"I Felt Like If I Didn't Make The Best Song In The World, What's The Point?" Clash Meets Alex Gough
The startling Irish multi-hyphenate in conversation...
There are very few artists in the world capable of building a world within their work. Having the power not only to construct a running line through the course of an entire project, and filling the tracks with a sense of aura and aesthetic that takes the listener not only on a journey through the artists mind but accompanying him through his surroundings and experiences, like a movie. The most popular example of Kendrick Lamar, who crafted his own version of his native Compton within his two most popular albums, ‘good kid, M.A.A.D City’ and ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ and, in turn, has spawned thousands of Reddit threads of theorising around the albums true purpose and power.
It was Lamar’s power of creativity and experimentation that inspired Irish songwriter/producer/rapper/drummer *Alex Gough* to create his most compelling project yet. “He has a fascinating way of painting a picture and taking us, like a movie, from scene to scene” Gough explains of Lamar’s influence.
On his latest 'EP FOREVER CLASSIC', released last year, Gough inspired to create his own universe of sorts, taking him away from his childhood bedroom where the project was being created to the sun-soaked beaches of L.A.. “I was never going to do it like he did because his stories are far beyond anything in my reality but I tried to emulate that world building in 'FOREVER CLASSIC'” Alex notes, before adding “I had nowhere else to go so I created my own world”.
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Alex Gough began taking an interest in music from a very young age. At the age of six, it was a combination of Alex’s older brother and the Jack Black classic ‘School of Rock’ that inspired Alex to pick up the drumsticks for the very first time. By the age of eight, he began taking lessons from a teacher in his hometown of Waterford, before his drumming teacher moved to South Africa when Alex was twelve, leaving Alex spending his spare time learning increasingly complex drum patterns from YouTube.
At sixteen, he began learning how to write his own music and learned quickly that the only way to get real work done was by learning how to produce. He managed to borrow a copy of the music production software Logic and quickly began producing electronic music. He quickly switched lanes to hip-hop and since then has been taking inspiration from artists such as J Dilla, Madlib and Lamar, all of whom spliced jazz instrumentation and motifs throughout their music, which in turn led Alex to studying the complexities of the jazz style. “It’s jazz I’m most influenced by now” Alex explains, “not only because it teaches me more about my instrument but you can also learn so much about playing other genres, it’s an essential genre for me”.
In 2017, he released his first project in ‘18’, which was quickly followed up by the release of two instrumental EP’s ‘Infomercial EP’ and ‘Art is Alive and Well Part 1’. Attention was slowly starting to build for Alex, but it was the release of his fourth EP ‘80%’ where things really began to take shape. Within weeks, the project had reached over 500,000 streams online and had helped to secure him a position on the bill at Eurosonic in January 2020 in The Netherlands (a position he maintained in 2021’s online edition of the event). Following a smash hit show abroad, it seemed inevitable that 2020 would be the year Alex broke through to masses.
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Then COVID-19 hit and Alex found himself moving home to Waterford as the music world stopped turning. What had begun as a year of excitement quickly turned into a year of nerves and uncertainty. “Mentally it was tough” Alex explains of the quick change in circumstances, “the summer of 2020 was meant to be the summer I’d spent five years waiting for, and within a couple of weeks it was all gone. That really put me down mentally for a long time”. After taking a few weeks to rest, Alex found himself anxious to create, and he had just the project to work on.
“At the start of 2020 it was very single-orientated and at the back of my mind I had this concept brewing, which became 'FOREVER CLASSIC'” Alex explains of the backstory behind his latest EP, an eight-track project inspired by the funk-fuelled playlists of American radio made popular by the GTA video games. The project began its life as a fun way of passing the time in lockdown, but slowly became something far more meaningful for Alex. He began examining his relationship with time, a pressure to succeed, and his uncertainty of whether he was doing enough to become the best artist he could. “That project, for me, was supposed to be this nonchalant EP of bangers, but that actually leaned into the whole concept of the EP” Alex admits, “despite all the fun tracks on it, rooted within is me and the emotion of it, and that everyone is dealing with something behind the scenes”.
The emotional epicentre of the project is ‘Plastic (DBS)’ which examines the stress of age, and the time in our lifes at which we reach certain milestones and achievements, something Alex had found himself battling in the past. “It’s a mix of impatience, jealousy and competition” Alex explains of age’s significance, “I’d be on Instagram, and I’d see these musicians doing incredible things, playing incredible music, and the first question, like it’s hardwired into me, is ‘what age is he?’ If they are 27, I’d feel justified in the fact that I haven’t done that yet”. “I felt like if I didn’t make the best song in the world what’s the point?” he adds, before concluding “It’s an ego thing, it makes me feel like I should be better than I am and I feel hurt like that”.
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As Alex was working on 'FOREVER CLASSIC', one of his tracks, ‘Dear SJ’, was taking on a life of its own as part of the soundtrack for the international sensation that was Hulu/BBC Three’s TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel Normal People. “I had never heard of Normal People, I didn’t even know who Sally Rooney was. I thought it was a soap” Alex laughs looking back on it. A few months later, ABC approached him for permission to use his track ‘Breakfast’ in the police procedural ‘The Rookie’. “I didn’t know anything about the Rookie but then I googled it and I realised it was on ABC in America” he recalls, adding “they played it for like two and a half minutes, it was sick”.
Since the release of 'FOREVER CLASSIC', Gough has been putting the finishing touches to a number of singles set for release later this year, and had time to record a live 'BONUS FEATURES' EP of tracks from the project, which was released today (January 29th). “That was one of my favourite projects I’ve ever made because I was in the room with people” Alex reflects of the recording process, “I just love capturing raw and in the moment music”.
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'BONUS FEATURES (Live At The Clinic)' EP is out now.
Words:* Cailean Coffey*
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