“His debut single I Have a Love, a tribute to a dead friend, is reminiscent of the Streets’ night bus poetry, and tracks from an album later in the year nod to other moodily rave-adjacent artists such as Massive Attack, Mount Kimbie and Burial.” The Guardian
“For Those I Love fights for the underdog… raw and uncompromising electronic music that taps into both deeply personal trauma and wider societal ills for influence.” The FADER
“One of the most stunning, evocative and compelling emotions in the world for any artist to display is vulnerability. It’s easy to do bravado, it’s easy to be self-deprecating, it’s easy to be “Ah sure look”. But vulnerability? Something else entirely.” RTE
Today, Irish singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist For Those I Love, born David Balfe, shares a remix of his debut single ‘I Have a Love‘. Reworked by XL-signed brothers Tom and Ed Russell, better known as the electronic duo Overmono, the remix gets a jolt of shimmering techno that intensifies as the song comes to a soft and poetic finale. Listen HERE, watch HERE.
The remix follows the track’s moving self-directed visual, his second single ‘Top Scheme‘ which also received a video directed by Balfe, and his powerful debut performance on Later…with Jools Holland. Watch it HERE.
Balfe 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, the project documents the harsh realities of 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 forthcoming album pays tribute to Balfe’s best friend and former bandmate, Paul Curran, who passed away in 2018. Following Paul’s tragic death, Balfe 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.
The self-titled debut album from For Those I Love will arrive early next year on September Recordings and arrives after the release of the mix, Into A World That Doesn’t Understand It, Unless You’re From It, which showcased unreleased tracks, ideas, and demos that didn’t fit onto the album and sold out of its limited tape run in only hours. Stay tuned for more from For Those I Love coming soon.
‘I Have a Love’ (Overmono Remix) is out now, buy/stream it here.