When growing up in Navan, a young Cuan Muyllaert was organically introduced to musical instruments. “I grew up in a house where my dad makes musical instruments,” Cuan remembers when talking with Post-Burnout. “So, my dad, Jan, makes Irish harps, mostly, but he’s made all stringed instruments, and works with wood. From an early age, we had no telly in the house, so our sitting room, as kids… – myself, my brother, and my sister – …it was our playroom, if you like.

“And there was always some kind of drums there, or some sort of instrument there, and they were just there; it wasn’t like we were made go to piano lessons or fiddle lessons or something like that, because that can have a detrimental effect on people’s love for music, and all they can think about is the traumatic fiddle lessons they went for.

“That is so important for any creativity; if you’re not playing, if you’re not relaxed, if you’re not in touch with that sort of childish side of yourself, and if you don’t feel safe, you might create something…I wouldn’t even say ‘create’; you might construct something that people might admire a lot from a technical perspective, but I’m not interested in that; I’m interested in the joy of creating something and the joy that other people get from listening to that creation.”

Around the same time that he was messing around with instruments at home, Cuan witnessed the profound effect that music can have on a person first-hand. “One of the first things that really hit home for me…it wasn’t like a Clancy Brothers or something really big or dramatic; it was actually at a variety show at the Navan Community Centre, of all places,” he recalls.

“I was about five years old, and there was a woman who sang the song ‘From a Distance.’ It’s a very Christian kind of song, and it’s talking about, From a distance, the world was green and blue, and everything was peaceful. It’s a very middle-of-the-road kind of song, I suppose, but, as a kid of five years old, I remember the tears in my eyes, and the power of just this local woman singing this song, because, for me, I hadn’t seen anything live like that before, ever.

“So, it has this dramatic effect on me. Thinking about it there, the other day, it reminded me that you don’t really have to have this high-culture musical background for music to have an effect on you. It can be something as simple as that.”

Inspired by his childhood experience, Cuan pursued music into his adult life, even if it wasn’t always his first choice for a vocation. “I was living in Dublin in 1999, and I was studying Photography at the time, in Sallynoggin, near Dún Laoghaire,” he recalls. “I became really interested in performing on the street, and it was kind of a baptism by fire, and it was enjoyable sometimes, but I remember one time I got robbed.

“This guy came up behind me, and I had my jacket off, and he took my jacket, and in the nonchalant way in which he just took it, put it on, and started rooting through my pockets, and it was terrifying.”

Despite some ambivalent experiences from busking on Dublin’s Grafton Street and Galway’s Shop Street in the late nineties and early two-thousands, Cuan continued looking into ways that he could use music to achieve the profundity he had once experienced. One of the highlights from his different avenues of exploration was his contributions to musical therapy in hospitals, which also served to expand his education.

“I used to play an awful lot for kids, and I used to play an awful lot for kids with disabilities and adults with disabilities,” Cuan says. “I kind of did that full-time for a few years, and that’s a different sort of dynamic, and it completely changed the way that I play.

“Especially with kids with autism, because…Now, the autism spectrum is very wide, so that’s a general thing to say – ‘Kids with autism’ – but some of the kids that I played for, it made me play so much softer, and you’re playing completely in the moment, because this person is not going to follow you on Instagram.

“This person may be non-verbal. They may not have a phone. They don’t have an interest in the rankings of people on social media or anything like that, so it’s a far more direct and honest reaction that you’re getting there. If they don’t like it, that will become apparent very, very quickly. And if they do like it, it might become apparent, just because they don’t leave, basically! [Laughs] So, that had a dramatic effect on how I play, and a very good effect.”

Eventually, Cuan tried being a session musician, and later a gig musician, but he didn’t really gel with the parameters they required. “I don’t play piano, but it’s sort of like you’re a cocktail pianist,” he says of this period of his career. “You just sit in the corner, you play, and people will interact with you a little bit.

“It’s not the worst kind of thing, but, at the same time, you’re actually selling yourself short. It’s like you’re trying to do the thing you really want to do by sort of half-doing it, and all it really does is just tire you out and make you just about enough money to survive.”

Somewhat deterred by the opportunities available for musicians at the time, Cuan moved to Donegal and took a job at sea. “I work at sea, but that’s getting harder and harder to do,” he admits. “You’re gone for four weeks and, yeah, you’ve got four weeks off after that, and that’s great, but about a week-and-a-half into that four weeks off, you’re thinking about when you’re getting back on, and you’re trying to stay consistent with friends, and consistent with music, and sessions, and other pass times that you enjoy, and there’s a severance.

“There’s a cut-off, there, that happens when you get back on the ship. A ship, it all depends on the crew. It can be a fine place to work, and it’s grand, but it’s still a prison for four weeks, like it or not, and it might be a pleasant prison… – if there is such a thing – …but that’s kind of what it is, you know? [Laughs] And there might be a romantic idea for me, being a ‘seafaring troubadour’ and all that, but I won’t lie to you, it’s getting hard.”

Despite typically finding the atmosphere unconducive to creativity, it was while at sea that an idea came to Cuan for a new musical project. “I was trying to get a whole project together for a long time, but having the balls to do it, I suppose […] is a scary thing to do,” he explains.

“I have released EPs before, but not [in a structured way]. So, I had a lot of things done, collected, and I decided that I was going to do an album. I had songs that were happening as I was out on the ship. I was writing some songs, and I had some songs written, and one evening, when I was on the ship, I was looking at Instagram, and my friend, Sinead Gallagher, who’s a painter here in Donegal, had one of her paintings that she had just finished, called Bird of Paradise, up on Instagram.

“I looked at it, and I can’t exactly remember if I wrote the song right away, or if it took a few days, or how I did it, but it struck a chord with me, and it wasn’t just the painting. If you hear the song, maybe it will make sense. It was the painting, but Sinead is married to a friend of mine, Marc. It was to do with my, say, relationship with them, as well, and there was something in that painting that reflected that or just sparked something in me, so I wrote the song.

“Then, as a commitment to the project, I decided to buy this painting, because this painting has to be the cover of the album. Sometimes, by spending some money, you’re like, ‘Well, I’m invested in this now in one way,’ and it kind of pushes you on to do it.”

This new project is simply mononymously titled “Cuan,” for which Cuan cites influences from the American musicians Beck and Tom Petty, and the Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby. Yesterday, at the time of publication, Cuan released his first single, “On a Ship.”

“I actually wrote it on the ship,” Cuan says of the song. “I wrote it while I was on watch. So, in the evening, you take a watch, sometimes. If the ship is at anchor, there needs to be somebody on bridge, monitoring the radios and making sure the anchor doesn’t slip.

“So, it was early on… – I think it was 2022 – …and I wasn’t enjoying the trip at all. It was early on, there was a lot of old-school guys there, a lot of shouting, and a lot of bad blood between people, and it was just hard, you know? So, I wrote that not even as a song; I wrote it as a way of processing what was happening.

“I was trying to just cope with a situation, and a lot of my writing is that. It’s a lot more of a people journal. I suppose it’s a little bit like that, but, at the same time, I like to think it’s more than that. I like to think that I’ll actually find the path through something difficult by writing about it, and even if it doesn’t solve the situation, it clarifies the situation.”

With his first release out, we ask Cuan what people can expect next. “Creatively, I’m going to keep writing my songs, and allowing things to happen the way my gut tells me,” he responds. “So, I really hope this single reaches a fair few listeners.”

Cuan’s debut single, “On a Ship,” is out now. You can keep up with him through his website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 22:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.