James Irwin: Ólafur Arnalds & Talos - A Dawning

A Dawning is a collaborative album from Icelandic composer and producer Ólafur Arnalds, and the late Irish singer-songwriter Talos. 

The album blends the two musician's iconic styles to take listeners on a journey of raw emotion and evasive hope, and serves as a reminder of the legacy left by Talos. 

All the artwork was made by Talos himself. 

James Irwin joined Jack Tame to review the album. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
It be.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Col Loco. Well, I'm pond the.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Fuse like this role is irn.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Don't let it le, don't ruin us here, fuse.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Like this war is irn. Waken of defainer for.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Someone you say they get us now.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Preaching a defining loaded lest someone the faith they get
us now? All right?

Speaker 4 (00:51):
This is interesting, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Song's called Adorning as an just as the day is
dawning a dawning. The album is also called Adorning. It's
by Oliver Arnold's and Hell and James Irwin has been listening.
Good morning, James.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Kidda Jack, Oh yeah, I just gives me goosebumps. This
particularly that song.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And today I'm gonna take our audience in a sort
of a journey into ambient and neo classical electronic music.
And before you raise another my brown Yeah, don't worry.
There's no sentence candles here, Jack. We're not going to
We're not gonna get out the Himalayan salt lamps and
no Lulu lemons are required. This is not day spa music.
It's soul music, but not the James Brown kind. It's

(01:39):
the kind of music that makes your soul, you know, warm,
It sneaks up on you when the world's really quiet,
and I was kind of thinking, I was thinking this morning,
how do I actually introduce our audience to this this
genre of music? How do I describe it? And it's
probably a little bit like how I heard you before
talking about the taj Mahal early in the morning. When
I was laying in bed this morning, awake, just sort

(01:59):
of around six am, the world outside is just starting
to stir the light, and the light started sort of
creeping through the cracks and the curtain, and it slowly
turns your room to gold, and everything's kind of felt
really cozy, And to me, that's exactly what this album
Adawning sounds like. Now. It's a collaboration between Olifer and
Alves and Talos, and Olifer is an Icelandic composer who's

(02:22):
mastered the art of Melancholy's done a lot of incredible music,
and Taralos not as so well known. He was an
Irish singer. He's an Irish singer whose voice feels like
it's echoing off as sort of like a distant cliff
as we just heard. Now this album was already appearing
on early album of the year's lists. I know that,
you know that's subjective. It carries a lot of atmosphere

(02:45):
with it. It carries memory, but this album also carries
great loss and grief, so I'm going to tell you
about that shortly. Musically, there's sort of delicate, delicate piano throughout.
It's really hesitant piano playing. It kind of tiptoes around
Talos's layered, ghostly vocals, and there's really sweet, beautiful electronic texture.

(03:06):
But it's subtle. It's not like it's not banging at
the club. It's really light, you know, subtle pulses and swells.
Nothing is really overwhelming. It's kind of this album's all
about restraint, but there's a whole lot of space in it.
So the first time I heard it, actually I was
I was walking up behind Wellington Zoo just after sunrise,
and I had my black labrador trotting beside me, and

(03:26):
I'm pretty sure there was a pea whacker pea wocka
waka dancing alongside with us, and the streets were super quiet,
you know that sort of five forty five am. The
year had that early spring chill, and this music it
didn't kind of didn't grab me for my attention, just
kind of settled in in the background, wrapping around me,
and it kind of waits. It was kind of like
it was waiting for me to realize the magnitude of it.

(03:48):
So Talos known as Owen French, he actually passed away
in twenty twenty four before the album was even finished.
So it's really hard to talk about this album Dawning
without feeling the weight of that. You can hear it
all in the spaces between the notes a lot. Like
I said last week with Tweety, this piano pet that
you can hear creaking and and things groaning in the room,

(04:10):
and I always adore that kind of sound in the background.
There's there's quite eight to this album, something that's kind
of slipping out of your reach. Now. These two met
during a residency and Cork so rest assured. I imagine
there was a lot of Guinnesses in their first meeting
and they decided to make music together. And when Owen
became seriously ill, they both knew that this was gonna
be their first and last collaboration. So Adorning is going

(04:33):
to be his final work. It's gonna be his closing
message to the world, and that kind of got me thinking,
I don't know if you know this book, Eric Winer's book,
The Geography of Genius, you know when when you get
really talented people come together and the creative dial completely
shifts seismically, you know, like bringing out the very best
of each other. So you know, if I was throwing

(04:55):
out names, you know, maybe Elton John and Bernie Torpen,
definitely Lennon and McCartney. I personally think Nick Cave and
Warren Allis. I think Warren Allis has just made Nick
Cave just sing. In the twenty years, this project became
a kind of preservation. It's kind of capturing something fragile
and beautiful before it kind of slipped away. And every

(05:16):
note is very intentional, and every note feels really sacred
when you're listening to it. You know, I know I'm
throwing around a whole lot of words, but Adorning just
isn't an album. It's a man's final offering to the world.
It's a quiet act of holding on even as his
life was letting go. So it was actually finished after
he passed away, and there's so much care and detail
in it. It's really emotional this album once you know

(05:39):
the story, but it's not mournful. It's like a gentle farewell.
It's again. It's a bit like that creeping light I
said at the start, behind the curtain, just coming in
and just kind of lingering in a room. There's eight tracks.
Each one glows. It's twenty nine minutes, Jack. You know,
I always love music that makes you feel like a place,
and adorning feels like a place that you go to

(06:00):
to reset. You know, when we're soft and gentle isn't weak,
That stillness is healing and oh my days, you know.
I would say give it a listen, not while you're
rushing around, but maybe when the sky is doing that
pink blue thing it does late in the day, early
in the morning. Let it n't fold, Let it breathe,
because music doesn't just fill a room, it can change
the ear around you. I love this album.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
That sounds great, Jays, So what did you give it?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, look, I want to give it a ten. I'm
going to give it a very hard nine. Okay, it's
twenty nine minutes.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
There's not going to be another. It deserves a ten.
I would say go and listen to it. It's Onnold
streaming SUPERB.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Love it. Thank you so much, James. So the album
is Adawning. It's by Oliver Arnold and Talos. We'll make
sure that the details of the album are up on
the news Talk's he'db website, because I know those names
can be a bit tricky, but A Dawning is the
one you want to search if you've got the streaming
platforms up and you'll be able to listen to it
at home. We will pick another song from the album

(06:54):
and play you that in a couple of minutes. It's
eight minutes to twelve.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
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