For Those I Love is the solo project of Dublin producer, visual artist and songwriter David Balfe. His 2021 self-titled debut album emerged from the death of his best friend Paul Curran, turning grief, love, friendship and loss into one of the most devastating and acclaimed Irish records of its era. Balfe built its instrumentals from music he’d worked on quietly on his own, first tested on late-night drives around Dublin with friends stuffed into the back of his car, mix CDs of Omar S, Omar Souleyman and DJ Rashad playing until one of his own productions snuck into the rotation. He later released an instrumental version of the album as, in his words, “an ode to those times… the background sounds to a friendship that will never leave me.”
Second album Carving The Stone followed in 2025, expanding the project’s focus from personal loss to a wider reckoning with Irish capitalism and the erosion of working-class life in Dublin, addressing renting, pay, debt and what Balfe has called a “cultural death” of a city and a generation. It became one of Nialler9’s best Irish albums of the year.
