Dec Burke Experiences Life in Two Dimensions
The UK pandemic lockdown shaped a new solo album that may be his best yet.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. For this issue, I spoke with Irish melodic prog rocker Dec Burke about his excellent new release, Life in Two Dimensions.
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Declan “Dec” Burke burst into the progressive rock consciousness in the 00s with his band Darwin’s Radio. The band released two solid albums in the second half of that decade — Eyes of the World (2006) and Template for a New Generation (2009) — and played in front of a packed house at the 2007 Rites of Spring Festival in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. That band fell apart and Burke ended up working with producer/songwriter Jem Godfrey in the second iteration of the band Frost* — another group that had the prog rock world buzzing in the 00s.
Dec has also worked in recent years with Dutch progressive rockers Dilemma and a collaboration called AudioPlastik. He drifted out of Frost* and released his first solo album, Destroy All Monsters in 2010, followed by Paradigms and Storylines a year later. In 2016, he released his third solo effort, Book of Secrets, and just a few weeks ago, in late September, his fourth studio album dropped. I caught up with Burke to talk to him about Life in Two Dimensions.
Burke wrote all the songs for Life in Two Dimensions and produced the album himself, with mixing and mastering help from Robin Armstrong of Cosmograf, who also contributed some backing vocals. Dec did all of the acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, keyboards, and some drum programming, with ex-Pendragon member Scott Higham on drums and percussion, Guilherme “Ghost” Aguiar on cello on the song “This Time” and three different bass players. Aguiar plays bass on “Trapdoor,” while Kristoffer Gildenlöw (ex-Pain of Salvation) is the bassist on “Energy” and the title track, and Reinier Siemons (Dilemma) handles the rest of the bass playing.
“It’s really odd, actually, how that came to be,” Burke said of using multiple bassists. “(Aguiar) was going to do bass on the album, full stop, and because of commitments he couldn’t. But by then he’d done the cello on ‘This Time,’ and he’d done ‘Trapdoor,’ which I thought, ‘That’s just amazing, we’ve got to keep that!’ And then Reinier contacted me and said, ‘Dec, look, if you need someone to do the bass playing, I’m here.’ And then Kris was working on his album and he said, ‘I’d love to hear some of your demos from the new album,’ so I sent them off and he goes, ‘Oh, I can imagine a great bassline on this.’ And what he sent on some of the songs (was) exactly what I need.”
Additionally, Robin Z, who handled the simple (yet striking) album artwork, performs a beautiful piano intro on “Paper Fortress.”
Writing for the album took place during the lockdown in March of 2020 and Burke said he finished that part of the process in late July or early August of last year and then spent about a month putting all of the bits he’d written together. Then it was time for Burke to reach out to other musicians to play on it. By February 2021, Armstrong was mixing it and putting on the final touches, and then there was a lengthy wait for a good release window, which turned out to be September.
Life in Two Dimensions was inspired by a wide variety of influences that can be heard throughout the album, including Rush, Frost*, Dream Theater, Danish/Swedish progressive metal band Vola, and even pop acts such as Depeche Mode.
The title track kicks off the album and it was the last song written. It’s also the catchiest tune on the album. It’s got a killer riff in the chorus and an excellent solo. It’s my favorite track on an album full of good songs.
“I needed something was that ‘kapow!’ opening track,” Burke said.
He found it. The opener is a high-energy rock track with the most memorable hook on the album. But it almost didn’t arrive in time to be on the album.
“The title track came along right at the end,” Burke said. “So, I had all the music and I kind of felt the album needs another song. It didn’t feel complete. And the melody just came to me one morning, and I was putting the demo down, and as I’m doing scat vocals — la la la la, this is where the vocal will be — the line ‘life in two dimensions’ came out. And I just thought, ‘that’s kind of cool,’ because it kind of sums up how things are in the world right now, where we still need to get on and do what we need to do, but there’s this whole other horrible thing happening in the world. So, it kind of felt like that people were living in two different dimensions to everything. Thematically, that's kind of in other songs across the album.”
Burke’s take on progressive rock has a modern sound, with the edge of his guitar work softened by liberal use of keyboards and slick production. Clearly he’s taken some cues from Godfrey’s production techniques. He explores several topics across the album, including materialism, loss, hope, and nonstop advertising.
“Emergency” is a frenetic groove drenched in bass and keyboards. One of the album highlights is “Sister X” with a singalong chorus, crunchy guitar, and a killer solo. Burke put multiple solos in some of the songs on the album because playing live he doesn’t like to be stuck behind the microphone stand. The extra solos let him interact with the rest of the band and feed off the crowd’s energy.
“I didn’t think, like so many people, that the whole COVID thing would drag on for so long,” he said. “So, while I was writing this (album), I was imagining, ‘OK, well live how’s it going to be?’ I feel very tethered to the microphone, that I’m in one spot. I was trying to imagine when we go back out and play again, it would be great that I’m just not always there doing the ‘bad dad dance.’”
While much of the album is up tempo with soaring guitar solos in the middle, as well as outro solos, “This Time” is a gorgeous ballad where Burke’s vocals shine and the cello from Aguiar lends a haunting air and some lovely texture to the song.
“I would love to take credit for that,” Burke said about the decision to add cello to the song. “Because it’s an astounding bit of playing and, as a melody lover, it’s amazing. I sent (Aguiar) that (song) and he sent that (cello part) back, and I was just jaw on the floor. I thought that was just the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever heard. That’s him, one hundred percent.”
In direct contrast to “This Time,” the next song, “Sunlight,” has a bit of a grunge undercurrent with middle eastern melodies permeating the chorus and some of the guitar leads. That flavor in the song came from his work teaching guitar.
“With some students, they're very interested in theory and modal approaches to stuff. And I think at that point, I was teaching somebody the modes and he was quite interested in the Phrygian mode, which has got that sort of Eastern quality to it,” Burke said. “And we’d done a few lessons concentrating on that. And I think that kind of stuck in my head, and then, when the riff came up, I was hearing ‘that will fit with it.’ So, total accident.”
On “Love Steel” Burke doubles the guitar lead early on with a harmony guitar line. He doesn’t have a harmonizer, so he plays all of the guitar harmonies on the album separately.
“That sort of stuff is something that's long sat with me, you know, that two-guitar melody thing, and we did it for a time with Frost* as well, between myself and John (Mitchell),” he said. “So yeah, that's happened quite a bit on this album, I think, actually more than any of the albums I’ve done before.”
“Energy” is a short song that provides some atmospherics interspersed with Dec’s “wall of guitars” kind of sound, with lovely, simple texture provided via keyboard.
“Fly with Broken Wings” has ballad-esque verses set over a rhythm and blues sort of beat that was inspired by a song by Massive Attack. It’s got some simple piano chords and low, moody guitar. The vibe of the song provides some nice contrast to some of the more up-tempo rock numbers on the album. It’s one of the album’s standout moments and a personal song for Burke.
“At the tail end of 2019 I lost my dad,” Burke said. “So, it was a really horrible period. And then, of course, my mum was all of a sudden living by herself. And because of lockdown, I couldn't go and give her a hug. So that was on my mind too. ‘Fly with Broken Wings’ is about that.”
The two longest songs, and most overtly progressive tracks on the album, close the proceedings. “Paper Fortress” (clocking in at 7:42) begins with the minute-long, haunting piano intro from Robin Z. It evolves into a big, cinematic sound with Burke’s guitar cutting through it. There’s a heavy guitar riff section in the middle, soloing for days, and terrific vocals, and it feels like a much shorter song than its run time would suggest.
“Trapdoor” is the album’s epic at 9:48 in length and it’s easily the proggiest track, going through twists, turns, tempo changes, solos and different instrumentation taking center stage. There’s an especially beautiful and emotional slow section midway through.
Lyrically, Burke used a combination of life experience and a metaphorical everyman voice throughout the album.
“It was very much a combination of the two,” he said. “You know, it was an incredibly hard year for me, and who didn't have a hard year, you know? It’s a meld of story writing and how I was feeling.”
Life in Two Dimensions will appeal to fans of Burke’s previous solo work and Darwin’s Radio, and perhaps Frost* fans (especially from the Experiments in Mass Appeal era). For those not familiar with his back catalog, Burke brings heavy influences from the melodic music he grew up listening to, the Godfrey-like production values from Frost*, and some fabulous guitar playing.
To find out more about Dec Burke, you can follow him on Facebook. His album is available digitally from most outlets and on CD at Burning Shed and from his label, Gravity Dream Music.
Thank you again for your time today. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy Michael’s Record Collection as a newsletter, and I hope you’ll check out the podcast (available basically on all podcast platforms, including Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora, Goodpods, etc.) as well as the YouTube channel. Speaking of YouTube videos, here’s my entire discussion with Dec, including a deeper dive into what I discussed above, his early influences, the breakup of Darwin’s Radio, his time in Frost*, and much more.