Back to the future for Breifne’s latest album
THE Beatles did it. Led Zeppelin did it. All the greats digitally remastered an earlier album and re-released it in later years, and now a Drogheda musician has followed in their footsteps!
Singer-songwriter and composer Breifne Holohan has just revisited an album he recorded 15 years ago, released in the weeks before his Leaving Certificate, and he says he has made vast improvements from his original offering
“It was June 2006 and I was getting ready to sit my Leaving Cert but more importantly for me, I had just released my first album ‘Entitled Untitled’,” recalls Breifne, son of renowned composer Michael.
“On a sweltering night under the lights at the now legendary Bagfull of Songs, a very casual and unannounced launch of the album took place. Having recorded, mixed, mastered, designed, printed and packaged the cds myself, I headed down to Sarsfield’s pub in Drogheda equipped with guitar, sports bag containing cd jewel cases and sharpie pen, overly optimistic about obligatory autograph signing. It was a fantastic night. I was beaming afterwards… and the lifespan of the album lasted as long as the gig!”
Of course, anyone who has followed Breifne’s glittering career will know he has gone on to excel in his chosen field.
A graduate of Dundalk Institute of Technology with a B.A. in Applied Music (2010), as both a composer and musician he has won a number of awards including the Bill Whelan International Music Bursary for Young Composers (2004).
“I have recorded and released many albums over the years, but became more and more estranged and dissatisfied with my first album - I wasn’t happy with the recordings, the album design was all over the place, and as for my PR abilities, well they haven’t changed much,” he says with a laugh. “However, the music I still felt strongly about. I played a few gigs early in 2020 and started performing tracks from the album again. This rejuvenated my interest in it and so I began a full audio restoration and remastering of the music. I also rebranded it with the accompanying image: a picture of a wide-eyed, Jimi Hendrix-obsessed me complete with complimentary psychedelic graffiti art in the background. This pretty much sums up my music, my influences and me from that time”.
The result is a crystal-clear collection of eclectic music, veering between the various styles Breifne continued to perfect, and offering an enjoyable jaunt on an acoustic journey.
“When I think back to what we used to record that album – I worked with Donal McConnon, who is a renowned Galway musician, but at the time was a classmate – and we did it all ourselves on an eight-track machine,” he explains.
“When the lockdown happened, I knew it was the ideal time to polish up the album and there really is comparison now between the two.”
What has remained is the title and cover photo, taken by Marc O’Connor in front of some local street art.
“He reminded me that it was taken exactly 15 years to the day of the re-release date, which I will take as fate,” he says with a laugh. “I have been working on some new material during lockdown, as I am a bit disenchanted with live-streaming, and I look forward to getting back to playing live as soon as a I can.”
‘Entitled Untitled’ is now available to download on Bandcamp for €10 and his vast body of work can be found on his website www.breifneholohan.ie.