Myles O’Reilly and Rónán Ó Snodaigh: The Beautiful Road – Experimental and intriguing

The recent collaborations between Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly might remind you of the final line in Casablanca, when Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart’s character, says to the canny Captain Louis Renault, walking away from the camera and into the night fog, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.

You might know Ó Snodaigh from Kíla, his trad/fusion/anything-goes band, which has been around for more than 30 years (and which, via Dublin’s then bustling busking community, donated some of its original members to The Frames). And you might know O’Reilly not only from his film work, under his Arbutus Yarns label, but also from his excellent ambient-music soundscapes on albums such as Cabin Lights Off (2020), My Mother’s Star (2021) and Cocooning Heart (2022).

The connectivity between them took flight on their 2021 album, Tá Go Maith. Nestled into Ó Snodaigh’s Irish-language songs (which thematically give thanks for the blessings in his life) are O’Reilly’s sinuous synthesiser swirls; for an album created during the fug of the pandemic, the blend of soft vowels and consonants with subtle electronics made for a reflective and rewarding listen.

The same can be said of The Beautiful Road, which mixes finely distributed measurements of traditional, folk and ambient music that have been created to offset what the pair of musicians define as life’s daily “white noise”: machinery, traffic, fire alarms, car alarms, doors and windows opening and closing, footfall, playgrounds and the thrum of what you might define as indistinct chatter. As the duo say, the album is “a sonic massage that relaxes the ears and settles the soul”.

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The musicians have been particularly fussy when it comes to the wearing of headphones or earbuds: for the songs, they sympathetically chose frequencies and lengths to consider the listener’s “hypothetical physical position”. If you didn’t know this it wouldn’t matter (and, indeed, as a listener you may not really care), but it’s the kind of experimental creative thought process that makes the music more intriguing.

You might not think that material such as King of the Kingdom; the title track; Bacon, Eggs, Blood and Bread; Calling All Angels; Sin Sin; and An Ghlas Ar An Domhain, which veer from acoustic/ambient instrumentals to gently presented songs, would benefit from such fastidious tinkering, but the results speak for themselves – quietly, very quietly.