I’m so excited to finally announce the release date of my debut album

I’m so excited to finally announce the release date of my debut album

1 June 2022

PORTAFERRY singer/songwriter Ryan McMullan’s eagerly anticipated debut album will be launched at the end of August.

Entitled Redesign, the album launch takes place 24 hours before he headlines Belfast’s Custom House Square on August 27, with his new single Real Love released last week.

As he prepares for a busy period, Ryan has admitted that he struggled with low mood early last year when the Covid pandemic forced him into ‘confinement’ and off the road.

The rising star, who’s been lauded by Northern Ireland musicians Foy Vance and Gary Lightbody, said not being able to perform or tour for many months became a “burden” and that “things got pretty dark” as the music industry took a huge hit.

He had been planning to release his debut album but the outbreak of Covid put the brakes on its launch. However, the period off gave him more time to work on the new album.

To coincide with the long-awaited release of Redesign, McMullan — currently gigging across Europe — will take to the road again in a huge headline tour which kicks off at Custom House Square before he tours the UK and Ireland, the  US and Canada. Early next year the tour will take him back to Europe and then onto Australia.

The Portaferry man told the Belfast Telegraph that he can’t wait to unveil his new material from Redesign to his fans.

“I’m so excited to finally announce the release date of my debut album,” he said.

“After what has felt like a decade of promises, it finally gets its time and I’m very happy that we’ve got here at last.”

Describing the hiatus from gigging as “surreal”, Ryan spoke about the dark times when he was confined to his home, but the benefits that followed.

“Initially, I thought it was going to be a wee three-month holiday, then it became six months and that was enough, but then it got pushed back for another year,” he said.

“That’s when things got really low for me, around January 2021. It just became a real burden. I felt confined creatively. I was a prisoner in my house, a lovely house with my family there too, but still, it was confinement and I felt stuck there.

“Things got pretty dark and there are a few songs on the album that let people into that. It was definitely a tough spell but ultimately, and I was quite surprised at this, there were as many pros as there were cons. In a way life became better generally, I got to make the album and redesign my future.”

Ryan has already released one single, Static, from the soon-to-be-launched debut album, with Real Love out last week. 

The young singer duets with Beoga’s Niamh Dunne on the track which she also co-wrote. Recorded in Bannview Studios, Portglenone, it’s the first of two songs written with members of Beoga that made it on to the record.

The process of recording the album was shown in the documentary Debut, directed by award-winning filmmaker Brendan J Byrne and shown last year at Galway Film Fleadh and on the BBC. The film centres around a four-day recording and listening session in Cruit Island, Co Donegal at the end of 2019, where Ryan and his team assessed all the songs competing for a place on the album.

Among the team featured in the documentary was friend and mentor Foy Vance and it was through the Guiding Light singer that McMullan found himself appearing in a recent episode of Derry Girls. Vance made a cameo as the lead singer of a band at a school reunion disco, attended by Ma Mary and Aunt Sarah while McMullan popped up as the band’s pianist.