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DEBUT Dirty Marmalade release Hills of Breifne album

Hills of Breifne could be the album title of an Irish country singer. Or maybe a mawkish ballad where an elderly emigrant pines for a departed sweetheart and a 20 acre drumlin littered farmstead he left behind.

“I only realised there is a Daniel O’Donnell song called ‘Blue Hills of Breffni’, which is quite funny,” muses Donny McAvenue, the guitar-wielding half of Dirty Marmalade alongside drummer Emil Kapusta.

In Dirty Marmalade’s hands ‘The Hills of Breifne’ is a restless, inventive, memorable debut album that’s due for released today (Friday).

Infused with irony, the pair roll their eyes at those who “idealise Ireland”.

The album brings together a selection of original music created since Marmalade’s inception in 2020. Donny says studio fees are €300-ish a day, and thus beyond their means.

Instead, they adopted a DIY approach to recording.

“An Air B&B,” begins Donny, “if you book it at winter time, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, it could be a grand for a week or two.”

Such B&Bs became ad hoc studios. Emil explains how they recorded some tracks in Leitrim, others in Donegal.

“We tried to book places surrounded by nature and trees because that’s what Donny and I like - we like being outside and surrounded by nature. That grounds us, makes us more creative.”

Inhabiting space

The band may have recorded the music themselves, but the result is far from amateurish.

“Really Emil is the genius behind that,” admires Donny of his bandmate’s talent for producing and mixing.

“I basically learned how to record music from scratch. I had no idea how to do it,” says Emil. “Through a lot of trial and error and re-recording songs multiple times we eventually got to where we got to with this album. When you listen to it, it sounds really raw and rough, but we wanted to show everybody: we made this all ourselves - it doesn’t have to be amazingly studio polished like all the other music out there today.”

The more Emil recorded and produced, the more he sensed the presence of the location in the music. As such the pair turned their financial shortcomings into a creative advantage.

“The music then embodies that place,” he suggests. “So the room you’re recording in, that room ends up being in the music. There’s something really special about that.

“We recorded vocals in Donny’s granny’s house in Belturbet a few times. And I think it was on ‘Markus’ we recorded the vocals in Donny’s mam’s closet because we thought that embodying the places we live in would be great to have on the album. Some of the drums were recorded in my bedroom, and in the kitchen as well.”

Emil adds: “It is not something anybody would think about, but in my opinion that’s something that really makes the music special, and original in a sense. It gives it its own timbre.”

Each are asked separately for their favourite tracks- both opt for Król Markus II- a song that ends with a manic, technically amazing guitar solo by Donny.

“I definitely want to go in the direction of that song,” regards Emil. “That song is mostly about friendship. I’m really sentimental in that sort of way, I really value the friendship that I share with Donny, so for me that’s the kind of song that means a lot.”

Emil also suspects it sounds the best of all the tracks because it’s one of the last recorded.

“On this journey I’ve learned so much about making music that the more I’ve learned the more I wanted to re-record other songs. But then we couldn’t just go back and rerecord the whole album again.

“As a creative artist you have to know when the product is finished. You know you can make better music.”

Donny has been working tirelessly to spread the Marmalade gospel wherever he can.

The cancellation of the Soft Launch tour, for which they were booked to support hasn’t helped. Donny’s ambitions remain undimmed however.

“We would love to create a bit of a cult following across Ireland, do a tonne of gigs and then sell out a venue in Dublin - for now that would be a great start and would get us from where we are to the next level,” he says.