FOR THOSE I LOVESHARES INSTRUMENTAL VERSION OF ACCLAIMED DEBUT ALBUM
For Those I Love, the brainchild of Dublin producer and songwriter David Balfe, released his debut album to significant public and critical acclaim last month. Today the artist shares an instrumental form of his debut album, Instrumentals. Listen HERE.
For Those I Love sits at #1 release of 2021 on review aggregator Album Of The Year and is 3rd Best Album Of 2021 on Metacritic. The record was also celebrated as BBC 6 Music's Album Of The Day last week and recently Double J's Feature Album. For Those I Love is available now on LP, CD and DL via September Recordings. While the lyrical content has proven key to the record's message, the music itself has also been singled out for repeated praise, skipping as it does between the off-kilter, ethereal and the euphoric. The Instrumentals release follows a poignant live film directed by award-winning Irish director Hugh Mulhern (Fontaines D.C., Inhaler).
The 17-minute piece contains both a narrative storyline as well as live performances from David and was shot at the home of Shelbourne F.C., Tolka Park. Referenced throughout the album - and enshrined on its cover art - the club has played an integral role in the For Those I Love story.
The film speaks great truths of friendships, hurt and grief, the power of empathy and community in times of loss, and sees David perform three of the most personal pieces from the record - its motif and beating heart in 'I Have A Love', the searching 'The Myth / I Don't' and the album's penultimate track 'You Live / No One Like You' that plays and ruminates on what they held so dear and - with David now stood overlooking the Tolka pitch.
ABOUT FOR THOSE I LOVE
The project of David Balfe, the producer vocalist first began work on For Those I Love as a chance to write frankly about the struggles he and his friends faced while growing up in north Dublin. Anecdotally and otherwise, For Those I Love documents the harsh realities of a daily life up against it, and holds a mirror up to the clear disparity between a working class upbringing and the lack of opportunity that remains to this day. At its core, the self-titled album pays tribute to Dave’s best friend and former bandmate, Paul Curran, who passed away in 2018. Following Paul’s tragic death, Dave locked himself away in his home studio for months, ultimately recording over 76 songs that would eventually be condensed down to form the basis of his debut album. The result is an incredibly beautiful, raw and uncompromising 9-track project addressing grief and catharsis, an important record that could only emerge from an entirely honest place.
Introduced to the world last year through the hard-nosed, beautiful eulogy of debut single 'I Have A Love' and the socio-political ruminations of its follow-up 'Top Scheme', early 2021 he announced the details of his much-anticipated debut album via September Recordings alongside a third single, the electric 'Birthday / The Pain', paired to a remarkable video forged through a process called photogrammetry. Alongside significant breakthroughs at press and radio over the last year, David performed live for the first time ever under the For Those I Love moniker in November on Later... with Jools Holland, delivering a performance ingrained with such emotional weight that 'For Those I Love' was to go on to trend on Twitter soon afterwards.