Interview: MOVMENT

What got you into music, and if you had not gotten into music what would you be doing today?

Martin: I can’t imagine a life without music. It is so important to me. If I didn’t play drums, write songs, and record, I would have to find something artistic to replace it. Not sure what, though.

Kevin: I am into lots of things, technology, sports, and more. But music is central to most of what I do so I’m not sure what I would do if I was not writing and recording. Probably something technological and artistic. Maybe I’d write a book or multiple books.

What do you like to do when you are not playing music and how does that influence your creativity?

Martin: I like movies and art, so all of those feed into the music we create. But music is my main passion so that is usually where I get inspired, by listening to music.

Kevin: Yes, music is important, gigs, new bands, new music technology and instruments. Outside of music I am into technology in general, and the web, which is a great source of knowledge. YouTube has plenty of excellent videos and channels which can improve your knowledge of any topic.
And I like hiking and the outdoors. Everything I experience has some impact on the music we write.

How long has your band been around?

Martin: Our first band, Raw Novembre, released 3 albums and numerous singles and EPs. So we are playing music for a long time. The last Raw Novembre album we released was My Bones.

Kevin: Yeah, we have been playing music since our teens, and have been writing, recording, and releasing albums and singles since then. We have our own label, and we generally release music ourselves. Movment has been active during our time with Raw Novembre, but also with Movment, and our first Movment album was called Broken Down.

Where are you based out of and how did that influence your music?

Martin: We are based in Mullingar, Ireland, 50 miles west of Dublin. Our influences are mainly bands we listen to, so I cannot say that Mullingar was our musical inspiration, but it has an impact on our song writing.

Kevin: Yes, we are from Mullingar, and we have our own Home Studio here. We have lived here all our lives, so it definitely has an impact on our songs. But musically, we are influenced by what we hear online, or on physical formats, or on TV or YouTube.

How did you come up with the name of your band and what does it mean to you?

Martin: We had been writing and recording as MOVMENT for a while and released a song as Movment on a compilation album during our Raw Novembre period. We like the idea of music as a movement.

Kevin: We see Movment as a group of people with the same ideas, perhaps a political movement, but not necessarily so. It could be a social movement, or an artistic movement.

We like to connect with people using music and lyrics.

Tell me about your most memorable shows.

Martin: We have played in the USA, and Germany and the UK, as well as Ireland.

Kevin: We played the Marquee in London, and that was great. Our focus over the last decade has been writing and recording.

What is your favorite venue to play at, and do you have any places you want to play that you have not already?

Martin: We would like to play some festivals, in Ireland, and the UK and Europe. There are lots of iconic venues, like the Paradiso NL, the Roundhouse UK, the Bataclan FR, and Batschkapp DE, so any of those would be good to play. My favourite venue in Dublin is probably Whelans.

Kevin: Yeah, I would like to play some UK festivals, Download, Reading/Leeds, or any of the festivals in Europe like Rock Am Ring, Roskilde, Mad Cool or The Heineken Jammin' Festival in Italy. My favourite venue in Ireland is Roisin Dubh, Galway, and of course we like our hometown venue The Stables.

If you could play any show with any lineup, who would be on the ticket?

Martin: For me it would be Iron Maiden/Nine Inch Nails/New Model Army. Something rockin’!

Kevin: I’d like to be on the same bill as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, and Smashing Pumpkins. That could happen somewhere!

What is some advice that you would give to someone who is just getting into playing in a band and some advice that you would give to your younger self?

Martin: Write songs, release albums, work on having a body of work that people can listen to. An album by a band is what I normally listen to. It is difficult to make an album where every track stands out. That is the challenge. It is so easy to release music now, especially digitally.

Kevin: Writing songs is the most important part of what we do. I like to add atmospherics and unique guitar sounds to our song mixes. We want to create something unique. And make your songs sound amazing. For my younger self, I would advise myself to write and release more songs and albums.

If you could go back in time and give yourselves advice, what would it be?

Martin: Work harder on the songs you are writing. The more effort you put in the better. You can be lucky and write something brilliant in a short space of time, but more often than not you will have to spend a lot of time on a song to make it work.

Kevin: Yeah, I experiment with sounds, so I should have done more of this in the early days. Having said that, the recording process, the instruments and equipment, all of this is much better now.
I would advise to get good recording gear and instruments. There are a key element of what we use to create music.

Of your songs which one means the most to you and why?

Martin: From the Raw Novembre days, Violence always stood out as one of our most powerful songs. My favourite Movment song to date is Propaganda.

Kevin: I like quite a few Raw Novembre songs, Birthday Tapes, which is based on a Beckett play, and Machine Run. And I really like We All Must Go, from the latest Movment album, Transformation.
We All Must Go sums up my attitude to living and dying.

Which songs are your favorite to play and which get requested the most?

Martin: We always get asked to play Violence. And also, a song called Stutter. I expect Propaganda to be a popular song at future gigs.

Kevin: Independent Asshole is also a popular Raw Novembre song that we play live. And Driven, from the first Movment album.

What is the creative process for the band, and what inspires you to write your music?

Martin: We jam together all the time and we have lots of pieces of music. We write music about life and living and what we see around us, everything that is important to us. Writing songs is a key part of our lives.

For our album Transformation we had about 25 songs and ideas initially and this was narrowed down to 16 songs, and we then recorded 10 of those songs in our own home studio. Mixing and Mastering were completed in London.

Kevin: Our music is dark, and the music we listen to is dark. Some of our music is optimistic. We comment on what we see in life. We jam regularly with bass and drums or guitar and drums and expand on these ideas. I use electronics and synths a lot more now. We have an excellent home studio for writing music. It allows us to get our ideas and sounds down. And the magic of mixing and mastering then brings those songs to life. With modern home studios it is so much easier to record songs at home now and to a high standard.

It allows ideas to be developed, so the final mixes are closer to what we wanted. We prefer to write and record in our own studio.
It is much easier to write and record songs on our own time and at home.

What kinds of messages do you like to get across in your music?

Marting: We normally write about life and living, and topics that interest us. Usually our songs have meanings and can be intense.

If something is happening that grabs our attention, we might write about it.

Kevin: Our songs are real and are observations on what we see around us. Our lyrics are dark, and intense, and real. We don't tell someone what to do in our songs. We comment on stuff that interests us. Listeners can make their own minds up about the things we write. If it is important to us, I am sure it will be important to some other people as well. It is easier for us to write about something if it means something to us.

So the messages in songs depend on what we are interested in. We All Must Go is about the inevitability of death and what lies beyond.

Do you ever have disagreements in your band, and how do you get past them?

Martin: We are brothers, so we do argue, but at the moment everything is going well, so there are few disagreements. We have developed a good way of working together, so we can now generally work things out if there are issues.

Kevin: We have had plenty of arguments. All families have those. And our music is intense, so it is inevitable we argue over songs and recording and mixes. But we are able to work around these now.

At the moment we are working well together. That could change.

What are your plans for the future, and do you have anything that you want to spotlight that is coming up?

Martin: I’m looking forward to our new album. The writing and recording sessions are going well. And TRANSFORMATION will be released by EPICTRONIC on 20 May, so that is exciting too. It was completed 9 months ago, so the new material is more exciting for me at the moment.

Kevin: It would be good to play some shows, perhaps in the UK or Europe or further afield, in 2022.

Not sure if this will happen, but we will be playing some shows in Ireland.
And we will have new music on the way in 2022, a 2-track single in September/October 2022, and a new album in early 2023.

But in the meantime, our 2nd album, TRANSFORMATION, will be released on EPICTRONIC on Friday 20 May 2022. We are proud of the album and the songs on it.

www.movment.ie