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In our March Essentials playlist for Tradiio, we featured ‘Slow-Burning Feeling’, by Dublin band Mongoose, as one of our songs to watch out for. Now we’ve caught up with the band themselves for a chat.
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EP: Mongoose is an interesting name! Who came up with that and what’s the significance behind it?Â
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M: The real origins of the name are quite mundane at best (a silly running joke we had!), so we like to say a burning mongoose came to us all in a dream one night, much like Moses and the burning bush. It proclaimed to us that we should name our band after it..and so we did.
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EP: You describe your sound as “Alt-Folk”. What does that mean to you?Â
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M: It’s the most succinct umbrella term we have for our music I guess. Our roots are in folk, but we draw elements from lots of other types of music to create our own style. Alternative is a good buzz word, you can do anything with that!
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EP: You released your debut album last May. What’s in the pipeline for you? Where do you see yourselves in 5 years, 10 years?Â
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M: We spent last summer on the Irish festival circuit promoting the album, and did a headline show in Whelan’s in November. We’re hoping to capitalise on that this summer and expand our fanbase further afield. Right now we’re working on new material and honing ourselves as a band in general. If we could keep on this trajectory for the next five years we’d be doing very well! Ten years is a very long time in the life of a band though, it’s hard to say where we see ourselves at that stage. Retired millionaires?
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EP: We featured you in our March Essentials Playlist for Tradiio. How did you discover Tradiio?Â
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M: I think I came across it on the web. Or possibly someone told me about it also.
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EP: There’s so many great bands (including yourselves) coming out of Ireland. What do you think is the reason for that?Â
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M: There are an insane amount of extremely talented musicians in Ireland, hard to say why exactly that is. It’s in our culture undeniably, from a young age most people are encouraged to engage in music in some way. It’s a lot for such a small country, maybe it breeds some healthy competition??
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EP: What’s your take on the current state of the music industry?
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M: Tricky one this..there are so many different elements to the industry as a whole, it’s hard to comment on it as one big machine. There’s a million miles between the top of the food chain, as it were, and the people working at local or national level. The industry is changing so rapidly all the time it’s hard to say whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. We’ve not had much experience with the industry but with most things in music it’s very subjective. Some industry folk have been extremely helpful and genuinely had our best musical interests at heart, others not so much! What a very diplomatic answer.
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EP: If you could do it all again, what, if anything, would you do differently, and why?
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M: Not much I don’t think, we’re still quite young as a band. It’s easy in hindsight to say we should’ve done this, that and the other at the time, but that’s the beauty of hindsight! Anything we’ve done so far has only furthered us a band, and I wouldn’t have expected to get where we are without a few speed bumps along the way.
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EP: What question do you wish someone would ask you in an interview, but nobody ever does?
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M: Can’t think of any in particular really, anyone who’s interviewed us has been pretty on the ball with their questions. What’s your favourite colour?? I think we’ve definitely gotten someone to ask us that in an interview before though.
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You can find Mongoose online on their official website, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Their self titled album is available on iTunes.
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Check out ‘Slow-Burning Feeling’ on Tradiio, and support them by investing – for free – in ‘Slow-Burning Feeling’ and their other music.
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