“I felt like I was unearthing hidden treasure. I was dreaming of finding things in the attic. I call it Old Gods in honor of this, that elusive heart of the creative process known as intuition. Old Gods is a tribute to the unconscious forces that shape us, that manifest mysteriously as inspiration, as if with a will of their own. The Old Gods name underlines that duality, tied to both nature and the numinous.

I think Vol. 2 is where the wheels come off. Vol. 1 has an air of nostalgia. It’s a bit insulated, yearning for an imagined past, whereas, I think, Vol. 2 enters headlong into the chaos of the modern world. The Old Gods are still there, but in neon.”

Old Gods began as a lockdown-prompted trawl through the archives by Derry, Northern Ireland based songwriter, classically-trained composer and jazz-grounded multi-instrumentalist Neil Burns, aka Comrade Hat, but quickly took on a life of its own. The result is a two-volume compilation of new and old, the sum of years of fearless exploration around the fringes of various genres but unified by its belief in intuition and the creative process, personified by the titular old gods. Indeed, during the process of making the album they seemed to be pulling the music in unexpected directions.

Where the NI Music Prize-long listed Vol. 1 album centres around ballads that pivot between confessional and enigmatic, Vol. 2 leans into his most experimental impulses, embracing a swirling mix of psychedelia, cosmic funk, folk, surrealist Americana, electro pop, bossa, jazz, and everything in-between, all at once, in what might well be Comrade Hat’s most ambitious statement to date. Harmony and form are stretched to breaking point, probing the nether regions of what constitutes pop music, while there are moments of gentle reflection and buoyancy too.

Tackling everything from pandemic-induced isolation, existential and environmental anxieties, to metaphysical speculation, to daydreams of Uruguay and musings on the state of Northern Ireland’s railways, Old Gods, Vol. 2 is painted on a widescreen canvas which gives the absurd an equal footing with the profound. In Vol. 2, the underlying myths are 'threadbare', as if struggling to hang on in uncertain times.

Indeed, Comrade Hat may have been confined to bedroom producer mode for this album but was not limited by it - a range of collaborators, including the Inishowen Gospel Choir, (of which he is joint-musical director), captivating Irish singer/songwriter Neptune M. (neptunem.bandcamp.com) and a revolving door of some of the best instrumentalists in the North West of Ireland and beyond knit together a rich sonic tapestry under Burns' watchful eye - abundantly evident in the singles From Lost To The River and Total Eclipse Of The Self.