After years of making genre-defying, other-worldly pop music and performing
visceral, kinetic shows across Europe and the UK, ‘Folk Songs For Mama & Papa’
by Irish artist AE Mak (Aoife McCann) marks a quiet and profound shift. Mainly
inspired by her own spirit and influenced by artists such as Björk, Judee Sill,
Aldous Harding and Paul Simon, the album steps away from character-making
and toward essence. It is a cosmical - spiritual folk record rooted in voice,
breath, and emotional resonance in the body.
The songs were written in the Winter during a time of deep emotional pain and
self-questioning. Living alone in a Berlin apartment, AE Mak began writing at a
friend’s piano, singing poems formed over a year of anxiety, low self-worth and
self-reckoning directly into melody. The music came quickly, not as an idea to
be shaped but as something that already felt there. The recorded demos were
later brought to Brían Mac Gloinn of Ye Vagabonds, who tenderly co-produced
and engineered the record with Aoife. Together with Cian Hanley (drums) and
Kevin Corcoran (piano, bass) and Fennel the cat, parts of the album were re
recorded in a friend’s farmhouse in Ravensdale forest under the mantelpiece in
their kitchen, with other elements captured in her family home in the Cooley
Mountains. The recordings hold onto their beginnings - the production remains
close and human, drawing from the warmth of ‘60s and ‘70s folk and baroque
pop, gospel-leaning organ, reverberant orange guitar textures, and layered
harmony, the voice at the centre.
This is a record born from pain and searching, but also from humour and
devotion. It is about illumination, creation, connection, and the quiet, ecstatic
knowing that we are not alone - we are spiritual beings having a human
experience - “we came from the stars, you see.”