With knowledge of his background, where he performed Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie-inspired acoustic sets at open mic nights in cafés and bars, the ambient synth-pop that Dublin musician Christian Cohle became known for was certainly unexpected, for him as much as anyone else.

“It’s funny, it’s so long ago now, but I remember I was with my co-producer – God! I can’t even tell you when this was! This was a long time ago,” Christian tells Post-Burnout of his origin. “But I had this acoustic album that I had tracked with him in a day, and we were listening to everything, and there were some cool songs there, but I remember being like, ‘Hmm…I don’t think I want to release this.’

“This was before this project had even come to be, and I remember Michael [Heffernan], my co-producer, was sort of forcing some of his tastes on me; he was showing me these electronic artists that were fundamentally electronic, but coming from a bit of a songwriter sensibility, and he was like, ‘I think you would be really interesting in this format,’ and that kind of began that whole adventure of bringing my songwriting to an electronic world.”

Using ambient world-building, Christian crafted two standout art-pop albums, 2021’s Holy Trouble and 2023’s WETLANDS, both critically acclaimed. “I love electronic stuff,” Christian says of the freedom it permits. “I love how there are just no boundaries with it, really; you can just go crazy with it, and there’s no limit to how many synth lines you want to stack up, and effects you want to use. It’s a world I love.”

And while Christian knows he could have simply followed this trajectory, he felt a new challenge was needed for his sake. “I don’t like being pigeon-holed into a specific genre,” he explains. “I just don’t. It was also just kind of a result of what I was listening to at the time, as well. I was listening to a lot of The War on Drugs, who are a band I love. I was listening to a lot more band-driven music, and that would have had a big effect, because that’s what it is; when I’m writing, I’m just writing what I want to hear.”

For his new album, Queen of Ashes (which was released last Friday, at the time of publication), Christian wanted more traditional instrumentation brought into the mix. “I knew from the get-go, going into this album, I wanted to do something more band-driven,” he explains.

“When I was writing in the studio, I was playing an electric bass or on my drumkit. I’d play, like, a shitty beat on the drums! [Laughs] I was just trying to start from a different place, and see where I end up. I was getting a little frustrated with being coined as an electronic artist, and I wanted to rebel against that a little bit, and I also wanted to do something out of my comfort zone; I wanted to go into uncharted territory.”

When it came to the album’s personnel, Christian enlisted the talents of Gavin Friday associate Ren Pion on sax and musician Kate Ellis on cello, who he had both worked with previously on WETLANDS, and first-time collaborators in drummers Alex Reeves (Elbow, Dizzie Rascal, Razorlight) and Cian Hanley (Florence + The Machine, James Vincent McMorrow, Cian Ducrot).

A meditation advocate and practitioner, Christian focuses on creating an album as a holistic experience, as he believes the process of listening to a full-length is, in a way, a meditative experience that requires discipline. “We’ve become master multi-taskers,” Christian says. “We’re so good at it. We can do, like, five things at once.

“But we’ve gotten so much worse at doing anything singularly; whether it’s sitting with yourself, whether it’s listening to an album, you know? Like, just that intention of sitting down and listening to an album for forty minutes or an hour.”

It is important to stress that Christian’s criticisms do not come from a sanctimonious place, as he admits that his attention span is as shot as every other dopamine addict. However, he views the recent spike in interest in vinyl records as a positive sign of people’s willingness to focus and engage with a longer-form piece of art.

“I’ve no control over it,” Christian says of people’s media consumption. “It sucks, but I think we are… – with everything we consume – …we just consume it how we want. Like, we consume this song, we consume this series, we consume whatever.

“I feel like, back in the day, there was a bit more of a community in what we’d consume. Like, you’d walk into Xtra-Vision, and you’d have a limited selection of movies. Or you’d watch the television, and there’d be a limited selection of channels. You’d go to buy an album, and there’d be a limited selection of albums. Now, music is just so saturated; it’s ridiculous! There’s so much content being uploaded all the time.”

Another reason for Christian’s love of full-length releases is that he can paint, craft, and expand upon a living world. His previous album, WETLANDS, for example, was a Blade Runner-influenced, rain-soaked, neon-dense world inspired by his trips to East Asia, specifically Japan and South Korea.

While geography and atmosphere play a huge part in sparking Christian’s creativity, ultimately, his lyrics have always explored elements of his lived experience through different creative modes. Holy Trouble was his exploration of grief and anger; WETLANDS was about the pain of breaking off a long-term relationship, and Queen of Ashes is about addiction and recovery.

 “I think Queen of Ashes is more of an internal story of this protagonist and antagonist,” Christian says. “But it’s almost like this kind of conversation that’s happening. So, it’s less about sense of place, and more about sense of self, really, and what I was going through.

“Now, definitely, certain things come through, like I mention India in one of the songs. There’s, actually, a couple of mentions of India […] because India had a big effect on me, and it bled into the songwriting. ‘Queen of Ashes’ is a bit of a tip of the hat to London, as well, because I wrote that song in London.

“But I think it has this mythological thing, this album. So, for me, if I’m to imagine it visually, or as a sense of place, it’s almost mythological, because I was playing with these different mythological ideas and wrapping it around my own life, as well.”

To celebrate the release of Queen of Ashes, Christian and his newly-formed band will perform a headlining show at Upstairs at Whelan’s on November 13^th. When asked what people can expect if they pop along that night, Christian responds, “Lots of dancing. Great music. A great band.

“I have a new band for this show. Incredible players. We’re going to play through the entire album, then, if we can, we’ll try to play a few tracks from the other albums, as well. But, yeah, expect a lot of energy, and, hopefully, I’ll find a nice suit to put on, as well! It’s going to be a great show, so I’d love anyone who is curious about my music to come along!”

Christian Cohle’s latest album, Queen of Ashes, is out now.

You can keep up with Christian through his website.

Christian and his band will perform at Upstairs at Whelan’s on November 13^th. Tickets are available here.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight 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.