Faodail, meaning ‘a lucky find’ in Gaelic, is the alias of Scottish electronic producer Callan Marchetti. With a highly-textured sound that is able to swell from the brooding and introverted to the expansive and moving.
After releasing a string of singles which received support from various outlets such as BBC Radio, Nest HQ and MrSuicidesheep, Faodail released his debut EP ‘Untethered’ in 2019. Inspired by nostalgia, the EP draws on a number of stylistic influences, such as Ambient, Techno, Future Garage and Neo Classical.
Describe your sound for us. What do you want people to feel when they hear your music?
I’d say what I make is essentially organic-electronic music. For me, a lot of it typically has a melancholic feel, but I’m a great believer in the meaning of art being derived from the listeners own response to it. What one person feels listening to it may be different to the next, it’s all valid.
Which 3 artists have influenced you the most growing up?
Nirvana must have been one of the first rock bands I ever really got into. I was at an age where I was just starting to figure out my own taste in things like music and they probably had a lot to do with me playing in some really noisy grungy bands when I was younger. It’s through Nirvana I heard the ‘Foo Fighters’, and that then led me down a road of discovering all these bands in the 00’s, many of whom I still listen to today. They really shaped my whole experience with music as a teenager.
I still absolutely love ‘You Know You’re Right’, and the fact, it was one of the last songs they ever recorded. Always makes me wonder what a 4th Nirvana album would have sounded like.
Bloc Party were a huge influence for me, seeing a band that was so clearly inspired by dance music really opened me up to listening to a lot of music that I never really got before they came along. I still remember hearing ‘Flux’ for the first time, this huge euphoric sound that I just hadn’t heard anywhere else before. It absolutely blew me away!
I discovered Kiasmos a few years ago, and they came along just at the right time. I was feeling really disillusioned with music, both with what I was making and what I was hearing. They were this massive breath of fresh air, hearing the way they mixed techno and neoclassical was this total lightbulb moment for me. I just became really excited about music again and it’s basically what inspired me to start this whole project.
How did you discover your particular sound?
It’s been a pretty gradual process. My goal with this has always been to try and create something representative of all the music that influenced me, and I feel like I’m getting closer and closer, my EP being the best example of that so far. The process I use to write obviously plays a big part in the sound as well. I typically start by creating some sort of pad or atmosphere and build out from there. That’s why these elements tend to play such an important role in my music.
What are the most important pieces of equipment to you?
Right now, the piece of equipment I’m actually using the most is an old Tascam portastudio. I’ve ended up down a rabbit hole of creating tape loops with cassettes and recording little synth lines and pads on them. You get this really unpredictable, warm sound that I used quite a lot on my Untethered EP. If I had to get rid of everything else apart from a computer, that would be the one piece of gear I’d keep hold of, there’s just something about it that you can’t recreate digitally.
I also have a couple of hardware synths that I use pretty extensively like a Prophet Rev2 and Microbrute, but those are more about workflow than sound quality. Synth plugins are so good that you can do anything with them, I just tend to end up creating sounds on hardware that I’d never make on digital synths, and vice versa, purely because I naturally tend to approach them differently. At the end of the day, it’s also a lot of fun messing about with something physical rather than just clicking a mouse.
What outside of music inspires you to create?
Because I’m an independent artists, photography and filmmaking are slowly becoming a bigger part of what I do. I really enjoy creating the visuals that pair with the music. It’s just another aspect that ultimately adds to the whole experience so I like being able to be in control of all of it.
It’s also great coming from music to something I have less experience in. I haven’t had time to build up habits yet so everything is an experiment and it’s really freeing, but it also makes me appreciate how much of making music has become second nature to me.
Recently, I’ve also started to try my hand at painting. Mostly just experimenting with techniques to come up with abstract visuals, that’s what led me to make the Untethered EP cover. It’s a really interesting experience because it almost mirrors the way I create a lot of the atmospheric layers that go into my music, and then to inspire each other to a certain extent.
Do you have a favourite memory of your career so far that you will take with you forever?
My favorite moments so far have probably been more on the writing side, nothing beats the feeling of a track finally clicking after pouring hours into it. Ultimately, I think that’s what keeps driving me to write. Outside of that, hearing my music on the radio has been a pretty surreal experience, especially when it’s something like BBC Radio 6, which is so well regarded in terms of the quality of what they play.
If you could work with, or perform alongside any artist living or passed, who would it be?
Without a doubt, Justin Vernon. All of the Bon Iver albums are great but the last two have been something genuinely special, Justin is arguably one of the greatest songwriters in the world right now and it really feels like he’s pushing music forward. I can’t even begin to imagine the process that led to tracks like iMi and 33”GOD” being made, so to be involved in something like that would be an incredible experience. I also love that he’s sort of transcended the whole singer/songwriter thing and is working with so many different artists, I think that’s really representative of how blurred the lines between genres are today.
Most artists say that if they weren’t artists they would be mailmen/women… what would you be?
My day job is working in Television so I’d no doubt still be doing that, I’d just be a hell of a lot more stressed out without having music as an outlet.
What can we expect from you in the near future? Any upcoming projects or gigs in the pipeline that you would like to tell us about?
I just put out my first EP, so right now I’m just focusing on writing and releasing some stand-alone tracks while I put together a concept for my next EP. I also have a couple of collabs with some friends coming out soon that I’m pretty excited about!
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