Meet Aifric, the Galway artist baring a fiery soul
On her first two singles, the poet and playwright turned musician introduces a project both restless and powerful
Aifric describes her creative process as “holding a fucking ball of fire and putting it into candles”. It’s a visceral metaphor, spitting flames in the same way the Galway-born, London-based singer’s excellent first pair of singles do.
“If you don’t put it into candles,” she expands, “it eats me up a bit. But now, because I’ve been writing so much, it feels like that ball of fire is always going to be there.”
‘Telephone’, the singer’s debut single, crashes out of the gate with a post-punk strut and already signature lyrical style. “Telephone sayin’ I’m no good,” she repeats over and over, the message of rejecting outside influence and expectations becoming clearer and clearer on each repetition. “It feels like a call to arms,” she says of her first song.
That intensity is also there on follow-up single ‘Yesterdayi’, but it’s given warmth and expansiveness through a softer vocal and shining synths. Joined on an upcoming debut EP by songs that further widen her sonic palette, it’s an extremely exciting first glimpse at an artist worth keeping both eyes on.
Ahead of the release of the debut EP, we meet Aifric to discuss the unusual places she has lived and written – an old grain mill, a London houseboat – her journey from making visual art and playwriting towards music, and how to keep that precious ball of flame alive.
Read our interview with Aifric and listen to ‘Telephone’ and ‘Yesterdayi’ via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.
Can you talk us through your journey from other creative disciplines towards deciding to make and release music?
The first part of the journey was me having a lot of questions. I was writing a play and the language was very rhythmic and musical. I was living on a boat in London just before Covid and I found living there was very primitive – there’s a lot that you need to do with your body. I felt a separation between me and modernity. You’re chopping wood, your hands are always dirty, and I had a romanticism for that.
It was the beginning of a new lens of perspective. The way that I was living versus how I was behaving, there was this space in between. I started writing poetry about it first of all, and then that led me to this play. I spent about a year writing the play, and there was a rhythm to what I was writing. I got a theatre bursary and had this mentor. I [told her] I was writing ‘sonic poems’, and she said, ‘These are not ‘sonic poems’, they’re songs!’
A lot of your first writing came when you were living in an old grain mill in Galway – can you describe it for us?
I was kind of living like a mad person, to be honest. There was a massive force of water outside the mill and it was really loud, basically really loud white noise all the time. I wanted to have exhibitions with these poems and photographs, and maybe do a performance as well. I kept just going back to the same form, which was piano and writing. I had sung as a teenager as well, but I never really I knew I could sing and I didn’t really think that music was for me, because I didn’t want to sing other people’s songs, and unless I have something to say, I probably won’t sing songs. There’s also a bit of Irish embarrassment there where it’s like, ‘Who do you think you are? Who does she think she is? Singing?!’ When it becomes necessity, it’s different – it’s an exorcism of sorts, or there’s a catharsis in it.
What was the core of what you wanted to express through this music you were writing?
Living on the boat and in the mill, there was this slight feeling of separateness, especially in a society that is all about gratification. I was thinking, ‘What is the purest version, my version of reality, before everything else comes?’ Because once everything else comes, it starts to slightly change… which is beautiful, and that’s a part of it as well. I started quite a lonely journey for a long time, with a lot of writing and a lot of inner thinking and searching.
The way that I use my voice is like this cleansing of myself. I was thinking, ‘How can I give the most amount of emotion or character in it?’ The repeating of the words and then a bit of dirty realism, where you just fucking lay it out on the table as well. Now what I’m really excited about is wanting to look at people and fucking give it to people. I really want an audience – whatever form that takes and however long it takes, it doesn’t really matter. The point is to be in the real world, because it’s very much been an internal excavation.
Can you tell us why you wanted to launch the project with ‘Telephone’?
I felt like maybe having a bit of an angry start would catch people’s attention, I have a lot of punk songs and I thought this is closest linked to the earlier songs that I have. ‘Telephone’ has a tension in it, this mechanical versus wild tension. That was the founding of why I started doing art, this tension between something very mechanical and repetitive in my mind versus pouring your heart out to someone and getting really angry.
What else is on the way after the first EP? Is this the start of a bigger story?
The first EP is a dream – it’s in the mind. The second EP is very much in the real world. It’s four songs, and sonically changes a little bit as well. It’s less conceptual and it’s more in the room, with more tangible, real instruments. It’s more of my heart; the first one is a bit more of my head. I have an album written as well, and that’s definitely got more storytelling narratives and a few love songs. You’re gonna get more of me. With [the first EP], I wanted to make a big statement, but only give you a little bit of me.