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COVER STORY: ‘O’Brother, come be my keeper’: How community completed the collaboration between @OlafurArnalds and the late Talos ⚫️
“This is not an album about death” - Ólafur Arnalds makes that clear. In his studio in Iceland, after playing 'A Dawning' from start to finish, he sat down with Far Out for a conversation about the moving collaboration between himself and Talos, the late Irish artist.
But this story is more than a story about an album. After beginning the collaboration as their friendship was beginning too, the process of making A Dawning tracked “a lifetime of a friendship”. It launched the two artists into a connection on a whole new level of vulnerability and, as Arnalds was left to finish the work after Talos’ passing, it kept their connection growing.
It kept many connections growing as the album also acting as a beautiful ribbon holding Talos’ wider community together. Arnalds’ work on it was a way of keeping everyone close, not only bringing them into the studio but using the music as a way to soothe and comfort the trickiness that often comes with communicating grief. A Dawning gave them a language to keep talking about Talos, and it was one that he had written for them.
In a staggeringly open and moving conversation about friendship, loss, collaboration and the very core of what music is for and what role is should play in community, Ólafur Arnalds didn’t just let us into the process of the album, but truly let us into his heart for an interview that has stayed with writer, Lucy Harbron, ever since.
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