CPI Archive 2009: You can see a surprising amount when the sun goes down. As they release their long-awaited debut album, Andrew Hamilton chats to Ennistymon man Fiachra O’Doherty - one fifth of Breakdown Rambler.
APOCALYPSE Now took more than a year and a half to shoot. In those 18 ill-fated jungle months, both cast and crew were tortured endlessly by tropical storms, as Martin Sheen suffered a heart-attack and Marlon Brando discovered two extra personalities and about four extra stone. All told, it was a fairly difficult production. More than five years in gestation, Witness by Moonlight is the debut album from folk-rocksters Breakdown Rambler. Five years is a long time to do anything, but a half-decade pouring over the finer details of an hour of music is an eternity. And like Apocalypse Now, the completion of this album has freed Breakdown Rambler to re- open their collective eyes, and look again on a world reborn. “Yeah, it’s an amazing feeling to finally have it. The night we launched the album, I think everyone just breathed a sigh of relief. We had just collected the CD the morning before the show so it was touch and go for a while. But we got it and we ended up selling maybe 100 copies that night. It was amazing to actually have it there in your hand, physically, and to be able to launch it on the same day,” says Fiachra.
