MacD on Music: Hearing Voices

When someone mentions the name will.i.am, the first thing that comes to many people’s minds is, naturally, Irish a cappella music. Recently, this natural musical pairing came together on The Voice, when Irish group Adrú got will.i.am to turn his chair with their rendition of Doecii’s ‘Anxiety’ mixed with Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’.

For a lot of people, this was probably their introduction to Ardú, made up of Filip Klubiča, Vicky Warwick, Judith Lyons, Sorcha Fenlon, Andy Dempsey and Ryan Garnham, but the group has been around for over a decade now, and are releasing their latest album ‘Irish Rock’n’Roll Museum’ on November 20th.

I was chatting to Filip and Vicky recently about the group and their time on The Voice.

We started with where the name came from. Vicky: “Ardú is an Irish word which literally means to elevate. We interpret that as to elevate and inspire life up with music. We had a ten-year anniversary concert in 2024. I’m the only remaining original member, and the current ensemble has been there for three or four years.”

Speaking about The Voice, Filip tells me: “That was really exciting. We saw they were casting online and we decided to apply. The Voice still pushes itself as a show for solo acts, but the show’s been on for fourteen seasons and the format has changed significantly. They’ve been accepting groups for a while now, but we didn’t really know. When we saw they were casting groups, we were like ‘Oh, maybe this is something we can do’, and after multiple rounds of videos, pre-auditions, calls, talking to producers, singing for producers, we got lucky and got through to the blind auditions.”

On having will.i.am turning, Filip said “If you’d asked me before who would have turned for us, I would’ve thought maybe Kelly Rowland because of Destiny’s Child, or maybe the McFly guys because they’re in a band. They would’ve been the most logical fits, but I think the reason Will turned is that he promotes himself on the show as the one who loves the unusual. He loves the unique and the ones who are outside the box and different from anyone else. That’s what makes him such a good fit. What I loved even more was how much we resonated with him emotionally. He said we took him on a journey; we showed him the best of humanity. We nearly made him cry. It was really special to see that, because I think that’s what we try to bring across, the emotion. We really feel the music, and we really try to convey that to the audience.”

I asked how they’d describe their sound. Vicky: “We’ve tried hard to reimagine the sound [of a cappella]. We like to refer to ourselves as a vocal band. We imagine the instrumentation and make it just a whole new thing for voices.”

Filip: “We’ve sort of found a niche. We do covers of rock songs and pop songs and we’re leaning into this on our next album ‘Irish Rock’n’Roll Museum’. We’re really making it all about Irish music, Irish exports, some of the legends and some of the lesser-known singer/songwriters. We also do covers of folk and traditional songs. When we, for example, tour abroad, we’ll throw in a mix of these things. Sound-wise, we try to bring that Irish-ness to it as well. We love working with Irish arrangers. We’ve done some arrangements ourselves, and we’ve got arrangements from some of our previous members, and we put a lot of emotion into it.”

Vicky: “This is album number four. They’re so time consuming and expensive to create. It’s not something that you churn out willy nilly. So much blood, sweat and tears have gone into this one in particular. We’re kind of quality over quantity.”

Filip: “But even four is nothing to scoff at. That averages one almost every two or three years, and if you listen back to one of the first ones, we’ve really improved in quality. We’ve started working with more and more established producers, and we’ve learned a lot from the process as well. This one, we’ve worked with the best of the best in the industry. Grammy Award-winning mixing engineers, that level of production. It’s so intricate. There’s so much going into it. If you want to sound big and full, if you want a great aural experience from an a cappella album, very few people in the world know how to achieve that. Every album, we’ve learned something and applied it to the next one and then gone to the right people for the things we felt we could improve.”

And that’s it from Ardú. Their new album ‘Irish Rock’n’Roll Museum’ is coming on November 20th and their latest single, a mix of Mick Flannery’s ‘Fool’ and Dermot Kennedy’s ‘Power Over Me’, is out now.

Their music can be found on all good streaming services and their official Bandcamp page.

They can be found on Instagram @ardumusic.