Analogue Appreciation: For Those I Love

‘Mirror’, the latest single from Irish experimentalist For Those I Love’s upcoming album Carving The Stone, begins somewhat calmly. David Balfe’s vocals enter over a low-end heavy, snarling guitar line and a quietly frenetic percussive rhythm. A thudding four-to-the-floor kick soon enters, and across the course of four minutes, the track builds and builds, adding layer upon layer of stress, until the final salvo lays it all out on the table.

He snarls: ​“Reprobate, ethnostate, modern nationalist cunts / They manipulate young workers and then neglect them when done / The modern state will strip a man down until he’s naked and scared / And these cunting blackshirts will give him a face to lace with his fears.”

Now onto his second album, four years after his 2021 debut, the For Those I Love project was originally born out of grief, after his best friend – artist, poet and musician Paul Curran – died in 2018. The self-titled album was one of the year’s best, and within the scattered mess of the pandemic, hit home with its introspective-yet-grand post-dancefloor sonics and pent up lyricism. 

His latest album continues that legacy, with cathartic, visceral vocals that moan the disaffection of youth in Dublin, while speaking to stark inequality under late-stage capitalism and the rise of the far right. It’s bristling, apocalyptic, and an ode to the greyed-out dread of modern city life. Ahead of the release of Carving The Stone, Balfe joined us for our Analogue Appreciation series, which celebrates the power of physical culture in an ever more digital, online world. See his picks below.

• Read next: Analogue Appreciation: Joe Armon-Jones

My first guitar

While it’d be easy to call this one a cliché, I don’t think it has lost any meaning at all. My uncle gave this guitar to me when I was about eight or nine years old. I didn’t learn to play it for a few more years, but I do remember walking around my road with it and feeling very cool. It stayed mostly decorative for the first few years, but eventually, I learned some chords and immediately started to write some songs, and never stopped.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve played it, but messing around with it now, it still sounds better than almost any other guitar I’ve had since. Eternally grateful. 

And sorry to my Ma and Da for all of the terrible Green Day covers they were subjected to on this thing when I was 11 or 12. 

My first camera

There’s no theme here. This is the last of the firsts. But there’s something exceptionally special about the first tools I had for creating art, and I’ll do whatever I can to hang on to these. This was the first camera I ever owned. It was a gift, and I was probably about 16 or 17 at the time. I’m not sure I realised how much of an impact it had at the time, but having the tools to make images and archive moments was vital. I remember adding layers of tape to the zoom trigger on the camera so that I could control it more slowly. I’ve always loved to jerry-rig a solution.

I found myself so drawn to the camera, that, when it ended up breaking in my late 20s, I bought another copy of the camera, and still carry it with me routinely. There’s something about the style of imagery it takes that speaks to me, and it’ll clip into my work here and there still.

Joyrider by Ross McDonnell

Joyrider is a photobook by the late, incredible image maker, Ross McDonnell. I’ll never forget meeting Ross in a park in Dublin, and him pulling out an early copy of the book and telling me it was called Joyrider. I’d pulled down the neck of my t‑shirt to reveal the same word tattooed at the highest point of my chest (a nod to a song I had made with Burnt Out, alongside my late best friend).

Moments like that never leave you. Every page of Joyrider is touching. There’s so much to say, that I truly cannot even start. Ross, a true wonder. Forever celebrated. I will cherish it always. Thank you my friend.

Foil ribbon from when we won the league

Tactility plays such a huge role in my memory. So much of my world gets lost entirely, forgotten, disappeared. But holding on to something physical from those moments ties me to them forever. The football team I support (Shelbourne F.C.), we had a rough up and down for a while, but last year, for the first time in 18 years, we won the league. On an away day trip to Derry (one of my favourite places in Ireland), on the last game of the season, we managed to nab it.

Standing on the pitch after, hugging strangers, hugging friends, on a video call to all of my closest who couldn’t make it up: the trophy was lifted, the chaos burst my ears, and these pieces of gold foil ribbon shot briefly into the air above us. My Shels pal Donal suggested I take one home, and I did, and when it hold it, it’s like I can still hear the roar of that 84^th minute winner. The greatest league in the world.

Cinema ticket for Michael Inside

This one is a cinema ticket for one of the week one showings of Michael Inside (maybe the first showing? I saw it so many times). It’s a moving, realistic, and vital portrait by director Frank Berry. 

Hanging on to that ticket is important to me for so many reasons. Some of my closest friends play some very small roles in it (but ones that were so important to us), ​‘Joyrider’, the song mentioned above from Burnt Out, one of my old bands, soundtracks the closing credits, and the film itself, biased as I might be, is some of the most affecting pieces of cinema I’ve been lucky enough to see. I am so very grateful for that film, and I’ll continue to keep that ticket as a marker and celebration of all of it.

Carving The Stone by For Those I Love is out Friday, August 8, via September Recordings.

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