Marty Byrne
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Up n’ Comin’ NI are excited to introduce this week’s artist, Marty Byrne from Belfast. Marty is a music producer, sonic artist and multi-instrumentalist who also loves a long walk in the West Coast of Ireland.
Music, for Marty, started at a very young age. “My earliest memory of emotionally responding to music, was hearing the songs ‘Take These Broken Wings’ by Mister Mister and ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush when I was about 5. My parents also have a video of me singing my first ever song ‘Bouncing Away’ in the kitchen at 7.” In 2012, Marty made a remix of this video. It can be found at: https://youtu.be/94KNGbeOWHk
One of Marty’s favourite artists growing up was Mike Patton. “I first listened to Faith No More when I was 9 and Mr Bungle when I was 14. Mike Patton showed me that you can kinda do whatever you want in music: be in 20 different bands at the same time or make music in any genre you want! Cheesy pop songs work very well with heavy metal music! The human voice can do some quite fascinating things!”
Marty first started listening to pop, rock and heavy metal music around the age of 9 (“the early 90s still a big influence on my music.”) He then moved on to listening to electronic and industrial music when he was 14. “In my later teens I listened to indie, trip hop, techno and some leftfield and experimental stuff too. Since then, I just listen to all sorts of stuff. I quite like a lot of things from the 60s and 70s. But then I also love the 30s, 40s, and 50s too...”
I asked Marty what makes him different from other people. He said, “A total lack of respect for sticking to one style of music and a total inability to ‘brand’ myself. Ha!” This may come from his own song writing which he describes as “folky pop to electronica and generally leftfield, quirky stuff.”While Marty’s main focus is his solo music, he also is usually involved in a few bands. “Currently I'm part of Treibh, who combine Celtic / tribal music with dark atmospheric textures and vocal layers. I also perform in QUBe, an ensemble who play with improvisation and experimental music.”
We're all creative beings and there is an abundance of creative energy in the Universe that you can tap into whenever you want. Nurturing our human need for expression keeps that creative garden fertile.
I asked Marty what his greatest achievement was to date, and was shocked when he said “Writing about 8 million songs ... Or something like that!”
To achieve this, Marty started a series of projects based around the idea of ‘a song a day’.
- He wrote 365 songs in 2011 for his ‘Song A Day For A Year’ project which can be found on: http://SADFAY.bandcamp.com
- He wrote 52 songs in 2012 for his ‘Song A Week For A Year’ Project which can be found on: http://SAWFAY.bandcamp.com
- He wrote 366 songs in 2020 for his ‘Song A Day For A Year’ Project again. These songs can be heard on his Spotify.
Having written that many songs, I asked him what his creative process consisted of. He said, “My creative process is just to turn up and trust that once I start to explore something will be uncovered.”
Having said this, Marty does draw some of his musical inspiration from his own life. “Being gay influences my music… Some more obvious, some more subtle. It's always this interesting battle of wanting to be very honest and outspoken about my queerness, but also enjoying the privilege of being able to blend in with ‘the straights’ (as I was mostly able to do growing up). There's something valuable about getting to see those different worlds. I was almost like a secret agent, infiltrating spaces that normally wouldn't be available to me. And then of course, music was always an escape from a lot of internalised homophobia I experienced growing up. Sometimes music was a way to forget. So sometimes in my music making I ask the question: do I want to acknowledge queerness and marginalisation, or do I want to escape it?”
As well as solo music writing, Marty also enjoys collaborating with others. ‘I love writing music with other people! I love performing in a room with other musicians. It's always a pleasure bouncing ideas about with other people. Music making really is a deep passion for me, so it's always exciting to share that.”
The only thing that matters in the end is that you live a meaningful life. Money and success ... It's all bollocks. Find something you are passionate about, that gives you meaning and do that.
Marty told me that he doesn’t gig as much as he would like to. When he does play, however, he says, “I have literally hundreds of original songs. When I play live it can take on many different shapes. I sometimes play my folky acoustic pop songs. Or I play my more electronic, leftfield, quirky stuff. On the rare occasion I will DJ my more dancey songs. And now and then I perform quite noisy experimental vocal improvisation music too!”
He told me about one of his most stand out gigs, “One time me and my mate Ross performed in front of about 5000 people in custom house square for gay pride. That was pretty cool!” While this was one of his most memorable gigs, he tells me that his favourite gig was “my end of year extravaganza gig in the Black Box. This was at the end of my ‘Song a Day for a Year’ project in 2011. I got to perform with loads of other musicians, and we all recorded a song together at the end of the night!”
So, what is next for Marty Byrne?
“This year I'm focusing on getting back into playing piano, guitar, cello and trumpet! Just finding the joy in locking myself away and learning and educating myself about music, rather than being constantly distracted by online stuff.” As well as that, he will be releasing a new album made up of his most recent collection of songs from JAMuary 2023. Don’t miss it!
Make sure you follow him and keep up to date with all his songs, events and gigs:
Instagram: martybyrnemusic
Spotify: Marty Byrne
Website: martybyrnemusic.co.uk
YouTube: martybyrnemusic
Twitter: martybyrnemusic
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