Studio Diaries: Anna's Anchor Studio Diary

“A nautical mile is a little bit longer than a mile. I find that with everything I do, be it academically, work or music related, I always have to work a little harder to get where I want to,” explains Marty Ryan, the man, heart and soul behind the Limerick based indie-emo-punk act, of his new release’s title. ‘Nautical Miles’ certainly is befitting of a debut album title, for an artist who won’t let simple geography stand in the way of “writing and releasing as much music as possible.” Laying down Nautical Miles saw Marty spend all of January 2016 criss-crossing the Irish Sea for studio sessions with producer Bob Cooper. Marty enlisted his pal Brian Scally to lay down drums, before handling all other instrumentation and vocals himself. The fruit of his labour is a soulful amalgam of emo, indie and pop, reminiscent of Jimmy Eat World and Into It. Over It. Following it’s release on release on 23rd September, Marty discusses how it all came together…

How prepared you were going into the studio? I'm quite meticulous when it comes to preparing for things, so I had everything written, demoed and analysed so I knew exactly what the record needed. Given the fact that I was flying over from Ireland, there were very strict time constraints so I needed to be on the ball, know all my parts and put in as good a performance as possible.

Where did you decide to record and why? I decided to go with Bob Cooper in Airtight Studio in Manchester. Bob is the go to producer for punk and DIY music in the U.K and for good reason, he has a fantastic ear for the genre. Bob's recorded bands like Nai Harvest and Hindsights. I could tell from the few chats we had that he's very thorough and particular about different tones – he is well up for the search of the best possible tone for a particular part so really it was a no brainer when it came down to it.

How did you record Nautical Miles? The whole project was a little different as typically a record is done: in one whole block of time. I work, it's essential to be able to afford to do a project like this. I tend use my annual leave for touring, which is tough because you never get a break but it means I can be actively touring whilst still keeping my head above water. If I recorded this all at once, I wouldn't have been able to tour as much as I wanted, so I recorded the album over 5 weekends. I would drive from my house to Shannon airport on Saturday morning at 7 am, get a flight to Manchester, be set up and ready to go for 10:30am. We'd do 14 hours on Saturday and 7 or 8 on Sunday. I'd then get the tram back to the airport, get an 8pm flight back to Shannon and home in bed for 10pm, into work the next 5 days and repeat. It was a crazy schedule that really burned me out but it worked. Luckily the studio was the airport side of the city and there was a tram directly from the airport to it. It was really nice to kind of think about the previous weekend's work and think about what I could do better the following week.

That’s dedication! So aside from this, was there anything else unusual you did or anything interesting that happened? We went for a bit of a Minus The Bear vibe on the guitars in the verses of one of the songs we were recording one weekend, a band I really only discovered during the writing of the album from a rig rundown video, and I was in awe of the creativity of the guitar parts and effects. Interestingly, after we finished up recording the guitars for that on the Saturday night, got back to Bob’s apartment and he was like, “just saw on Facebook that MTB are playing Manchester tonight”. They were meant to be on stage in 15 minutes time, so I called an uber immediately and got there as they started the first song. This is one of the fondest memories I have from the whole month or so, as they’re a band that wouldn’t come to Ireland and it was so spontaneous yet they were really influential on the record. I hadn’t a clue where I even was in Manchester, on my own and my phone died during the gig, so getting back to the apartment was a mission, but got there in the end!

How do you feel about how the album turned out? I am 100% happy with the record. Bob managed to capture the mood and emotion I was going for. A lot of the songs flow into each other and I feel like it's really one cohesive piece of work. We got some really interesting and unique guitar parts that set it apart and the drums sound absolutely massive. I'm delighted with the results and the whole experience is one I’ll always look back on fondly!