Ólafur Arnalds details forthcoming collaborative album with late musician Talos

The new track, "Signs" follows the project’s first single, "We Didn’t Know We Were Ready", featuring Niamh Regan, Ye Vagabonds and a choir of friends. “At its core, ‘Signs’ feels like a coming together, a curious meeting of creative souls. It’s filled with carefree experimentation and exploration. ‘Signs’ was the first song that Eoin and I wrote together,” Arnalds explains.

"It was only shortly after we became friends and we were rather decisively paired together by our friend Mary Hickson at her music residency in Cork – she seemed very sure that we would get along musically. She was right, of course. It was the start of an incredible, inspiring, heartbreaking but heartfelt journey that took us places we could never have imagined in our wildest dreams. So it feels appropriate that it comes out as we announce this album that became the fruit of that journey.”

The album process began in 2023, when French and Arnalds first started working together at Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival in Cork, when they had both been invited to take part in a residency at the event. They quickly formed a close bond, working in Arnalds’ Reykjavík studio and later in French’s home in West Cork. When French fell seriously ill during a trip to Iceland, the project deepened in meaning and urgency. Arnalds ultimately finished the album after French’s death in August 2024 , guided by the music they created together and the memory of their time shared.

“We made this album together,” Arnalds says. “Even after, while I was there working on some arrangements, I never felt like I was truly alone. Near the end, where we were saying how grateful we were to have met each other, he told me, ‘You know, I’m still gonna be there.’”

Tracklist:

1. Shared Time
2. Signs
3. Bedrock feat. Sandrayati
4. west cork, 12 feb
5. Borrowed Time feat. Alexi Murdoch
6. A Dawning
7. for Steph
8. We Didn’t Know We Were Ready feat. Niamh Regan and Ye Vagabonds