As the ‘Enemie’ album is written and recorded, I thought it would be valuable to include the reason and intention behind the song titles and lyrics, so this post is part update, part confession and part contrition.

The seal is broken! I finished recording the music to the first song from ‘Enemie’ this week. The song is called ‘What I Am’. I haven’t recorded the vocal parts to it yet – I’ll be doing all of the vocals at the same time towards the end of the album production. I’m REALLY happy with it. It’s such a relief to finally get the album underway.

The song is an introspective look at changes that I’ve gone through over the past few years. After the 10 month tour of the US in 2011, I needed a break from touring and Lluther, so my wife and I moved to the side of a mountain in Connemara (West of Ireland). It’s beautiful, but quite remote. Being completely removed from Lluther and my ‘normal’ life forced me to rethink everything I thought I was.

Up until that time, I’d spent every minute of every day for 10 years working firstly on Skindive and then Lluther. Along the way I hurt some people that I cared for (band mates, friends, managers, etc, etc). It wasn’t intentional, I wouldn’t intentionally try to hurt anyone, but I was so wrapped up in what I was doing, I just didn’t think. So I had a lot of personal regrets.

Then there was the dreaded ‘self image’. After removing myself from Lluther and touring, I suddenly found myself questioning my own identity. Up until that point, I was that Skindive/Lluther guy. I made music. I played music, I made more music, repeat… That was it. Without that, I wasn’t quite sure who I was. If I’m being honest, there was a fair bit of ego and bullshit to let go of, but one Irish winter locked away in a cottage on the side of a mountain tends to erase that quite quickly!

I was still creating music up until the end of 2015. I worked on about 50 movie trailer cues. This was a wonderful, but humbling experience. It was really good for me in terms of upping my production skills and looking at music in a different way, but it was also really bad for me. Music became a day job for me and frankly, it killed the joy of music for me. I replaced the creative high that I got from music by diving into Visual media, Cinematography and Film. This, as it turns out gave me some very useful skills that I can now adapt to the new Lluther material, but that’s a blog post for later in the year.

So the lyrical background is me dealing with a lot of ghosts of albums past, as well as personal regrets and a reassessment of ‘What I Am’.

Next up on the list is ‘As The World Burns’. I’ve have had this in my head for 4 years. I’ve decided to tackle this one next because it’s a monster, and it’s probably best that I deal with it now rather than later. It’ll be the first time that a Lluther song gets full orchestration, so it’s a big job. I’ll let you know how It goes!

G.