In Time: A Posthumous Retrospective on Talos

It was only days ago and nearly 18 months since his death that I last listened to the haunting sounds of Talos, the stage moniker of Irish musician Eoin French. There are artists and albums that typify a time in your life — the struggles, the victories — and become soundtracks of a personal epoch. In his terribly short tenure, French crafted those sounds for me. My personal tethers to his career aside, there was something alarmingly ethereal about his work. Throughout his soaringly brilliant LPs, there was a preternatural consciousness of impending loss and deterioration.

Talos Posthumous Retrospective: In Time

French passed away in August 2024 after disappearing for months from social media on the back of a collaboration album with Ólafur Arnalds, which was released posthumously this year, and a 2022 solo album release. His last post on Instagram was especially haunting — a brief reflection on the bygone year at its end and his excitement to return to stage and fans for the coming seasons. Silence settled in like stark midnight winter until his management and family posted a loving announcement of French’s death of “a short illness.”

When I last played songs from Wild Alee, I remembered to search if any journalists had leaned back in their desk chairs to examine the promise cut short of French’s remarkable work. I stared in disbelief as my search revealed nothing, as if the beauty of this artist’s work had sunk to the seafloor.

This was a notion by which I could not abide! Some part of me wishes I had done this a year ago, more closely following his passing, but sometimes you weep for those who create what you love as though they were real in your life. I suppose I needed my own space to process my shock and sadness before I could sit at the keys and honor French as he deserves. So here we are.

In Time Album Review

French started as an architect and lectured at University College Cork, in his hometown. Somewhere in the ether, a different magnetism called him, and he eventually pursued training at Cork School of Music. Whatever ethereal energy pulled him toward this tectonic career change, it was a gift to the electronic music-loving masses. By the time he had dabbled a bit with band Hush War Cry, French had polished the sonic identity that would become the Talos project in 2013. French would spend time in Iceland mid-craft, and his sound would suffuse the effects of his Irish and Icelandic musings.

I remember well the moment my ears caught his music while awaiting my favorite coffee in a local shop, now also deceased and only lovingly remembered. I was instantly enrapt and asked my barista to go to their tracklist and tell me “who the hell is making this amazing shit.” It was the track “Odyssey” — an early drop on streaming platforms that set the Talos soundstage beautifully. The music center of my brain would never be the same after that fated caffeine run.

Exploring Talos’ Sound and Musical Evolution

To describe Talos’ soundscape is nearly a fool’s errand. Certainly, there are common throughlines and themes, yet the enormity of layers and sequences sparkling throughout each composition is singular. If you’re keen to take a quick walk-through of his works, I’d recommend tracks “In Time,” “Piece[s],” “Landscapes,” “D.O.A.M.” and “Kansas”… though I can more easily name the very short list of quotidian songs than the myriad brilliant ones. Few indie artists have ever had such a glitteringly solid-palladium discography in less than a decade.

Something of a lovely chimera of James Blake, Bon Iver and Sigur Rós, Talos set himself apart from the vague similes one could draw with his electronic cohorts. His live performances soared like his sounds and featured several acts in sprawling gothic cathedrals that resonated with the aura of his art. It feels like French was merely at the precipice of profound recognition and reach in the industry in 2022 when he was shortlisted for Irish Artist of the Year at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize awards, alongside such artists as Dermot Kennedy and Fontaines D.C.

It would be only a short two years later, following his death in August 2024 at age 36, that different tributes would flow from fans and fellow musicians worldwide in mourning of French’s startling death. That was a strange week for many of us as he left a seat at the table as artist, son, spouse, father and friend.

Themes of Loss and Reflection in Talos’ Work

And here’s where the themes so often infused in Talos’ music become especially haunting and sorrowful. All the tracks about loss — the gorgeous music video for “Far Out Dust” depicting French fleeing desperately from imminent destruction as a conclusion to the earlier imagery of “In Time,” for example. Looking back on his work, French seems to connect to a quantum thread tugging at his existential awareness. Certainly, it’s easy to retrospectively evaluate as such, now that the tragic brevity of his lifespan is apparent.

A year and a half since his passing, I still can’t shake the feeling that French felt the arrow of time heading straight for the center of his chest. Perhaps that’s what makes his music all the more profoundly mesmerizing and precious. In that same span of time, I am still sad in the general locale of my center when I think of the light we lost with his passing. I was so much looking forward to seeing him live, to writing many more reviews of his work and to seeing him craft a musical legacy of decades.

So here’s a holiday-season champagne cheers to the benevolent spectre of one of my favorite indie artists. May your music live on.

Read more about musicians in SLUG:
Electro Light Parade: Erasure’s Andy Bell Comes to Park City
Imprint Response Machine: An Interview with Rhys Fulber