Next up to feature on our Who What Why feature is BIMM Dublin’s Taran.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
Right now I’m obsessed with instrumental rock bands, math rock in particular. I’ve been going through Cleft’s discography for the last couple weeks, especially looking for inspiration because I have recently started an Instrumental heavy rock two-piece too, called Bicurious (shameless self-promotion). I find myself listening to a lot of Irish bands though. I don’t know what it is but this island seems to produce some of the best bands, and with instrumental music it’s just amazing. We have bands like Megacone, Yonen, Val Normal, Punch Face Champions, Leo Drezden… All of them are huge influences on me. Other than that I’ve been getting into jazz and fusion, and a lot of soul and funk too. It’s like going to college here and meeting new people has really opened my mind towards new genres I wouldn’t really have listened to before, it’s really great!
What do you love about Dublin?
The music, the quality of the bands, the people, the fact that it’s not too small so you always meet new people and see new things, but it’s also not too big, so you can quickly find your favorite spots. The hipster coffee shops are great, the venues are awesome (although they took away the best one, Sweeney’s). I come from a little village in France, so when i started living here about 5 years ago, I just found that people were just really nice and welcoming, and they loved music. The reason I came here was to play music, and I haven’t looked back!
Why Guitar?
I decided I wanted to play guitar when I was about 6 or 7 and my dad was playing Ben Harper in the car, and he had one pretty heavy tune called “Less”. As soon as I heard that riff I knew i wanted a guitar and I wanted to be a rockstar…
I chose to do this course because i wanted to learn a lot more about my instrument, because up to that point I had only been playing blues and rock in various bands. So I applied for the CPD diploma, because I wanted to have time during the week to play with my band at the time. I got in, and I loved it, I loved being able to play with loads of different musicians, and I really enjoyed learning about music theory, which I had never done before. I then got offered to go straight into second year, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to do the full degree, but I just went with it. So far it’s been great, i’m learning loads and playing with Incredible musicians all the time
