Meet Bricknasty, the Dublin collective thriving in chaos

The way Dublin trio Bricknasty describe the making of new mixtape Black’s Law conjures images of damp rooms, loose minds and fervent creativity. Or, in frontman Fatboy’s words, like they were all contestants on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!.

Making a reputation as a fierce live act, supporting the likes of Kneecap, and a forward-thinking and genre-fluid studio project, Black’s Law blows their horizons wide open on a record that incorporates jazz, traditional Irish folk and beyond.

It also saw the quintet become a trio, with the departure of sax/keys player Louis Younge and bassist Dara Abdurahman. Everyone’s on good terms, producer Cillian McCauley says, but the fractured and chaotic process “shook things up” for the band.

Read our interview with the battle-scarred Bricknasty and listen to their music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.

You made new mixtape Black’s Law in a six-month burst – how do you remember that time?

Cillian: It felt like forever, like an eternity. It was a very intense six months. With [2024 mixtape] XONGZ, it was a slow ramp up and then ramp down. This one felt like a boot camp: ‘You’re getting in there and you’re not finished till you’re finished.’

Did that intensity take it out of you?

Cillian: We poured literally everything of ourselves into it.

Fatboy: You don’t really have anything left for your body to keep itself well or to regulate. I had wounds on my face that were opening up. It was horrible.

Cillian: When you go off tour, you’re already battle-scarred. You’re fucked up, you know? And then going from that to making this project… it’s bad.

Fatboy: Especially this one. We looked like junkies, but we finished it. We won the game.

Where were you while making the record?

Fatboy: We had six days in the Black Mountain [studio in Dundalk] which was deadly, but we don’t have Black Mountain every day money. The rest of the time we were… I’m trying to find a way of describing it that won’t get me spoken about on Reddit… They were really, really bad.

Cillian: Very damp rooms.

Fatboy: Lots of black mould. You shouldn’t be recording music in these rooms. You shouldn’t even be visiting your auntie in these rooms!

Apart from your surroundings, what made this creative process particularly hard on you?

Fatboy: Every single day, we’d wake up and feel like we were on I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here! Just wake up, bushtucker trial! Eating centipedes!

Korey: There’s parts it that that are difficult to listen to. The boys were in it at the time.

Cillian: This project carpet bombed the band! Literally, this project orbital missiled the band from a foreign country.

Fatboy: [As a listener], you want to hear people who want it and need it. They don’t want to just hear happy little songs. Happy little songs are great, but it wasn’t the time for that here. It was time for something a little bit mean.

What made this energy come out of you for this mixtape? What were you wanting to transmit?

Fatboy: The world is so confused. Everyone’s being really combative but also non-combative at the same time. People are shitting it, and are so scared of one another. We have as much of a role to play in the new world order as anyone. If you decide you’re going to be a good little boy and bend over then that’s that. Game over. If you’re happy to be like, ‘Hey I can’t help but notice how we seem to have less and less money every year and they keep knocking down all our gaffs’, and say something new about old fights, people lose their minds.

What are the new things you’re trying to say?

Fatboy: A lot of places are under the lock and key of the same systems and skills of people. I’ve organised groups of people, be it people who run finance, people who run anything like that – it’s a good way of getting nowhere fast. Let’s put that in the bin. Why not? Even if we got it wrong [by] saying something new, so what? What’s the better thing? You have to try and get in there and try to do something new. People don’t want to do anything weird or new, and that was what we were giving out about a lot in the studio. So we were like, ‘Right, the music is going to be that now’. Even in the songs we decided that whatever we did a million times, I don’t think we’re gonna do that now. We’re gonna just try to believe something else.

With this ethos in your heads, what changed about the music that came out?

Fatboy: The music is just the best music we’ve ever made. It’s way better, so I’m happy with that. I don’t know if people are going to like it as much, but who cares?

Korey: Who cares? Who gives a bollocks?

Fatboy: It’s our thing, so we get to play our instruments the way that we like. We’re just clapping the arse off these instruments. Korey doesn’t even want me saying what he did to the drums. He doesn’t want me putting that out on the airwaves. But he did do it because I watched him.

Enlighten us about your drumming, Korey…

Korey: I was using my hands more, which is something that I didn’t really work on until this cycle. Using my hands and grabbing things with my finger and my thumb. It really sped up the whole thing.

Sounds like a winner! Any parting words?

Cillian: Black’s Law had a serious hand in shaking things up in the band.

Fatboy: If I was to describe it in an analogy – if you’ll entertain me – it was like valiantly shitting in your nice duvet. Valliantly, bravely. Not out of fright or fear or confusion. It’s a ceremony.

And how did it feel?

Fatboy: Ecstatic. Euphoric.

Cillian: Triumphant!