Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

All of Eden are Galway brothers and singer/songwriters Troy Daniel and Jake Tyler Mac Amhlaigh. The pair have written and performed music together for a number of years, but this project really took shape in 2020, when their acoustic folk sound evolved into a textured brand of indie-pop informed by smooth and graceful bedroom production.

That practice has been fully realised on their latest release. Abience, a six-track EP, arrived last Friday, September 15.

It is a catalogue of songs that drifts regularly between lovelorn and nostalgic. All of Eden take a highly visual approach to making music and it shows in the imagery throughout Abience. The songs are rich with nature and harmony, and never too cluttered.

“We were travelling all of last year and that’s where we took loads of inspiration,” Jake recalls.

“A lot changed in how we approached songwriting during that time. It really took a long time [to find the sound]. It was a lot of figuring stuff out on Logic – finding the right way to record and finding the right patches and plug-ins that worked for us.

“When we were stuck on a song and we weren’t happy with it, we’d put on movies we really liked and we’d mute them, and then listen to the tracks we were working on to try and make it cinematic and make it match the movie.”

“It’s a new technique we found that helped us,” Troy adds.

“You might be 90% of the way there on the production but there’s 10% where you’re just never happy. We’d put on a movie, mute it and make music to match it. It could just be an ambient part on the top, but it would help us get that last tweak.”

The poetry of Leonard Cohen was particularly impactful on the brothers’ writing of Abience.

While Troy bears the brunt of the production for All of Eden, Jake has moved the project in a new direction lyrically. Their writing has been aided by a book of his poems that they now pluck from intermittently. It facilitates the type of songs that can function well when left as words on a sheet.

Pictured: All of Eden….Galway brothers’ new EP out now.