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I'm Here Now

by Daithi

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1.
Sunset 03:56
2.
I'm Here Now 03:25
3.
Poly Poly 03:01
4.
5.
Joined 03:11
6.
7.
Familial 04:36
8.
9.
Moonlight 07:26

about

I’m Here Now starts where it must – at the end.

A sunset stretches out, led by the commanding presence of long-time collaborator Ailbhe Reddy. ‘Sunset’ serves as the closing of one journey – 2019’s critically acclaimed, RTÉ Choice Music Prize-nominated L.O.S.S., an album that found Daithí O’Dronaí confronting his most personal questions up to that point in his life – and the start of another.

I’m Here Now is an exploration of the past, present and future. It speaks to where Daithí is in his life at the precise moment you’re reading these words, in addition to his experience of the past two years; a time that challenged just about every living creature on the planet in ways nobody could have imagined.

For Daithí, having closed out his twenties during this period, it was crucial to capture as much lost time as possible. ‘Sunset’ and the initial genesis of I’m Here Now was indeed born out of isolation, but it was more of a shared, purposeful tranquility as Daithí decamped to his own artist’s hideaway – The Beekeepers in his native Clare.

It was here that the cast of supporting characters that make up his newest cinematic vision came together – Ailbhe Reddy and Sinéad White (‘Sunset’), David Tapley of Tandem Felix (‘Think Straight’), Uly (‘Like The Water’), and Neil Dexter (‘Keep It For the Next One’).

Old friends, new companions – a kinship was quickly formed in terms of the overall arc of what I’m Here Now needed to become.

“It’s easy because we understand what we’re looking for from each other,” Daithí offers.

The overall approach also meant finding a place for long-standing, dust-gathering documents, like when Daithí traveled to Slieve League in Donegal in 2015 to record the surrounding local harmonies – you’ll hear the creak of a heavy, rattling farm gate on the title track, for instance, ultimately used as a punctuation mark.

“It felt like I was holding onto that sample forever,” says Daithí. “I could just never figure out where to put it. This record was the first time where I knew, ‘This is the exact place for it to go’.

“I’d always try to mix that sample in with other synth sounds and drum sounds and ultimately it became, no, you just use it as a standalone piece of music to close the song. It needs to be on its own so that people can hear it. I know it might sound like a weird thing to say, but I just don’t think I was brave enough to do that before.”

There’s undoubtedly a courage to this album, particularly when Daithí takes the time to honour the legacy of those who carved out the path he now strides.

His grandfather Chris Droney, revered in Irish traditional music circles as much for his personality as his signature playing style, is very much present in Daithí’s decision to use a concertina on the title track – the instrument that his grandfather was rarely seen without.

Fusing traditional Irish sounds with a contemporary dance aesthetic has long been Daithí’s signature flourish, but this was a new, important context.

“There’s all of these facets that have inspired my music – my bread and butter has been about taking culture and history and mixing in the personal – if I’m tracking a lot of different parts of my life, if I’m trying to search for the different parts of myself right now, I needed to revisit these places and these people – you’re the sum of your parts right now, you know?”

As for Chris Droney, his presence has resonated with his grandson from an especially formative age.

“He was the real leader of the family and had been for his entire life – he was referred to as ‘The Boss’ right up until he died,” says Daithí.

“If you were doing anything in music, you would run it by him and he would let you know, in his way, whether it was the right or wrong thing to do.

“When I was a kid, you had to play an instrument – there wasn’t any question about it,” Daithí recalls.

“When I first went into music and started playing electronic and dance, I didn’t think he would approve – but he was so happy that I was doing something in music, and something new with it, too. He was, and is, a massive, massive inspiration.”

Also providing fresh encouragement – the idea of truly testing oneself; as a musician, as a storyteller, as an individual who has really come to appreciate the value in letting these songs speak for themselves in a way they hadn’t before.

“It’s about playing with the concept of control,” Daithí explains. “You’re trying to accept the fact that you can’t control everything – and I think how you come to actually deal with that, particularly as you get a little older, is so important.

“Once you stop yourself from trying to control every little detail, once you realise that the music can answer your questions and create exciting new ones, there’s a beauty in that,” Daithí smiles.

This attitude is reflected most prominently in the one-two punch of ‘Think Straight’ and ‘Like The Water’, two movements that find Daithí – and guest vocalists David Tapley and Uly – finding liberation in letting go.

“There’s a hypnotic poly-rhythm that drives ‘Think Straight’ – the hope is to unsettle the listener’s expectations a bit, to force them not to be in control so much and not to know where the next note is coming from,” says Daithí.

“Once you’ve given yourself up to that, it becomes one of the most unique tracks I’ve ever worked on. I think David Tapley really gets that, when he sings – ‘I keep on slipping up / I couldn’t keep my head above my heels / It’s like a whirlwind / And the world comes and sweeps me off my feet’ – it takes me somewhere else entirely.

“‘Like The Water’, then, takes that idea and brings it to an extreme. You start off with a quiet, calm acceptance but as it progresses, we build it out, just getting bigger and bigger, layer upon layer until it eventually explodes. You have to reach that side of it – there’s a danger to completely giving up control, after all.”

Sometimes, these things are decided for you. When an old-school cooker powers down, for instance, or when you’re cycling through your grandmother’s classic FM radio to tune into the local station. Bespoke noises of generations past coming through the ether of this very day.

These moments – sonic patchworks worthy of short stories of their own accord to the right ears – would of course find themselves collected, manipulated and fed back into the record. ‘Joined’, which serves as I’m Here Now’s plaintive, Burial-adjacent interlude, takes these journalistic scratches, adding uncertainty to the narrative.

“When you’re really unsure of yourself and you don’t know where to go and it’s quite upsetting and you’re genuinely super-scared by it – that’s this track,” notes Daithí.

A range of emotions filter through the nine tracks on display here. Quickly, those aforementioned fears melt into a heartfelt sense of self, one that guides the author – and so too the listener – to a place of solace that holds excitement for the future.

Having physically put more than one home together as a new decade of life dawned, Daithí is constructing a brand new one with the foundations of this album.

“I feel like I’m more connected to where I’m from than I’ve ever been,” says Daithí, who has found himself spending significantly more time in Clare than Dublin, where he settled properly in recent years.

“This song is me cueing up the next stage of my life, almost literally arranging it. That was deliberate; I wanted to find the contrast between bustling city life – which I love – and the more sparse, quiet, expansive and even epic nature that you find in the countryside – which I also love, of course,” he laughs.

Playfulness abounds, and confidence with it. Take lead single ‘Familial’, for example, and its beautifully-realised video accompaniment courtesy of award-winning New Zealand filmmaker Ayla Amano.

The video, a short film in and of itself, presents the well-worn fractures of a family through the strains of a father-son relationship, culminating in a cathartic release that ‘Familial’ totally comprehends, not least when Daithí taps into – and updates – a notably old sean-nós recording to both ground and elevate proceedings.

“There’s a culture in the west of Ireland where it’s accepted that you hide your feelings, a very male, old-Irish way of life,” says Daithí.

“Ayla was really taken with the huge amount of similarities between Irish culture and Pacific Island culture, particularly how men interact with one another. She thought it would be interesting to draw ties between two wildly different worlds and showcase the connections between them.”

As for the sean-nós aspect, well, that’s a classic Daithí thing – celebrating Ireland’s cherished musical heritage and reframing it in a fearless modern way – and yes, that can mean applying auto-tune to something that others would deem untouchable.

“It sounds like blasphemy – you’re taking this natural, very old thing and you’re using modern processes to grasp a different view of it – but ultimately it’s the epitome of what sampling is,” Daithí explains.

“That’s what makes sampling such an integral part of music today, not just in Ireland; the ability and the respect to reimagine something and present it within a brand new shining light.”

Not everything is as meticulously planned out. On occasion, life will intervene – as was the case when Daithí, David Tapley, and Neil Dexter convened in The Beekeepers towards the end of I’m Here Now’s writing process.

A sense of gaiety in the air; the work was flowing, but they weren’t there yet. Suddenly, Dexter received word that his wife had taken ill at work. The mood, understandably, changed. In the end, everyone was okay and Dexter returned in a matter of minutes, a whole new set of words in his brain.

The resulting song, ‘Keep It For the Next One’, acts as a chronicle of this time-stopping disturbance – the importance of our everything coming to the fore. For Daithí, it’s one of the most powerful moments he was a part of.

“It hit me – we are older dudes now,” he says. “We’re adults. We have our lives and the people in them that we love and feel we need to protect if something goes wrong.

“When he came back in, Neil was initially very quiet but when we started up the track again he started singing these words, off-the-cuff – for me, that’s what a true musician does; taking the things that are going on in your life and translating them into a form of therapy.

“Watching him find that and hearing him put it all out there in such an honest way – ‘Will you always love me, even when I’m not around?’ – it’s the kind of thing you dream about in a studio situation.”

So, how do you bring the curtain down on this record? You look to the next adventure, of course.

‘Moonlight’, a seven-minute instrumental rush of euphoria that looks to redefine the term ‘sky-scraping’, was born out of something very simple though nonetheless crushingly painful – the disappearance of live music.

A Daithí album is supposed to work on two fronts; transport the listener to another world, while also serving as a considerable advertisement to one day experience these songs in your very own one.

Locked out, frustrated and crestfallen at the lack of being able to stand on a stage in front of people and deliver his music to them, Daithí ensured that he would have an impeccable shimmering ace up his sleeve when he got back to work. ‘Moonlight’ is that new calling card for the live arena, and a hell of an album closer.

“It’s a shock to the system,” says Daithí.

“It’s supposed to set you off, to jump you out of the album. I love that we start with ‘Sunset’ and then, a little over 30 minutes later, you’ve reached ‘Moonlight’ and it’s almost like you’re arrived at the after-party following a great show.

“You’ve gone through all of the things that people think will be the highest points of the night – but it’s the moments afterwards, the people you meet when you’re not expecting to, that you remember.

“‘Moonlight’ isn’t a complicated piece of music – and that’s the point. Sometimes, the best moments in music are the simplest, sometimes music lets you know that.”

Everything said, and everything left unsaid.

credits

released September 9, 2022

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Daithi Galway, Ireland

Daithi is an electronic music producer obsessed by the culture of Ireland. The choice award nominee combines nature recordings, old Irish samples and analog synths to create a unique type of house music that’s soaked in Irish culture. A mainstay in the Irish gigging scene, his live show is an improvised performance, creating on the spot dance music using synths, drum machines and live fiddle. ... more

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