Standing alone - but not aloof - from most Irish rock bands, Cane 141 have crept up from the lower ranks of the ne'er-do-wells to cruise past some of the better-known names. The reasons are these: no white-bread guitars, no skinny ties, no pale-faced boys, no girls with cheek-bones like equilateral triangles, no Stooges fixation, no axes to grind, no illusions, no make-up and no delusions of grandeur.
Instead, the Galway band proffer in their defence, Kraftwerk, Galway, Can, Tim Hardin, The United States Of America, Tim Buckley, Cathal Coughlan, Husker Du, Healthy Eating, Sonic Youth, Pere Ubu, Silver Apples, Captain Beefheart, John Peel, Labradford, Autechtre and Tortoise. Oh, and tunes. Lots of tunes.
Living proof that experimenting with Theremins and other 1960s analogue equipment doesn't necessarily turn you into Tonto's Expanding Head Band, Cane 141 also highlight why they are Ireland's coolest band: they know how to escape from the traps of mediocrity by infusing their love of the past with their designs for the future. They do this by keeping a lower-than-low profile - which is why, when band member Michael Smalle arrives for the interview, it's hard to tell if he's just another mature student in for a pint before catching the bus to Galway.
A student of music and media technology at Trinity College, Dublin, 25-year-old Smalle has the demeanour of a man whose shyness belies his ambition. Cane 141's latest CD, Garden Tiger Moth, is also a n album of ambition and quietude: a record that modestly knows its place, but also knows its worth.
It revisits territory mapped by two pioneering 1960s electronic rock acts: The United States of America, which featured Joseph Byrd, an associate of the minimalist composers LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, and Silver Apples, which included the artist prodigy, Simeon Coxe III, a friend of William DeKooning. In doing so, it continues a form of elegant sonic arrangement, a la Brian Eno and Stereolab, that makes it a record of the year.
FORMED in 1993, when the band members were finishing their Leaving Certs, Cane 141 was never meant to be a careerist option. Essentially a weekend garage band, they sent demo tapes to record companies in 1996 and 1997, and regard their development since as "organic".
They started to buy old electronic instruments, organs and synthesisers, exploring the boundaries of the studio rather than the limitations of live shows.
"All the equipment has been found by accident," says Smalle. "We got them from old warehouses. And there's a guy in Galway who repairs old equipment - he had a couple of Moogs, which he wouldn't sell, unfortunately. We did get this great piece of equipment from the 1960s, though: an old Hohner Fan organ - the lower registers sound like cellos. We got other equipment from Buy and Sell magazine. There's a real warmth to the sound."
Smalle agrees that Cane 141 are unique in Irish rock. "We're isolated from everything else that's going on. That can make for better music, because we're not in the middle of any major music scene."
It's not an archly deliberate situation, either, he claims. "It's just the way it is. When I was in my mid-teens, there were very few people from Ireland who inspired me. Cathal Coughlan, who I still think is an incredible songwriter, was one. A lot of Irish bands weren't really pushing the boundaries. It was depressing, but it's become a lot better.
"Cane 141 is not really guitar pop. The music is more subtle than that, and takes a while to unfurl. But it's the way it happened; so much is not premeditated."
The next few months will see Cane 141 engaged in - for them at least - that most audacious of things: taking their music to the people of Ireland and beyond, by playing live. A Peel session has been completed, while work on a new mini-album is evolving nicely.
Being the most critically successful but faceless Irish band of the moment doesn't bother him, despite good reviews in British music magazines.
"I don't think about fitting in," he says, before getting the bus back to Galway for another bout of wilfully, fitfully losing himself.
Cane 141 play Auntie Annies, Belfast, on Wednesday; Dolans Warehouse, Limerick, on Thursday; Roisin Dubh, Galway, May 3rd; Whelans, Dublin, May 5th; and The Lobby, Cork, May 6th
