I guarantee that from now on every time you hear or see the phrase "One Way Traffic" you will think of this song. More importantly, if you find yourself in a relationship or situation where you aren't being listened to or are disregarded, then play this song and you will feel empowered. 

Solitary Daze, Whisky Trail and Tarot For Gamblers are also included on this eclectic E.P.

One Way Traffic

In A State of Nature is the third release since August from The Sundancer, working from a small cottage by the Cessnock Water in Ayrshire. One of the songs, Anarchy Is Love, is inspired by listening to the poet Benjamin Zephaniah talking on the radio one day.

Paul Brunton, writer and singer of the songs explains, “Benjamin spoke of anarchic tribes still surviving in parts of Africa who live together on the basis of helping each other out by working in harmony and exchanging what one tribe has plenty of for what another needs.”

I thought it was a great starting place for a song and a counterpoint to what we all assume anarchy to be.  The three songs on the E.P. are songs about relationships breaking down but ultimately, offering hope of healing. I was really inspired by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys solo work when writing and recording these songs…classic songwriting while working with great musicians.”

“Though it feels like I’ve only just begun, a legacy of The Sundancer songs is starting to emerge. A living, sonic artwork that intertwines across different releases. It straddles rock, pop and folk with experimental detours along the way. “

“Writing songs has always been the driving force for me, and I’m looking forward to whatever oppoortunities there may be in 2021 to play this new material to live audiences once again. “

“The E.P. gets its title from how I’ve been living over the last 9 months or so, and it has been an incredible experience. For me, the best way to deal with Lockdown is to embrace it as a time to be creative. I’m currently putting together a short film about this to be released in December alongside original The Sundancer music.”

In A State Of Nature

Dreams Turn Wild Final Master

This song has had a few different titles, but I liked the name Beulah. It could have been Bridget, Brid, or any number of names. 

Beulah is about a female entity, a muse, a goddess or lover and she brings Love. It's the second song on 21st Century Prophet$ and a good one to dance to. When I was writing the album I was also writing a story to go with it. 

                                                         New Caledonia and the Oracle



                                            One Revolution of the Sun by this Planet Ur-Th

                                                                     A Star Revolution

                                               The Carnival that dropped me off here

                                                    Has disappeared into yesterday

                                                             A caravan of crazies

                                                      Still following their own tracks

                                                        In search of Revelation


A tall, slender girl with curly auburn hair, pale skin and freckles greets me as I emerge from the frozen waste of a time capsule that has held me for so long.

“Are you... alright?”

“Yes...I'm fine.” I've used all of my strength to make it here, I can barely walk and I'm freezing. She stretches out her hand and I take it. It's warm and it melts away the chill, at least for a warm moment of touch that is grasped like fire from a burning twig. Without any explanation she leads me away from the slowly melting tundra from where I have come. I don't ask her how or why or when, I just let her lead me to safety...and warmth.

“What are you doing here...?” I say.

“I've always been here. You have to keep moving or you'll freeze to death. Come on, I have a small fire lit not far from here.”

There's only a light breeze but I'm shivering uncontrollably now. Teeth chattering, extremities all but numb. As she leads me along a pathway reaching up the steep cliff that stands over a beach that no longer exists I ask her, “How long have you been waiting here?”

“Oh...as long as...as long as I could. I had just about given up hope when I saw you. Probably my whole life, but then I've never been waiting. I'm not really a waiting kind of a girl. You must move quickly, we don't have much time.”

The landscape has changed, if I've been here before then there is a faint recognition but it wasn't in this lifetime. It's more like a primal memory lodged somewhere deep inside my brain. As she pulls me along her strides become longer and stronger and in the half light it seems that the young girl is growing from a child into a woman.

She whispers, “Did they try and take you?”

“Who?”

“The ones over there?” She looks back from where I have come.

“Yes.”

“Did they want you to become their King?”

“I think so...”

“And did you let them?”

“No, I escaped before they could do that. It wasn't really my sort of thing. Christ it's cold!”

She stops and looks closely at me with her bright blue eyes and says,“I'm lucky to have found you. Usually people like you don't make it this far. I knew you would make it though. Have you been destroyed and they just let you go?”

“No. I chose to leave.” She smiles, turns around and leads me further up the cliff. I see a green bench which strikes me as odd and vaguely municipal.

“We have a chance then. Come on, we're almost there.”

As we continue up the steep slope a vision is forming inside my head. A bowl, a huge impression in the ground, a crater where some great boulder once impacted before exploding into a million pieces. Now people gather there and it curves round in concentric circles where people can stand. A natural amphitheatre.

“Can you see it yet?”

“What?”

“The place we are going to...”

“Yeah, I see it.” We continue in silence as I wonder who she can be.

“You realise that the clock is ticking, don't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that things have been set in motion and there is only so much time left to complete this thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing that you were sent here to do.”

We are moving towards this naturally formed arena that predates mankind by millions of years. We were the first to gather here of all the creatures of the Earth. I see this place clearly now in my mind's eye. It is the first meeting place, a kind of natural temple where only the bravest of the brave will stand at its centre.

“Have you been there?” I ask her.

“No, but I know the way.” We clamber up over stones and ridges on what may or may not be a path. I feel that I can trust her. We are in a state of nature where nature has become invisible to the point of being ignored.

“I've heard so much about you,” she says, panting with the effort to climb the steep slope.

“Oh really? What've you heard?” She stops for a moment to catch her breath and then starts to giggle.

“What's happening to you now, how do you feel, what do you see?”

“Well, I do see something...but more than that I'm disappearing. I've become invisible, almost nothing.”

“Almost nothing?”

“Yeah.” I also feel anger welling up inside me. Anger at all the things that I've had to face. Maybe it has all been necessary, but nonetheless I feel resentment in my blood. The smell of smoke. We run at an angle up the hill, over and along its side. I think that once water washed upon a shore here, but now it has turned green. Where once there was a sea, a beach and a hill – now there is a grassy kind of play area.

“We're here. Quick, help me build the fire up.” It's not much, just a little place to shelter for a while. She blows the fire into life and I pick up some branches from a small pile she must've stacked here earlier. We start to build it up with little sticks and dried leaves.

She says,“I came up feral just like you must've done. There are few enough of us. I speak the truth just like you must do.” She stops again.

“Do you have a name?”

“A name?” I can feel the warmth of the fire pass through my skin into my frozen bones...life returning, thought patterns unfrazzelling, relief, feelings coming back to life again.

“Didn't think so. That proves it. I bet they once tried to give you a name, like when you were a baby.”

“Do you...do you not have a name?” Every part of me is crying out for and embracing this warmth, and it's all I need and all I want right now.

“I am Bryd.”

I see her in all her angel form, divine. Behind, beneath, inside and everywhere. I see her pure-self. Behind the cold, stone forms of human life there is something else that I’m starting to see. An ever-breathing reality, something that is harder than stone but filled with vivacious being and awareness.

Maybe it's just the heat from the fire, maybe I'm just thawing out.

I turn my head to look at where I’ve been. So many lives have passed before me until…this. Roads have been walked, lives have been lived, mistakes have been made and victories have been won. All of it has been necessary to reach this point.

It feels like I have played every part until there are no more parts left to play. What remains now but to occupy time? Time to be filled when all is done. Perhaps it is better to be absent. There is a greater strength in it. Leave all the machinations and manoeuvring to the fallible mortals of this world. Distance is a virtue. I am now a shadow.

She says,“I am going to give you a name...I am going to call you Dion. This is the daybreak, Dion. There can be no more false dawns for you. There will be some who seek you out for teaching and advice, this is something that you will need to grow accustomed to. You are going to need some rest, but before you can do that there is something that you must do. ”

She gets up and walks round the fire and hunkers down behind me, “Look up there.” In the early light I see a great white staff rising up from the shadows on the top of the hill, a thin line but significant and startling to behold.

“It has been placed there.”

“Who placed it here?”

“I don't know for sure. There are stories of course, but...” Part of me is suspicious, but this is completely overridden by a sense that it is here for me, and what's more, I'm ready to take it. If I am a superstitious fool then so be it. I'll take my chances. This fire has given me the strength to go on.

“Come on, let's go and get it.”

As we scamper up the hill through the mud and the wet grass my thoughts are flooded with signals, words, place names, music and whispers all struggling to be heard. The only way to make them clear is to reach for the staff, a multi-directional receiver and transmitter of sound and vision. As I quicken my step towards the staff Bryd says, “Are you not afraid?”

“I don't fear it, I need it.” Release, release, release...

I'm locked into a wonderful trance of new music and pure expression calmly reaching me drowning out all other signals. Masters dance on the edge of reality, joyful Masters who nonetheless bring with them warnings and deep enquiries,

“Who is he who goes to the heart of all we do without a care? Who is he who strides fearlessly towards all that is sacred?”

They are cheerfully intrigued, yet it is as if I am taking on a cherished identity that they have held secret for so long. Too long.

They seem to be saying, “You've gone too far, you're revealing too much of our secrets.” The self-preservation of priests. I'm blasting through their hierarchy of mystic secrets.

As we run up the hill hand in hand, that final muddy ascent where people grow sickly, I see the white pole stand 10 metres in the air, a flagpole without a flag. Instinctively I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out a folded flag. I pick out a corner and let it unfold behind me. This flagpole is first and foremost a living symbol. The one who flies his flag upon it commands the respect. Bryd stands away from me as if I may be struck by lightning at any moment.

I was a wild flowing force of nature, an energy knowing no bounds. Things have changed. As I focus my attention distant planets are coming to life. I can feel them. Through the redeployment of the energy of suns, chemical reactions are bringing new life. I feel it as the most powerful new force in the universe. I am surrounded by avatars being reeled in for a new cause. Great golden eagles allow their wings to touch. There are many who must be sealed into this moment without delay. I am washed over by 10,000 mystery visions and in each one I am saying the same thing,

“We are as One.”

Upon this hill I am receiving a vision of Golden Eagles. These Great Spirits are joining and testing me to the limits of my being,

“You are the colour red, passionate...now let your passion become your destiny.”

“You are the colour green, of nature...now let your nature become your destiny.”

“You are the colour purple, wise...now let your wisdom become your destiny.”

Golden Eagles. Golden Eagles. Golden Egos. Golden Egos.

And on and on they go until I say to them, “I am all of these colours and I am none. I am white light and now you shall come to feel my brightness.”

I am awakening to my full strength. This place can be the source of great world healing, or a chilly mountaintop of a hermit recluse. If I can't find release then it will be the latter.

“We must build a shelter, I can go no further until my work is done here.”

“Work? What work?”

“This will be the place where it happens.”

She smiles in the brightening light, reaches down and picks up a branch.

“Then we will need to gather more wood for the fire.”

“She faces to the East
Where the Pilgrims seek their Priests
Of the Shining Light, Shining Light.

The mountain magic hums
To the beat of the drums
And an old guitar, an old guitar

I place my hands on the ground below me and listen for what it has to say to me...

A defeated army runs from the battlefield pursued by their conquerers, men running in fear for their lives...bleeding, hysterical, gone insane. The truth of defeat leaves them isolated and exposed, scattered remnants of hope and faith in their mission and their Queen. Heavy breathing, heavy footsteps tumbling down the hillside. They throw away their swords and shields and helmets. Eager pursuers of their first kill chase after the defeated men. Those who are captured are either butchered or surrounded by inquisitors.

“What can you do, why should we spare your life? What is your trade? What use are you to us?”

The man, bent over, on his knees and covered in mud and blood says nothing.

“Kill him!” The great, heavy steel swords butcher his body amidst cries and shrieks from the gathered youths who will always remember him as their first kill. They only stop when all signs of recognisably human life are replaced by a bloody mess and their own vomit.

Bodies are left unburied in the massacre. I'm consciously stepping back from the bloodshed and stepping into something else...life is stripped back to primal images. In the aftermath of a battle some of the defeated army will escape to regroup and to rebuild. I sense this deeply from the cold ground that I touch with my hands. History is all around us, but it is also within us and our struggle to be here.

Strange creatures are being born into a new age and a new set of environmental conditions. Radical craftspeople having allowed themselves to become fat and rich and wasteful are only now returning to their senses. Visionaries will always be seen as odd to those who refuse to look beyond the ever-changing present. All the potentialities have been shown to us who have eyes to see it. From these a new future must be carved.

“What is this place? It is in the Earth but not of it. Am I a prisoner to these Inner Visions that prevent me from being part of the world? Does anything that I see hold any consequence beyond the bars of this Inner Life?”

Bryd takes my hand and says, “Now you must sleep and regain your energy.”





Beulah

One of the first songs that I wrote that I thought was any good. I recorded early demos but I could never get it the way I wanted and so it never appeared on albums. There is a great story of how I wrote it...but I cannot share here unfortunately

Big thanks go to Laurence Lamb on production and lead guitar and BV's and Paul Wood on strings...both knew what to play on this one.

Last Star

Planet Ur-Th

Surrender

Solitary Daze

WHisky Trail

Whisky Trail

Tarot For Gamblers

Anarchy Is Love, is inspired by listening to the poet Benjamin Zephaniah talking on the radio one day.

Paul Brunton, writer and singer of the songs explains, “Benjamin spoke of anarchic tribes still surviviing in parts of Africa who live together on the basis of helping each other out by working in harmony and exchanging what one tribe has plenty of for what another needs.”

I thought it was a great starting place for a song and a counterpoint to what we all assume anarchy to be.  The three songs on the E.P. are songs about relationships breaking down but ultimately, offering hope of healing. I was really inspired by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys solo work when writing and recording these songs…classic songwriting while working with great musicians.”

“Though it feels like I’ve only just begun, a legacy of The Sundancer songs is starting to emerge. A living, sonic artwork that intertwines across different releases. It straddles rock, pop and folk with experimental detours along the way. “

“Writing songs has always been the driving force for me, and I’m looking forward to whatever oppoortunities there may be in 2021 to play this new material to live audiences once again. “

Anarchy Is Love

You've Caught The Sun

Let Me In

This song references The Abbotsford Hotel in Ayr where I've enjoyed many a pint and holds many great memories for me. It's a song about bringing people together in a joyous and happy way and saying that you will always be there for them. 

During Lockdown a meeting place can be just about anywhere, but it's important to remember that some places will forever be associated with friends and family.

Paul Wood brings some tasteful violin to the track with Laurence Lamb on guitars and backing vocals.

One More Day

New E.P. In A State Of Nature is out now on all online formats, follow The Sundancer on iTunes, Spotify, Youtube Music, Amazon...in fact call up The Sundancer on your Alexa and you'll find plenty of great tunes. 

The Sundancer is the project of Paul Brunton, who is a rock singer/songwriter who also dabbles in folk and psychedelia. His latest EP, One Way Traffic was released on October 1 and is a good blend of classic rock elements while still modernizing the sound. Slick electric guitar solos and the vocals give it a vintage feel reminiscent of 70s/80s classic rock. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to One Way Traffic..." Beat Critiques

"One Way Traffic...the latest work of the alter ego of Kilmarnock-based musician Paul J Brunton, there are four tunes on the collection – as well as the title track, it includes ‘Solitary Daze’, ‘Whisky Trail’ and ‘Tarot For Gamblers’." Jock Rock

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