Julie Feeney's first album, a crackling pop/classical hybrid, has raised the highly-qualified Irish musician's profile considerably, says Tony Clayton-Lea

BEWARE of the quiet ones, for they will sneak up on you, all surreptitious and stealthy, and deliver blows which, if not quite the killing kind, certainly know how to bruise. Strategy has little to do with it, either. At least, that's the case with Julie Feeney.

You're right to say "Julie who?" Formerly an anonymous figure very much on the periphery of the Irish music scene, Feeney has, in the past six months, elbowed her way close to the centre, picking up plaudits along the way for her late 2005 debut album. To say that 13 Songs is the constituent part of Feeney's ambitious cottage industry is to incorrectly imply that she is just a musician and songwriter with a few itches to scratch. In fact, this woman has so many strings to her bow she could be mistaken for an orchestra of harps.

Get this, part one: on the album Feeney plays keyboards, alto recorder, treble recorder, harmonium, accordion, violin, harmonica, melodica, and xylophone.

Get this, part two: Feeney graduated from TCD in 2002 with a Masters in Music and Media Technologies; she subsequently studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Since then she has worked as a professional choral singer and composer. She sings with the National Chamber Choir, has performed and recorded all over the world with various ensembles (including Anuna, Riverdance and Lord of the Dance) on numerous CDs, DVDs and broadcasts. Her own concert compositions have been performed in Ireland, the UK and the US.

As composer and singer for Cosan Dearg (which ran at Project Theatre, Dublin, last July), Feeney worked with choreographer Fearghus O Conchuir and theatre director Jason Byrne to create a contemporary dance performance.

As if this weren't enough, Feeney has a Masters in Psychoanalysis, which is bound to come in handy if she continues to work in the music industry. Oh, and she works part-time as a model, has collaborated with other artists as a live-art performer, lectures part-time in St Pats, Drumcondra, and is currently working on a dance opera. Is she busy? Er, just a tad.

And yet Feeney is still very much an unknown quantity in terms of contemporary Irish music - to her benefit, it would seem. Not for her the apprenticeship of garage gigs and support slots, the smell of the tour bus and the grime of the dressing room.

Musically, too, she has come from a different place, which is probably why the decidedly off-centre 13 Songs has met with equal measures of nodding approval and head scratching. The album, says Feeney, was in her system for over five years; she started work proper on it two years ago by, as she imparts, putting the songs into context.

"You spend a lot of the time deluding yourself thinking that you're something, but it's more you're aspiring to be that," Feeney starts, somewhat uncertainly. "I would have thought that I sounded like certain people, when I didn't even have a sound to begin with. I went to a studio with a band, but that didn't work out. I felt the songs weren't about me, but rather about the musicians. I then came to the realisation that I could actually make the songs turn out in whatever way I wanted.

"That was almost an epiphany; it's like the way as a child you're allowed to stay up late to watch something on television - there's such a sense of excitement. And the process of doing it all by yourself is very exposing, nerve-racking."

She knows that 13 Songs is a curve ball in music terms. It certainly isn't made up of a regular diet of rock/pop - not even the radio unfriendly kind. Background seems to be all important.

Feeney is from Galway, and her initial love of the folk/traditional idiom was supplemented by listening to (and loving) everything from 12th century music and Meredith Monk to baroque and (so called) avant-garde. She's familiar with the works of composers Henry Cowell and Harrison Birtwhistle, but not at all with early '70s Virgin-label experimentalists Henry Cow and Slapp Happy. Feeney knows her Steve Reich from her Steve Naïve, too.

"It's difficult to define where precisely musical integrity comes from," she suggests. "It could come down to your personality; in fact, perhaps it's a form of stubbornness in your personality. How you organise your mind, and how you take on music is part of it, also. Do I think the record stands out as being very different from the norm? Hmm. Maybe I need to take a step back from it. I know a lot of classical music people, and they certainly can read references into it."

The success of 13 Songs has taken Feeney completely by surprise. Her cottage industry project has taken on an extension, she reckons.

"I'd no idea what would happen. I finished making the record, and then I put the CD into envelopes and posted them off to people. I didn't pay anyone to do PR or publicity for it. I suppose I had no idea about that side of things. It sounds like I wasn't very much focused, but this is the thing - I'm going to be doing music until I'm old and grey, and 13 Songs is just one project of mine.

"That said, I never realised how much work was involved. I find it difficult to focus on a fixed plan. I haven't even licensed it yet, although I know I want to. There are also different projects that I want to do. Working as a classical musician, I spent some time worrying about how I would be perceived by releasing a record that is neither classical nor pop. I've realised, however, you can really do whatever you want, because there's no one person that has a universal knowledge."

She'd like something good to happen, of course - the mundanity of not having enough money makes life difficult, despite the album selling in shops, at gigs and on her website (www.juliefeeney.com).

"I'd like a bit of acceleration, and more money would be a great comfort blanket. Where I am right now I'm depending on all the income to come from myself, so I have to think more along those lines. I believe in momentum very much - you have to jump up on that wheel.

"You're a snail, a worm, whatever, moving your way along. Would the album obstruct other projects? Well, that's up to me, isn't it?"

Julie Feeney appears on Other Voices on February 22nd on RTÉ2 and at Bewley's Café Theatre, Dublin, on February 25th. 13 Songs is on the shortlist for the Choice Music Prize - Irish Album of the Year 2005. The live event will take place in Vicar St, Dublin, on February 28