Seated around a table in a Dublin pub, the four members of Lankum are explaining what singer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Lynch calls the “mental strain” of performing their brand of folk music live. Part of the problem, he says, is the sheer number of instruments involved. “We’ve got about 30, across everybody in the band,” he says. “I play hurdy-gurdy, pipes, whistles, synths. Then there is the tape machine, a tambourine and concertina. That’s seven just for me. Honestly, our soundchecks take about four hours.”
There is also the fact that Lankum like to experiment with the fabric of the acoustic instruments they play: taping tin whistles together and blowing them simultaneously, recording not the notes produced by the uilleann pipes but the groaning of their bellows, taking drums to pieces to “get different textures out of them”. The results are such that, as Lankum happily admit, they sometimes listen to tracks from their most recent album, False Lankum, and haven’t got a clue what’s going on. “Like on The New York Trader,” says Lynch’s brother, Daragh. He says there is a sound somewhere between a jaw harp and a didgeridoo. “And I’m sure nobody is playing either of those instruments.”
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