Michael Smyth has been active in the Belfast music scene for over two decades, and is currently the guitarist for the shoegaze project Virgins and the drummer for the post-hardcore band Broncos. Over the Christmas break last year, when he had some time off from his bands and promotion company, Old Crows Promotions, Michael’s thoughts gravitated towards his mortality.

Rather than stagnate in melancholy, Michael elected to channel his woes into music. “It’s such an odd thing to be driven by, but I’m forty now,” he said when he spoke with Post-Burnout. “Like, I turned forty in January, and there is part of me that’s like, ‘How long can I reasonably do this for?’ Like, ‘How long can my body keep allowing me to do this?’, and ‘How long does life allow me to do it?’, and all these different things.”

Michael has always been influenced by the time of day and the general atmosphere that he creates within. What would end up being the first song released from these Christmas sessions, “Faze,” was born from Michael’s battles with insomnia and observing and writing in the wee hours.

“So, ‘Faze,’ the lyrics were like, ‘I don’t sleep when you dream,’ you know?”, Michael explains. “My wife can fall asleep like that [Clicks fingers], and she sleeps a lot, then I’ll just be lying there, awake, […] and I get sleep paralysis, as well. I’ve had it since I was no age. Really, really young. And sometimes, it’s really scary, especially when you’re young.

“But, I don’t get it so much, now, but ‘Faze’ was written in my kitchen, as I was watching the sun coming up because I couldn’t sleep. It’s really as simple as that. I think that kind of woozy, half-awake, half-dreamy/sleepy thing, that’s a very shoegaze-y kind of thing, and it lends itself to all of that. I think even the production on ‘Faze’ has that kind of feel to it.”

For “Faze,” Michael self-imposed a six-week, start-to-finish deadline to have the release coincide with his fortieth birthday on January 31^st. “It was kind of this weird challenge that I set myself,” he says, “because I had recorded, like, four songs to mess about with over Christmas. Then that one kind of came together, and I was like, ‘Oh, this one’s kind of cool. Maybe I’ll put some vocals on it. I’ll just see if I can make it sound OK,’ and I didn’t hate what I did.

“After many, many vocal takes… – because I really struggled with it. It’s so difficult for me – …I was like, ‘OK, well that sounds kind of cool. Maybe I should get it mastered, just to see…’ Because, like, I’m not an engineer by any stretch; I just own some mics and GarageBand, you know?

“So, Joel Harkin from Belfast, at Aye Sound, mastered it. Even that was like a learning curve, because I sent him that, and he was like, ‘Man, this is so loud!’, and I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know, dude!’ [Laughs] […] ‘I’m just learning,’ you know? And I’m always trying to get better at stuff.”

In addition to Harkin’s mastering, the track was then mixed by Wynona Bleach’s Jonny Woods, as Michael worked in his kitchen to create the paratext around the single. Suddenly, he found himself with his third musical project, which he dubbed Silk.

As the surroundings during the crafting of “Faze” dictated its gazy sonic direction, and, by extension, Silk’s sound has a whole, Michael clarifies how it differs from his other shoegaze band, Virgins, by stating, “I’m in three bands now, but I write all the time, and I write lots of different stuff, and there’s some really poppy stuff that comes out, but, obviously, this kind of shoegaze-y stuff is where I kind of focus most of my energy on, and there’s lots of stuff that comes out that it doesn’t fit into one box. I kind of like the really heavier end of it, too.

“It’s pretty much impossible to talk about one without talking about the other, but, obviously, in Virgins, it’s poppier, and we kind of back away from some more of the tropes of shoegaze, like the buried vocals.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of pop in shoegaze, across the board. I think there’s a lot of pop in [My Bloody Valentine’s] Loveless, if you listen to it. It’s in me, too, but with this, I wanted to swing more towards the heavier end of things.”

Last month, Silk released the second of the tracks Michael wrote in December, “but then, yes,” which features Picture Postcard’s frontman, AJ Das, on vocals. Michael has worked with AJ since he had promoted shows for AJ’s previous project, Fulvetta, and had told him, “If we lived in the same city, our band would be so good!”

Wanting to collaborate with AJ for a while, this track finally gave Michael the opportunity. “I think I mentioned, vaguely, at some stage, ‘It might be cool to do something’,” Michael says of how the collaboration came about. “Then, right before tour, things started to pull together. I was like, ‘Oh, I have this song. You should do this.’

“I was like, ‘I got it. I’m ready.’ I sent it to him, and he had it back in two days, and it was with Jonny Woods the next day. Things do move quite quickly with this, and I don’t see how people wait three years to release a song or something. It doesn’t work for me.”

With “but then, yes,” Michael had a specific theme in mind. “It’s about a connection, and shifting from a platonic thing into a romantic thing, and then into something else,” he explains. “That can be a slow shift, but massive, emotionally. So, hopefully, that comes across in it.”

Beyond that, Michael gave AJ carte blanche for the lyrics. “I actually don’t know what he’s singing, to be honest,” Michael admits. “I sent him what I was singing. I was like, ‘This is kind of the idea. Have at it,’ just because I trust him and I know he understands where it all comes from, you know?  We’ve played together a bunch, we’ve chatted a bunch. So, he’s into it.

“So, like, ‘I’m asking you to be on this for a reason, so you do what you think is right, whatever you think that feeds into.’ I have an idea what he’s singing. It’s almost like that bit at the end of Lost in Translation, where he whispers to her. I don’t know if I’m Bill Murray or he’s Scarlett Johansson. Who knows? [Pauses] I’m definitely Bill Murray! [Laughs]”

Despite intending to take a more relaxed pace while he upped his engineering skills with Silk, the project has now expanded beyond Michael’s initial scope and has become a full band. On July 25^th, Silk will perform their debut gig, supporting Alpha Twin at The Deer’s Head in Belfast. The current line-up features Michael’s Broncos bandmates Cameron Leggat on guitar and Shane McMullan on bass, and Wynona Bleach and Mucksavage’s James Foy on drums.

“I guess I’m kind of taking the same approach, in a way,” Michael says of the natural expansion of Silk. “Like, Virgins was always meant to be me plus a singer and whoever else, and then I tried that. It didn’t really work, and that’s kind of when everybody left, the first time [Laughs]. Then, I got new people in, and then I was like, ‘We’re a band. We’re going to be a band,’ and some people left, and we’re on, like, our third line-up now.

“So, my approach was that it was going to be like Nine Inch Nails, you know? Like, a revolving door kind of thing. But, obviously, because I wasn’t doing vocals, I needed a permanent singer, too. With this one, man, with ‘Faze’ and this song, I recorded those just before Christmas last year. I was like, ‘I’ll just record these, and I’ll try to teach myself how to mix better, and just get better at all that,’ and then that progressed and got away from me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I should put this out.’

“That’s kind of what happened. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do a recording project, and I’ll be able to kind of do it at my own pace, and, because I’ll do all the stuff, I can be as prolific or not as I want.’ Then, as soon as I put it out, I was like, ‘Oh, we should play shows, though!’ [Laughs] It always happens! I just want to do the next thing!”

By Michael’s estimations, Silk already has a “mini-album’s worth” of material in various stages of completion, but, in the meantime, he’s focusing on pushing this project. Beyond their debut gig, the band will also perform at Gazefest, Belfast, on August 30^th, and Michael teases a Dublin gig for later in the year.

“A mini-album at some stage, possibly next year,” Michael says of their plans. “Then, just shows. I just want to play between now and then. So, if we play and it goes well, we’ll keep doing it. And, if it’s terrible, then we’ll just stop! [Laughs]”

Silk’s latest single, “but then, yes,” is out now. You can keep up with the band through their Linktree.

See Silk live at:
July 25^th – Belfast – The Deer’s Head (w/ Alpha Twin, Picture Postcard, and Sheela) (Tickets)

August 30^th – Belfast – Gazefest @ Oh Yeah Music Centre (Tickets)

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (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.