Cabin
In producing, writing, recording, and mixing his work, Cabin (aka Adam McCabe) offers a singular artistic voice, yet attempts to push beyond individual limitations into grander compositions.
Drawing influence from the classic songwriters, his psychedelic sound is glittered with the palpable anxiety of Post-Punk, and exuberant tenderness of Soul music.
His focus is for his music and lyrics to imbue the aspects of modern-day disillusionment and existential dread with a defiant sense of radical optimism and to try to see the colour through the grey.
Cabin is...?
I'm Cabin, a songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, from Dublin, currently based in London. I started this project off last year when I had been working on some tracks for myself, and after "that big bad thing" that happened to the world, I realised life's a bit too short not to start putting your work out in the world. Before that, I was a member of the band Brass Phantoms, touring Ireland, the UK and the US, while working as an engineer and producer for some local independent acts.
Who inspired you to make music in general?
It always seemed like an intuitive draw to me. Most of my life, I've been surrounded with and fascinated with the creation of music. My older brother was in bands so I had access to instruments, and I was exposed to a wide variety of musical genres that piqued my curiosity in different ways.
The classic artists of the sixties and the seventies seem to have been the most present and consistent sources of inspiration for me throughout my life, whether it's learning Beatles and Kinks songs as a kid, drumming along to Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, or trying to wrap my head around the many layers of David Bowie or Bob Dylan. I suppose they appear pretty clearly in the material I've been releasing thus far.
What's the story behind your latest release "Whatever you have", what or who was your inspiration, respectively?
I don't think it's any great mystery that this latest track is a love song, but I suppose it's not as clear cut as "I love you baby, oh la la". The music of the track came about kind of incidentally. I was in the middle of recording one of my previous singles and took a break, sat down by my piano and just started fiddling away aimlessly.
Before long I had this repeating piano line, which ended up being the main piano part. I soon found myself stopping my recording session and starting a new one to make a rough demo of what I had with this track. Because of the way it sounded to me, this kind of melodramatic ballad, it started to build up in production with strings and synth pads and all these elements. This is where my 70's inspiration kind of comes in I reckon.
The lyrics then didn't come till much later down the line, when the music and arrangement was pretty much nearly done. I just didn't know what it should be about. It wasn't till after going through that whole 2 year lockdown, living with my partner, that it all clicked. We started learning about ourselves and our mental health a bit more and how we affect each other. So with all the big production ballady sounds that I had, it just seemed fitting to dedicate it to her and lean it to the classic 70's troupe of making an over-blown love ballad.
What's the hardest part in your opinion concerning songwriting?
It's all hard in its own unique way. As I am writing, producing and recording all by myself, one of the main things is that I really only have myself to stop me, and it can be tricky to know when I've reached that line and haven't started to push a track over a cliff. But saying that, this way of working also makes it very rewarding for me.
All the little challenges that you have to overcome from idea to final mix, makes me feel like I have a far deeper appreciation for all the aspects that goes into making music. Don't get me wrong though, I love working with people, jamming, writing and collaborating with people to make something truly special, I missed it so much during the isolation.
It's just when it comes to a solo project like this, I suppose it's the truest representation of what I can offer, and I like charting the growth of that.
What are your "All time Top 3 Songs", right now, in this second?
In no particular order, as these songs themselves are not safe on this list
The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
Fool On The Hill - The Beatles
Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control - Tame Impala
Social Media, is it fun or more a necessary "evil"?
It can be fun, even though I don't really get so involved beyond just promotion. I see artists I like really utilising it in a creative and entertaining way, and I'm envious of that for sure. I'm not going to go off on some boomer sounding things about how social media is bad, and it affects people's mental health, because obviously it does.
I've just started to view it as another entertainment outlet and the big notice board of the world, and that's really it. I follow who I want to be updated on, and I hope people follow me to be updated on the work I put out.
What’s next for you?
I hope to have a little complimentary EP out soon, to go along with the 4 tracks that I have released, as they all are kind of bound together in time. Beyond that, I've started work on a new body of work, that leans into a few new sounds I've been playing with, and hope to have that finished and recorded after the summer.
On top of that, just go out and about and get to playing and performing, for my own sake, as much as anyone else's who wants to see me play.
