Basciville

“Pearl Jam felt like a gateway influence to so many other sounds that heavily influenced them.”

Hearing music coming through a door as a kid, can be the start to a career in music. “We started making music in an attempt to be as cool as our older brothers; we would sit at the bedroom door and listen to all the Seattle bands through the door, then mess around on the instruments lying around the house until something stuck. It’s been an obsession ever since.”

Growing up, their musical heroes were diverse: “Pearl Jam, all the ‘grunge’ stuff, Jeff Buckley, lots of Joni and Pantera! I feel like Jeff Buckley is a master at building tension in songs with his guitar voicings and that’s something I’ve tried to take on. I don’t know what you can learn from someone as inimitable as Joni Mitchell, but it instilled a love for the folk song. Pearl Jam felt like a gateway influence to so many other sounds that heavily influenced them, like R.E.M., who have become a massive influence. The songs they chose to cover for The Influences; R.E.M.’s Country Feedback and Elliott Smith’s Clementine had been on repeat in the time leading up to our visit to Kilkenny. “We thought the sound and sensibilities were something that we hoped, reflected our own. Also, Michael Stipe is the man.”

“Jeff Buckley’s Grace broke the obsession barrier.”

An album that changed their perspective on music, is Jeff Buckley’s Grace. “It broke the obsession barrier, lionising everyone who had anything to do with the record. It showed us how filling your day with only this was enough to be happy.” Of course, Lorcan and Cillian’s taste – although broad to begin with – has evolved over the years. “We studied music in college and came to a lot of jazz and classical music that has stuck with us. But we’ve always accepted good music for what it is and gave it a go.” 

Other songwriters the Byrne brothers admire at the moment are Cameron Winter and Thom Yorke. “We’re big fans of Cameron Winter currently; there’s an unapologetic warts and all approach that is refreshing. And, I don’t think you can make alternative anything and not love everything Thom Yorke does, even if you don’t like his politics.” 

Cillian and Lorcan Byrne have played with so many brilliant other Irish acts, like Susan O’Neill, The Ocelots, Alannah Thornburgh, and Lemoncello. How does this – and their other work as producers and making scores – influence their music as Basciville? “We feel that Basciville is an outlet for our most personal work and everything that doesn’t find its way out in other projects, so I wouldn’t say it influences it beyond the honing of your craft that happens through doing. Maybe mistakes get made that inform your work but that goes both ways.”

A love letter to any attempt to make things better than they currently are

The upcoming Basciville album is their second, after 2021’s Hymns to the air. A first song has been released called Your Own Head, featuring the equally talented Ailbhe Reddy. The new record is a very personal and politically minded work, socially moreso, the brothers tell me. “A love letter to any attempt to make things better than they currently are. It’s feeling sick with the times but beyond hopeful that beauty and love run deeper and beyond what is fed back to us. Musically it’s more of a band sounding record, lots of live takes. It’s the most us sounding thing we’ve done and we’re very proud of it.”

I’ve often wondered if and how musicians’ geographical location and cultural background influence their music. Basciville reckon it could have. “It’s an interesting thought and I do think your environment bleeds into your art, because it bleeds into your subconscious in so many ways. The first album was written in a rural area by the sea and there’s an expanse and almost flatness that purveys the arrangements, an isolation too; minimal characters and introspection. The new record was written in cities and tries to speak outward to something shared and social. It’s more honest to us for sure, less experimental for the sake of it. Trying less and more fun I think.”

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Keep watching

Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like these earlier ones we filmed at TakeRoot festival.

2026