Ólafur Arnalds on making a record with Talos before his passing

The composer and producer, and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds met the Cork singer-songwriter Eoin French aka Talos after he ran a marathon in Iceland. A friendship was struck, that quickly developed into a musical partnership, as seen at Sounds From A Safe Harbour in Cork in 2023, when the festival director Mary Hickson put the pair together for a collaboration. Now six months after Eoin's death, Arnalds and French's family, friends and collaborators have been celebrating the artist's creativity and legacy with the stunning song they wrote together 'We Didn't Know We Were Ready'. The song was performed on The Tommy Tiernan show on RTÉ in January under Arnalds' Opia community banner with vocals from Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds, JFDR, The Staves, Sandrayati Fay, Dermot Kennedy, Laoise Leahy, Memorial, Christof Van Der Ven and most poignantly of all, Eoin’s wife Steph French. In our chat with Ólafur today, he recounts meeting Eoin, their creative time spent together and the instructions he received from Eoin before he died to finish the record they made together, which will be released later this year.

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