Next to U2, Clannad are probably Ireland's most successful musical export, racking up platinum and gold albums wherever their music is heard. Mark Prendergast tracked them down to talk about the unique sound which has spawned a dozen successful albums over 20 years.

In 1990, Anam, Clannad's twelfth album, went gold in America. The inclusion of the 1982 British hit, 'Theme from Harry's Game', bolstered sales considerably. A mercurial mix of synthesised vocal and wafting Gaelic lyric, it was this track that broke Clannad away from their early, folksy image and made them international purveyors of a smooth electronic sound that was as well crafted as anything else in the genre.

Clannad began in the early '70s as a folk group covering Beatles, Rolling Stones and Joni Mitchell songs in their native Gweedore (their name is derived from the Irish words Clann as Dobhar — family from the town of Dore). Maire Brennan played harp and sang, brothers Pol and Ciaran did nice things with flutes, acoustic bass and piano. Rhythmic support was provided by guitarist uncles the Duggan twins. They collected old Donegal songs and re-interpreted them. Like U2, it was the winning of a festival that spurred them on, providing much-needed equipment and publicity to continue their music.

As a group so far away from anything, Clannad found it necessary to throw themselves into a continuous European touring schedule. Unusually for an Irish group, they negotiated their own record contracts and debuted in '73 with an acoustic album on Philips. Their second, Clannad 2, the following year, saw them already moving towards electronics with the inclusion of a Moog synth. The combination of upright bass, flutes and African percussion with Maire's evanescent voice would develop a lush sound over successive albums. Crann Ull from 1980 was recorded in Koln with Conny Plank of Can fame. Fuaim, from 1982, featured Maire's sister Enya, herself destined for superstardom in 1988 with the single 'Orinoco Flow'.

For the world audience, Clannad's international career really began in earnest with the Prophet 5 masterpiece 'Theme from Harry's Game', whose keyed voices and multitracking defined Clannad as a high-fidelity group in the same league as Pink Floyd. They even won an Ivor Novello award for this song, which became the closing music for all of U2's concerts to date. Name producers from all over the world wanted to produce the group, who were now signed to RCA. Tony Clarke (of Moody Blues fame) produced 1984's Legend, while David Sylvian mainman Steve Nye did a corner-turning job on the following year's Macalla, which featured Bono duetting with Maire on the soaring 'In A Lifetime'.

Today Clannad are one less, as Pol Brennan (who wrote 'Harry's Game') bowed out in 1989 to work with Peter Gabriel in Box. As WOMAD producer and in-house acoustic specialist, one could say he's gone back to his roots. The remaining two members now live in Dublin to be nearer the music business and are still good friends with U2. Their new album, Banba, with its mixture of chugging acoustic electric songs and ambient scapes, such as the brilliant 'I Will Find You' (theme from the film The Last Of The Mohicans) is certainly a sonic tour de force. I met up with collaborators Maire and brother Ciaran to talk about the past and present of this remarkable Irish phenomenon.

COMPOSITION

How do you go about composing a song?

Maire: "Ciaran is mainly the composer. After so many years, he knows my voice and range. On Banba, he took a different approach. Fifteen or so songs were put down at his leisure. Then we'd take one out and develop it. I'd then demo it with him. We'd leave it for a while and then go back to it and find things that were important. Then we went into the Mill in Berkshire, which is a residential studio. We like that because you can have a late night or early morning and can feel your own time. It's nice to walk out and be in country when the mood takes you."

How long did it take?

Maire: "Six weeks before Christmas and six weeks after. If something wasn't working, we'd just leave it. On Anam, we wrote, structured and recorded it in two and a half months. We now have our own studio in Dublin, because you can't exist in the music business in Donegal, not unless you have a helicopter. Ciaran's house in the Dublin mountains has a 16-track Tascam, a desk, a computer and some keyboards and samplers. Enough to be able to do plenty of stuff. We have sampled ourselves recently, but if you take 'Harry's Game', that wasn't sampled — it was only us into the desk and then layered."

Ciaran: "I like the Wavestation and the Roland JD800. I like to MIDI them all up. It's the acoustics of the keyboards in the room that are important to me, and I'm very particular about sounds. I still use the DX7. It's amazing when you rig up these keyboards together and all these unusual sounds come out. Before we track anything, I'll try to get the strangest sounds I can from the equipment. We also use a lot of reverb and loads of delay lines; it's sometimes difficult to recreate all of it perfectly live."

Do you think you pioneered the keyed voices approach?

Ciaran: "Well, 10cc did it before us. I think Richard Dodd was involved with 'I'm Not In Love'. Anyway, he came in to engineer 'Harry's Game' and we put all our vocals on all the channels. Myself and Richard and my brother Pol just faded them up."

Do you think your music is mystical?

Maire: "Ethereal, haunting... people find our music visual, misty, earthy, all those things. The way our sound happened, we spent six albums collecting traditional songs. We then spent nine years experimenting with them in a contemporary style, using different instrumentation and doing the harmonies. When the boys wrote 'Harry's Game', we had to step back when people pointed out the sound to us. It seemed so natural to us, coming from Donegal with its stories, folklore and songs."

"We've always been very careful about how things blend together — how acoustic instruments like guitars and flutes and expecially voices complement each other. It's all about colouring and balance."

Back in 1987 you recorded Sirius, which many consider to be your American album, with Greg Ladanyi and Russ Kunkel. It even had Bruce Hornsby on one track. What do you think of it now?

Maire: "I like the songs on it. Many think it was recorded in America but it was actually done in Rockfield in Wales, Dublin and London, though it was mixed in Los Angeles. The producers didn't listen to our previous records but we felt we had to experiment. The reviews were quite stiff. I felt at times that they were fitting our music together like you'd do a jigsaw puzzle."

Ciaran: "I thought it was too sandpapered down to be a radio-friendly album. Ross and Greg took five weeks to mix it, which was quite a lot. We learned something, as we do from all the people we work with. I think they relied too much on the computer and when you do that, the music gets rigid. We do use an Apple Mac, but the concentrated areas are the played parts."

INFLUENCES

You are unique in making the Irish language universal in song. What do the three Irish songs on Banba mean?

Maire: 'Na Laetha Bhi' just means the days of yore. 'Banba Oir' refers to the three Goddesses of ancient Ireland. 'Ca De Sin Do'N Te Sin' is 'Nobody's Business But Your Own'. We're bilingual and Irish is our first language. A lot of people tell us it's the Irish songs they love most."

It's this mixture of Gaelic lore and language with a rock sensibility that makes Clannad so special. Ciaran loves the Beach Boys, while Maire considers Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert her number 1 album. A fan of Neil Young, she was delighted when the legendary Canadian invited her to sing on Harvest Moon last year — though sadly she had to decline through pressure of work.

Like the artists they admire, Clannad feel that artistic freedom is paramount. Two to three years is their normal album time, though, as Maire comments "We have a budget and deadlines to make. Record companies are very like banks. If you spend a little, it is up to you. If you spend a lot it is up to you. Young bands feel that the more the record company spends on them the better everything's going to be. And we know that's not the case."

Do you think of yourselves as electronic musicians?

Ciaran: "Not really, but after studying classical music, I see elements of that in us. I mean, Schoenberg was greatness but you've got to add to that. It's just coincidental that there was a Prophet 5 on Fuainr, I just started dabbling with nice drones and the spatial aspect of things.

Maire: "We've always been very careful about how things blend together — how acoustic instruments like guitars and flutes and especially voices complement each other. You can overload things with electronics. It's all about colouring and balance."

Do you think of yourselves as high-fidelity artists since you are asked to do quite a lot of soundtracks?

Ciaran: We don't mind that. When we go into the studio we've got something mapped out but you never know how it's going to turn out. The soundtrack route is very painstaking, especially when the directors get involved. For The Last Of The Mohicans, there were 20 phone calls in three weeks and tapes flying back and forth across the Atlantic. That happened because Michael Mann liked the Gaelic but we felt that it wouldn't be right to sing about early American history in Irish, so we chose Mohican words and a Cherokee Indian chorus. We gave them a complete English version as well, so they could blend the two on the soundtrack. Unfortunately that was a mistake and on the film it sounds like it's coming out of a transistor radio."

Clannad don't brag about their ability to fill the Albert Hall many times over. Or their BAFTA awards, or the other kudos that has come in a long and fruitful career. Asked to comment on the kind of music they really make, Maire answers: "The new world music, whatever that means."