2002 the band began to define exactly where they were heading. If there was a duality in the music where songs sometimes took dreamy, pastoral form and sometimes geared up into harder edged rock with harmonies, the next singles and EP releases started to merge the elements. Now signed to Red Flag Records, the band released their 'Girls And Magazines' EP in April 2002. Demonstrating a rare emotional complexity in the lyrics, the five tracks - 'Girls And Magazines', 'Freewheelin', 'Why Can't You Feel It', 'It Ain't Gonna Last' and 'The Only Light' - broadcast the fact that here was a hyper urbane-guitar band capable of exploiting strange, lovely, energized spaces between jagged, dirty rock and hazy strumming.

They were by now using horn sections and melding acoustic and electric guitars. With the single 'Listen To Bits', released in the UK in July 2002, they took things further, finding that they could be flamboyant and sensitive, delicate and heavy in the same record, and making critics stretch further to account for a musical place that somehow touched on 60s West Coast US guitar pop, 70s early song-based Brian Eno solo records and future production styles.

Already they were beginning to be recognized as melodic maestros with a streak of stubborn originality. With the move out of Dublin and a scaling down of live shows to allow them to focus on songwriting, the stage was set for a remarkable debut album proper.

"We wanted just to make a really good rock record because there was no-one fucking doing it," says Dermot. "And we needed to get this record out of our systems as well. I think we'd learned more and more how to mix different influences together. We've listened to an awful lot of folk music but then also to Talk Talk and people like that as well, and everyone does listen to both sides. There's a different kind of excitement that comes from both of them. And we learned that with rock songs you can put acoustic guitars in there and make them sit in, and you can put more electric guitars on the other things. It all just came together perfectly on this record."

Although finally recorded at The Chapel in Lincolnshire, with the band producing (and Spiritualised/Divine Comedy producer Darren Alison mixing) every note of 'Ten Speed Racer' was written in the big, secluded house. Rather than encouraging a traditional approach, the rural setting allowed the band to create with clarity and perspective.

"I think a lot of the songs came out of the fact that we were away from things and some of the songs are about that," says Dermot. "And a lot of the songs are about being away and then going back to it, and seeing what it actually is, and staying out. It definitely influenced all the songs. "We all have about two or three songs on the album, so there's a lot of perspectives, but then we have all kind of gone through the same things. When you're that close to people in a band you understand what they're going through as well, so its alot easier to understand what they're doing in the songs."

From the euphoric blaze of 'Bring On The Feeling' (written by Pat about his escape from near fatal illness) to the punishing, intense confessional 'Demon Heart' the band exhaustively explore emotional fragmentation, hope, fear joy and minor madness while fusing layered vocals and hyper-textured riffs into some of the most eloquent, curvaceous, addictive, and original songs 2003 will see.

'By My Side' is a revved up mantra; 'Come Over' spins a six string kaleidoscope to gorgeous effect; 'Head' races downhill into the arms of love; 'Just Don't Wanna' skews the sound into glorious art-punk; 'Loaded Gun' is all dark melodrama and heady ensemble vocals; 'No One Love' surfs a golden storm of guitars; 'Nobody Has To Know' chimes out irresistibly; 'Overcast' swaggers; 'The Greater Cause' goes beach punk; 'Wine Morphine' goes grungedelia. None of it sounds quite like anyone else.

With 'Ten Speed Racer' they've pulled off the near impossible task of creating a record that exists entirely within its own frame of reference. It creates its own mood and its own worldview. And it will be loved and misunderstood precisely in accordance with its uniqueness. Its easy to do nouveau retro goth, or punk electro. Ten Speed Racer, hidden away at the end of a long, long muddy track, have done something harder and done it superbly. "One of the best compliments that we've had is people saying 'You don't sound Irish at all'," explains Dermot. "We're all well proud to be Irish but that's not the point of the music. I think we're just trying to be honest, more so than to be something. I think we're just trying to be ourselves."

For the moment its enough to know that a space for super cool, streamlined velocity rock has been staked out in the crowded guitar band territories, and that wherever they go next Ten Speed Racer will get there with maps they've drawn themselves. There's never been a better time to be a 10 Speed freak.