Talos
I’m an architect. But it’s not my profession. I live making music. At times, I design things… and it’s a welcome release. But music is what I do.”
Talos is Eoin French. A musician from Cork, Ireland, and also an architect. But first and foremost, a musician. That’s why he’s surrendered certain things. That’s what drove him to an attic in Dublin; further afield to Iceland and finally, to splendid semi-isolation in the expanse of West Cork. The end result: a private world that becomes public, a debut album called ‘Wild Alee’.
He arrived, not quite fully formed, in December 2014 with the release of his dreamy debut, ‘Tethered Bones’ - a catchy, hook-y and yet not quite right electronic pop song that quickly zipped to a million or so plays, and more importantly, became something of a signpost. To what, to where, though, was not exactly clear.
After ‘Tethered Bones’, French threw himself into writing and into playing live. But something was not. quite. right. It took time, almost nine months in fact, to harness ‘In Time’, a gorgeous, woozy follow-up and another glimpse into this ‘Talos’ world. And with that release, a change - of mindset, of process, of band, of location, of people, of almost everything really.
“Way out amongst the madness, I feel free…”
French acknowledges the fact. “With the album, for the last year of it anyway, I pretty much existed as nomad. I travelled a lot and never really had a completely set stable home. I think in a way this helped. This idea of physical instability, movement and restlessness influenced the end result greatly; its tone, its development as an album and its imagery.”
This challenging process - a letting go; a sort of creative unblocking via isolation and air miles - began to work. Methods learned in one discipline proved vital in another. “I think studying architecture has given me the ability to throw something out. If something doesn’t work you try something else without hesitation. It has also given me patience, which I think is missing in many things today.
“I think the main influence it has had on me is on how I interact with music. I’d like to think that what I make is visual in a way, that it evokes space or the emotion of a certain setting anyway be it a water’s edge, or a clearing in a wood, or a cliff edge, or a cityscape… I’m an architect. But it’s not my profession. I live making music. At times, I design things… and it’s a welcome release. But music is what I do.”
Slowly, things began to change. Bonds were made, and kept. Shows were played, and enjoyed. Songs were written. ‘Your Love Is An Island’. The ‘O Sanctum’ EP. Festivals. Sold-out signs. Playlists. Imagine a world… not quite there, but getting there.
“In this odyssey, it’s hard to leave…”
Into 2016, gathering up what was learned and made in Iceland and Dublin out to West Cork. The centre of the new world. To record in a cottage with a view - alongside the album’s co-producer Ross Dowling - and also to a recently renewed Connolly’s of Leap, to build a band. The storied old space became something of a HQ, a capital for Talos. Here, the band expanded out to a six-piece: old friends, three brothers. It was, says French, something of a “lightbulb moment”. “It gave me a different outlook on what writing and making music meant. The idea that at the end of this (for the most part) isolated endeavour, is a shared experience.
“I think I’m very lucky to have these people around me. They’re as invested in this as I am, which is quite a rare thing to find. But this comes across in the live show I think, which is as much theirs as it is mine. I like being amongst it, the entire live sound moving en masse and me in the middle of the flow.”
“I hear the voices, coming closer…”
Slowly, surely, ‘Wild Alee’ was constructed from the foundations up. “I always start with the track,” French says. “The track is king! The lyrics have to fit with the music and melody, because this is the emotive core.” The words, though, must carry an equal weight? “I write lyrics as they come to me. I spend the longest time on them as they are the last element to be finished.
“In Ireland, I believe we’re blessed with the most luscious and colourful history in literature, and I get a lot from that. Beckett has been the biggest influence. This idea of the limitless, or being encased in a dreamlike/in-between state was quite inspiring. I also got a lot from the visuals he evoked, and in turn, why I named one of the songs after his play, Endgame. As well I think the ramblings and randomness of some of his passages played a part in the lyrical content.”
The ‘Alee’, in the album’s title, refers to the side of a ship that is sheltered from the wind. “I fell in love with the word,” says French. “The coexistence of both peace and tumult, resonated with what I feel a life in music is.” There’s a duality at play in the lyrics too - hidden behind these beautiful words is a bitingly personal record.
“Oh devil, hide amongst the leaves…”
“I think it’s a naked reflection of myself. I’m not hiding anything here. People can take it or leave it, but this highlights me starkly, with every blemish and bad mark.” And despite the nomadic nature of the recording, French acknowledges ‘Wild Alee’ is a “record rooted in place”, one which “evokes a sort of genius loci of the spaces” he wrote in.
“It’s a selfish record too - the time spent making it anyway, I sacrificed a lot, turned away from a set career path and maybe hurt people along the way. But now looking back it makes sense to have done so, because all of that got me here.”
“Here” are the 13 songs that make up ‘Wild Alee’. Some of the previous singles are here, alongside the new music - first single ‘Odyssey’; the breezy, evocative ‘Contra’; the expansive, immediate ‘This Is Us Colliding’. And at the album’s conclusion, again, signposts - the harsher electronics of ‘Wetlands’ and the defiantly big song, ‘Voices’, pointing the way to a future. Sonically, French and Dowling’s production - assisted, in spirit, by the time spent with friends in that room in Connolly’s - seals you into this Talos world: personal and private; comforting and curious; strange and familiar; sheltered in a storm.
‘Wild Alee’ is released on Feel Good Lost on April 21 2017.
