Following a sleeper debut, Ken McHugh is ready to take on the world with help from a couple of friends, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
Autamata is dead - long live Autamata. Or let's put it this way - the Autamata you may have known from 2002's My Sanctuary has had an extreme makeover. Gone is the ruthless, stern dictatorship of producer/musician/tune writer Ken McHugh; gone is the vocal assistance of Dublin singer Cathy Davey (now forging ahead with a moderately successful solo career); gone is the anonymous image (which featured vague visions of cerebral studio eggheads); and gone are the mostly instrumental/electronica melodies that curiously nabbed the album a nomination for Best Dance record in the Hot Press Readers' Poll.
In their place come the wise, benign dictatorship of producer/musician/tune writer Ken McHugh; the vocal and songwriting collaborations of Dublin singers and songwriters Carol Keogh (an original helper in all things Autamata, as well as being involved with another Dublin band, Tyconaut - formerly The Tyco Brahe) and Sarah Verdon (a former member of Dublin band Subrosa); a clearly defined image with echoes of The Human League (with Ken being the Phil Oakley figure, Carol and Sarah the all-dancing, all-singing "girls") and Goldfrapp (with Ken being the Will Gregory figure, Carol and Sarah the all-sleek, all-chic Alison hybrid). Oh - and lest we forget, a medallion-type logo that hints more of a metal act than anything else.
Out of humble beginnings are such success stories born: Autamata's debut has filtered out into the wider world, and has become one of the sleeper hits of the past three years. Its blend of learned, cheeky instrumentals, strange but charismatic electronica, and killer songs has been used on soundtracks you might not have heard but which please McHugh's bank manager no end.
THE BAND'S FORTHCOMING album - Short Stories - comes from the same stable of influences, but it's nevertheless a horse of a different colour.
"The difference is the confidence," says McHugh, who, along with Carol Keogh, is putting forth a good case for the acceptance of Short Stories as one of the best releases of the year. "You don't know how a first album is going to be perceived. I had worked with a few other acts in a producer role, but for me as an artist it was a different thing altogether. When I brought the first album out I just did it - I had no expectations at all."
"Everyone goes through that 'am I any good?' phase," says Keogh, "and Ken is confident and very positive." "You have to be," he offers. "I'm doing what I love to do. I wake up every day and make music. I make a good living from it. The response to My Sanctuary - even now - is amazing, so when we finished the album, we sat down and said we could do it in one of two ways - we could do it big, or we could just faff around once more. And why do that again? We've all put so much time and effort into it."
While Keogh and Verdon (latterly at least; she came in to sub for Davey) are the vampish limbs of the Autamata body, McHugh is, to all intents and purposes, the head, neck and brains. His obsession with music began as a child, when as a member of Mayo-based trad/folk act The McHugh Family, he travelled around Ireland playing pubs and lounges. It was, he says, an early taster of things to come; an appearance on RTÉ's Screen Test will, he says ruefully, come back at some point to haunt him.
As he grew older, McHugh's interest in music continued. Following one year as an an electrical engineering student in Kevin Street, he left - "it wasn't for me" - and started a course in sound engineering. It was this that set McHugh off on a career of multi-tracking, producing, composing. He comes across as very much the type of person whose controlling instincts dictate his work patterns. And so it proves: "I started to learn about samplers - about how you needn't depend on people who didn't show up - and how to make a record by yourself. I spent a long time learning how to use everything."
THAT WAS THEN, however; nowadays, he is quite happy to have assistance in the shapes of Keogh and Verdon. He's still the sort who beavers away in his studio, fretting about how to make things work and sound, consumed with the creation of melodies, but as Autamata evolves more and more into a collaborative unit and live act he realises that strategically placed, multi-stranded creativity makes sense.
"The process changed since we started playing live," he says. "It changed the nature of the way we approached song writing." And what does Keogh bring to Autamata? As one of the country's most distinctive female vocalists/songwriters, she has been on the edge of mainstream success for some time now with her involvement in (among others) Plague Monkeys and Tyconaut.
She has seen other female vocalists come, go, and break through the veil of cultdom; it's probable that she has the voice to best them all - and if Autamata songs such as Liberty Bell are anything to go by, she has the writing ability, too.
"We work very well together," she says, knowing from a past life that skeins of surface tension can work wonders for the creative process. "There's a little bit of push and pull, because neither of us particularly want to give up very easily. But that leads to good things. We never fall out. It's a good working process, and I really enjoy the challenge. Ken can give me a number of pieces of music and they'll all be very different, so they'll bring out different voices in me. It's almost as if I'm a different character within specific songs, inventing little worlds. I enjoy that."
So this album is more democratic than the first? There's a sharp, possibly theatrical, intake of breath from Keogh. "Ken is still very much . . ." Keogh begins . . . "I'm still at the helm, musically," interjects McHugh. "I write guide melodies. I also hand Carol and Sarah instrumental tunes, with a verse and chorus, and then they provide the lyrics." How does he feel about the lyrics? "It's their thing, their short stories." Does he cast an editorial eye over them? "Once or twice, but rarely . . ." Now it's Keogh's turn to interrupt: "I think Ken will be tiptoeing around that subject with me! How do I feel about people making suggestions? It depends on the nature of them. It's a very subjective thing a lot of the time. Someone might think that they have a better idea; most of the time people are a little bit too shy or wouldn't really say it."
"I think Carol's a songwriter and a poet," enthuses Ken. "Her lyrics are quite outstanding, so I wouldn't have an issue with them. If something is cheesy or crass, then I'd say it. But it has never happened."
There seems a definite sense of grasping the nettle with this fortified version of Autamata. Loud and proud, is how McHugh describes the change.
"It's ramped up because we want to play the world," he says.
"We're impatient," reasons Keogh. "We wanted to cover everything, with no loose ends."
• Autamata's new album, Short Stories, is out next Friday. They play Cyprus Avenue, Cork (Sept 17); Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin (Sept 22); Róisín Dubh, Galway (Sept 23) www.autamatamusic.com