DMac Burns

“This is a four song EP from a batch of upcoming material that unites music makers from all over the world. It features two original songs, "Pulse" and "Whatever It Will Be" along with dub versions of each song, dubbed by legendary reggae musician, producer, and mixing engineer, Victor Rice. For these songs, we had myself and my bandmate, Matias,, record guitar and keys in Ireland. Bass, drums, and backing vocals were recorded in New York by some of my closest friends, Rocky, Seth, and Eric. We all used to play in a vocal harmony driven reggae band called Rocky and The Pressers, so I wanted to make sure they put their stamp on these songs. Then, I got in the studio with Victor Rice in São Paulo, Brazil to record lead vocals and plan the production. From there, we handed the material to an amazing Argentinian producer/drummer, Glik, of El Natty Combo, who added percussion and helped with pre-production. Finally we gave it all back to Victor, who got his go-to Brazilian horn section to lay down the brass before he mixed it all and added his signature sound to the dub versions. Below you’ll find a little piece I wrote on my experience moving to Ireland and how that influenced the song/ep.

 

Since moving to rural Ireland from New York City a little over a year and a half ago, I've learned a lot. I've become a father. I've gotten married. I've learned to drive a manual car on the other side of the road. I've had to round and chop insane amounts of wood to heat an old crumbling farmhouse with a range (something I didn't even know existed until moving here). I've worked as a power washer at a strange pharmaceutical company in the middle of nowhere. I've worked for my brother-in-law, putting up insulation and drywall, sanding and finishing bits of timber for carpentry jobs and assisted in installing kitchens and office furniture in various commercial locations. I was not trained for any of this. I basically spent the last year and a half being pretty bad at everything and staying about as broke as I've ever been. 

But, I also wrote a bunch of songs, which I workshopped at weekly rehearsals with my bandmate, Matias, who hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but similarly found himself living amidst the cow fields in West Cork. There’s something about the land and the people here that breeds creativity without hubris. The culture humbles you, but lifts you up in the same breath. I found that to be the perfect energy for writing reggae songs. The painful history of colonialism in Ireland still feels quite present, as it does in so many places throughout the world. It lives in the trees and the rocks, the winks and the nods, the somber songs and the humor. 

Being a member of the Irish diaspora, who’s ancestors left for New York during the “famine”, I almost felt like the country was testing me to see if I really wanted to bring my lineage back here. It was as if the whole place was saying, “your people left us in our darkest hour, and now you want to come back? Feck off!” But then, in the next instant, I would be given some amazing gift like meeting Matias, or being booked at the legendary West Cork venue, Connolly’s of Leap because the owner saw us busking at a market, or getting months of back pay from the dol. That last one might not sound very exciting, but believe me, it is when you only have twenty euros in your bank account. Anyways, my point is that I’ve experienced a flow here lurking behind the struggle. Once I embraced that, some realizations emerged.

This leads me to the song, “Pulse” which is also the name of our EP. There is a pulse that connects the land and the people of this world to some deeper knowledge of history, spirituality, humanity, and nature. It exists in the pain, the joy, and everything in between. Doubt, self hatred, and fear seek to disconnect us from this incredible force. We cannot let that happen. I’ve had the privilege of tapping into this pulse here in Ireland, by being a fish out of water and eventually finding my way through creativity. I’ve only just begun the journey. I don’t anticipate it will be easy, as it has not proven to be so far. This EP is the start of some ancestral healing for myself and by extension, the world. It’s not just healing the pain of my ancestors unjust persecution in Ireland, it’s healing the unjust persecution that many of them likely put on others, because of their trauma. We are in a moment in time that requires us all to take responsibility for humanity's collective suffering. We must name the atrocities that have been done and continue to be done by vampiric forces of greed. We must understand our complicity in these actions, but also, understand that we have the power to be complicit in unification, justice, peace, and creation. So as the song says, 'It’s a fine day to break the chain of self destruction that’s been guiding us so far. New dimensions exist. We don’t have to live like this.'"

 

-Danny McDonald (DMac Burns)