Ensemble band 3epkano, who score contemporary music for historic silent films, are beating a new path for an old medium, writes their bass player, Laurence Mackin.

Several years ago Matthew Nolan and Cameron Doyle came up with an idea for a film and music project. Nolan, a lecturer in film at Dublin Business School and Trinity College, wanted to score some soundtracks for silent film. Not the comedies of Charlie Chaplin or Fatty Arbuckle, but initially the dark and largely difficult films of German expressionism, movies where directors were becoming comfortable with the medium and starting to explore its possibilities, in terms of angles, set building, models and lighting.

The music would always be secondary to the film and the band would have a mixture of the classical and the contemporary, pitting distorted guitars, rolling percussion and ambient electronic noise against the clean, atmospheric lines of viola and cello.

Several years later and the project has taken on a life of its own. 3epkano have scored and performed live accompaniments to the Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Metropolis, Blood of a Poet, Man with a Movie Camera, Faustand now, Battleship Potemkin. The band currently has seven members, including myself on bass, Nolan and Doyle on guitar, Lioba Petrie on cello, Karen Dervan on viola, Richard McCullough on piano and keys, and James Mackin on drums. I played with the band initially, took a three-year hiatus while abroad, and recently rejoined in time to play with the group at this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival.

"The main incentive was to try and create something that did almost the polar opposite of what the traditional silent film genre did, where the music is very tightly and rigidly tied to the action on screen," says Matthew Nolan. "This actually does the films a great disservice; the films themselves are quite intricately structured and the editing that is created by the filmmaker has a musicality of itself. The simplistic approach with a piano player jogging along beside the film doesn't tie in with the rhythms that the editing sets."

The point here is to create atmosphere; the band and the music are not there to lead the viewer around by the nose, pointing out the landmarks of the film's landscape. The music is anything but rigidly controlled; the band embellish and pull back as the movie is rolling. There are pieces of music worked out in advance, with in and out points for each section, but the overall atmosphere is created live on the night. In a way, the film itself is the conductor. If this sounds slightly chaotic, that's because it is.

"It's more an atmosphere that we are creating; once we manage to create that atmosphere, weave that spell, it doesn't matter if note for note, it's not perfect," says Lioba Petrie.

Nolan quotes Ray Carney, in his book about the work of film-maker John Cassavetes, as his take on the band. "[Cassavetes] would give the actors very general directions and just let them explore the characters and he is the father of American independent film. Carney wrote that creating film for Cassavetes was a process of 'patient exploration and tentative discovery'."

It's an approach that takes quite a bit of confidence (or foolishness) on the band's part, but a large amount of humility, to resist the urge to overplay and overpower the film. "I feel that I'm constantly mixing as I'm playing, to sit in at just the right level with everyone," says Richard McCullough.

"Some people have said that, especially with Blood of a Poet, that the music helped the viewer to make sense of what's going on. In some ways, I'm terrified of that notion because that means we are creating meaning that shouldn't be there," says Nolan. "But in another sense we are making it more accessible," interjects Petrie.

THIS ORGANIC APPROACH, this blend of the formal and the spontaneous, is reflected in the band's set-up. Four of the band are classically trained, while the three guitarists have no formal training to speak of, beyond hours spent listening to and playing music.

"It's an interesting melting pot," says Nolan. "I was really surprised with the classical musicians. I associated classical musicians with the rigid approach to playing and it was an absolute revelation to start playing with them."

"At the very first gig we didn't know who would come," says McCullough. "We were sitting in Hourican's next door to the Sugar Club and this diverse crowd was coming in, some dressed up, some in their 50s and 60s and a student crowd. I presumed the older ones were going to the Concert Hall and then I saw this wide spread of people sitting looking at us."

The hope, on the band's part, is to steal part of the crowd from the NCH and part of the crowd from a Mogwai gig. The diversity of the music, though, is not without its drawbacks.

"The one thing we will always have difficulty with is trying to get recognised as an authentic ensemble . . . when it comes to funding and certain festivals, because two or three of the seven don't read music, that combination is going to work against us," says Nolan.

For now, the band thinks the approach is working, but it has crash landed in the past. "We lost the run of ourselves at a gig in the Project Arts Centre, about a year ago," admits Nolan somewhat sheepishly. A lack of rehearsal, and a little over confidence from a recent stint in the studio, made the group complacent. "We cobbled together a set list and everything petered out. It was a real lesson for us, we had to regroup and we rehearsed every week throughout that summer."

The next challenge is this weekend's Kilkenny Arts Festival, where the band will premiere a new score for Battleship Potemkinand perform a live soundtrack with the film Metropolis.

In a way, Kilkenny has been a second home for the band. It was there that we had our first few gigs and, thanks to the enthusiasm of arts officer Mary Butler in particular, it has opened up a huge community for the band and exposed us to other event organisers, promoters and, most importantly, a much wider audience.

Playing there is always a privilege, so roll on the weekend.

• 3epkano play the Kilkenny Arts Festival on Fri and Sat. www.kilkennyarts.ie .