French worked with his longtime production partner Ross Dowling (James Vincent McMorrow, Bell X1) on most of the instrumental load on the album. A good share of Far Our Dust, however, was collaborations with the likes of Doug Schadt (Maggie Rogers, Wet), Valgeir Sigurðsson (Sigur Ros, Feist) and Damian Taylor (Bjork, Arcade Fire). While subtle stamps of these multiple artists might come through on the album Far Our Dust is all Talos. In anticipation of this upcoming show in Toronto, we wanted to ask Eoin a few questions…

Quip: Hello Eoin, how are the first few tour shows? 

Eoin French: They’ve been great so far. It’s great to get to finally play some of the new music live!

Q: That’s great to hear! Let’s go back a little though, when did you know you wanted to be a musician?

EF: I think I’ve always kind of loved music really. I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where listening to music was an everyday thing… but I think it was seeing a band called Wild Beasts live when I was in my early 20’s that really made me explore it in a focused way.

Q: How did Talos come about as a project?

EF: I finished up with a band I was in and had a producer in Cork, Ian Ring that wanted to work with me and from there it grew I suppose really.

Q: How very organic! Far Out Dust has been written all over the world, how did that process work?

EF: I suppose it was about working really intensely in these places for shortish periods of time and then bringing what was made back to my studio in Cork and recasting it all into something that felt like an entire, concise piece of music. It was really rewarding in the end because the different spaces made me make in very different ways and forced me to think about what I was making in a different way also.

Q: How long did it take to complete the record?

EF: I started it when I finished the last one so 2 years on and off, I released the Then There Was War EP in between also, but the last 8 months of the process were relentlessly intense.

Q: Wild Alee was a very personal album, is Far Out Dust drawing on your emotions and personal experiences as well?

EF: Ya, everything I make draws on personal experience I think it’s the only thing we can do. If not then it’s not really worthwhile and I think it’s very hard for others to latch onto what you are doing unless you really mean it.

Q: Very true! What’s behind the album name, Far Out Dust?

EF: A number of things. I was reading into the idea of the triptych in art when I started making the album and wanted the name to be one. It’s also kind of cyclical. There is a beginning a middle and end in the title. I also kind of wanted it to reflect a carelessness in a way, and talk into the idea of ephemerality and that things simply pass.

Q: That’s very deep. What can we expect from the live show?

EF: Our live show is really full on ranging from having between a four and six piece. I consciously want it to feel very different from the record in that it’s a communal end to a solitary process.

See Talos live during one of these upcoming tour dates:

12/21 Dolan’s Warehouse, Limerick
3/01- Metro, Chicago #
3/02- Danforth Music Hall, Toronto #
3/03- Corona Theatre, Montreal #
3/05- Royale, Boston #
3/07- Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn #
3/09- Union Transfer, Philadelphia #
3/10- Lincoln Theatre, Washington, DC #

# with Aurora

The post A few quick questions with Eoin French from Talos appeared first on Quip Magazine.

by Arielle Friedman

The Talos of Far Out Dust seems to do battle, dance, and converse with the Talos of Wild Alee. French sings in two voices, one a trembling and mournful falsetto, embodying the style of the band’s debut, and one a deeper and more wrenching tenor, rough with recrimination and regret. No song showcases this duality better than, “The Light is Upon Us,” which pounds with an epic orchestral sound as the accompanying video pans on French dwarfed by sweeping desert landscapes and empty skies. This is no longer the young man from Cork lamenting the smallness of his world; over the past two years, French has worked in New York, LA, Dublin, London and Reykjavik. If Wild Alee yearned for freedom, Far Out Dust—with French singing “We are echoes way out here”—comments on the price of that freedom.

And yet, the sound and video for “The Light is Upon Us,” juxtaposes these vast landscapes with an almost claustrophobic intimacy, as rocks, footprints, and geometric shapes made alien by an eerie red light pulse across the screen while French sings in a soft falsetto that hearkens back to the emotions of Wild Alee. French has said of the song, “the idea of the light… it’s not a positive light. It’s one that erases things. It’s blinding. Sometimes things have to be destroyed for something else to be created. An acceptance that things are supposed to die at some point. Everything has an end.” And yet, whatever it is that’s struggling to die or be killed by the light of this song survives and diffuses through the rest of the album, through the swelling recriminations of “To Each His Own,” the pulsing, orchestral storytelling of “The Flood,” and the disconnected sensuality of “2AM.” By the time French reaches “Far Out Dust,” the album’s titular and final song, the lament has taken over, echoing through the soundscapes that for all their scope twist around the tragedy of the past.

No review of Far Out Dust would be complete without a discussion of the sure-to-be controversial “See Me.” “See Me” succeeds at conveying that coveted universality, where the lyrics seem capable of wrapping around whatever haunts you. And yet the song has a chillingly specific origin: It was inspired in part by Ed Kemper, an American serial killer. French describes “See Me” as “a sort of prequel to [Kemper’s] life. We are confronted with innocence and humanity, and a character that finds himself in a world where he is an outsider seeking his place in it.” The video features a boy resembling a young Kemper, at turns frolicking with and cowering from his mercurial mother. In lyrics rich with metaphor, the singer begs his lone light, “Won’t you teach me how to see/The way you see me” with increasing hopelessness, as his deepest self becomes aligned with darkness and silence. The pounding, echoing synthesizers buoy French’s soaring voice, carving out the frozen landscape so clearly that you can almost see the snowlit pine trees and smell the smoke of dangerous fires. The real Kemper would grow up to murder at least ten people, including, finally, his mother.

We know that the love at the center of this song will fail, and it will fail terribly. Talos explores the question: Was that love always doomed, or could things have been different, if everyone involved had risen to the challenge in another way?

Far Out Dust succeeds at both developing the themes of Talos’ debut, and at introducing new elements, weaving both together into a beautiful and powerful sophomore album. Far Out Dust drops on February 8th, and you can pre-order copies on Talos’ website.

The post Talos travels far from its origins, but keeps them close in “Far Out Dust”” appeared first on Quip Magazine.