Orange Spotlight: M(h)aol

Who are M(h)aol?
M(h)aol is Constance Keane, Jamie Hyland and Seán Nolan. The band was formed in 2014 when Connie wanted to make boys in green rooms uncomfortable. The band name is in Irish and comes from 15th century Pirate Queen, Gráinne Mhaol. The brackets in the name isolate the “h” which changes the “w” sound of the “mh” to an “m” sound so the name is pronounced like “male” because that’s funny… That’s the joke… We’re not men, we are terrifying pirate queens (aside from Seán). We are based between London, Belfast and Dublin.
What inspires M(h)aol?
We all have very varied and different musical inspirations from anything with an uilleann pipe, to Taylor Swift, to Gershwin, to Gilla Band. Lyrical inspiration comes from all aspects of our daily experiences. Music is a great way to convey messages we feel might be important for people to hear in a fun way that can also serve as a catalyst for catharsis or just.. y’know.. be fun to listen to and have a bop.

What Orange gear is important to M(h)aol?
Our first experiences with Orange amps was a few years ago at the Birkenhead venue Future Yard. They had some Rockerverbs and a huge pile of cabs (which may or may not have been belonging to Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs). That was the best guitar sound of that whole tour and just cool to know we weren’t going to be struggling to hear each other on stage. Since then, while supporting Gilla Band around Europe, we got to use an AD200 every night for bass which was truly transformative in so many ways and finally lead to me not feeling the need to just completely crank a bass amp to properly feel what was going on.
We currently have a Terror Stamp for guitar and a Terror Bass of our own, partially for the portability, but mostly for the sound and reliability. These were first used on the recording sessions for our latest single “Snare”.
Future Orange amps?
The current Orange gear we have feels very much like a stepping stone and is somewhat limited by our normal touring set up. being spread out across a bunch of different places and not having a set rehearsal space where gear can live and be readily accessed, when we go on tour we generally have to go and meet up somewhere close to the first show and start the tour from there. In the future I would love for us to be able to have a full orange backline somewhere that we can load into a van and just hit the road.. a pair of OBC810s, a PPC212 and a few nice heads to power them.. I’ve always been curious about 4×10 + 1×15 cabinets too.. sounds like it would be fun.

What does Orange mean to you?
As a sound engineer (started as recording in 2012, moved on to mastering in 2018) I came across Orange a long time ago. Initially, and very naively, I was comparing the aesthetic to other brands and judging them all by their covers but once you hear what they can do and start to understand how important reliability is both on the road and in studio, their quality becomes very clear. There’s something about feeling like the design is still done from a musicians perspective that I really appreciate, when it comes down to it, what it’s like to work with and play through is the most important thing.
What’s the most memorable M(h)aols moment?
A couple of things jump to mind immediately. Swimming in a lake in the swiss mountains at Bad Bonn Kilbi is definitely one. Another is being taken out by the organisers of the Basquerial Festival in portugal for Vino Verde and an amazing tapas-style meal before going to play our show there. Getting to tour with Gilla Band was also a very nice.. to be shown the luxury of playing shows around europe and being introduced to Switzerland, not to mention spending time with that lovely bunch of boys was definitely an experience to be remembered.

What’s on the horizon for M(h)aol?
We are about to go on a short tour of the USA, playing shows at TV Eye – NYC (March 9th) , SXSW, Permanent Records – LA (March 15th) and Vera Project – Seattle (March 17th).
Once we are back We’ll be preparing for an Irish co-headline tour with our pals from Cola (Canada) and Junk Drawer (Northern Ireland).
Those dates are in The Black Box – Belfast (May 28th), Sandino’s – Derry (May 29th), The Roisín Dubh – Galway (May 30th), Dolan’s Kasbah Club – Limerick (May 31st), Coughlans – Cork (June 1st & 2nd), Lucas Records – Waterford (June 3rd) and Whelans – Dublin (June 4th)
We’ve a few more things in the pipeline that will be worth keeping an eye out for in the next while including a fair few festivals over the summer yet to be announced.

Gear Currently Used



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Photo Credits – M(h)aol, Cait Fahey and Celeste Burdon Photography