Myles O’Reilly on Against All Certainty: “Until I actually sat in front of the President, I didn’t think it was going to happen. I thought it was all a dream..."

Being tasked with soundtracking a spoken word album by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, isn’t something that happens every day, yet that is exactly what happened to ambient/instrumental artist Myles O’Reilly. Not that he quite believed it was real until he visited Áras an Uachtaráin.

“Until I actually sat in front of the President, I didn’t think it was going to happen,” laughs Myles. “I thought it was all a dream or some kind of fancy notion of Claddagh Records.”

Michael D. Higgins. Photo: Ellius Grace

The album in question, Against All Certainty, features 10 original poems penned by the President and recorded in Áras an Uachtaráin, underscored beautifully by Myles’ ambient music.

One-time frontman of much-loved indie act Juno Falls, Myles spent much of the 2010s following a new artistic pursuit as a film-maker, creating stunning visuals for a host of musicians, from Martin Hayes to Glen Hansard, Villagers to Crowded House. However, a near-death experience a decade ago had a profound effect on Myles and how he lives now, sending him back to his first love, music.

The result was more intrinsic than just falling in love with music again, he insists.

“It’s much bigger,” he says. “After my accident, I didn’t have any concept of owning things. I let all that go in the almost dying. Ambient music has been part of a rehabilitation process. If I didn’t have ambient music in one ear all the time, even when I was talking to people, it felt like life had no weight. So, it was crucial for about five years that I always had an earpiece on with the drone going like a soundtrack.”

Nowadays, ambient music is all he listens to.

“I can’t listen to something if it stands out, which is an odd thing to say, because music is supposed to stand out,” Myles continues. “It’s supposed to slap you in the face and give you this energy. We find our identities through music and it’s like, lyrics come from a place. But ambient for me was just minus ego, minus dialogue.”

During lockdown in 2020, Myles began creating ambient soundtracks at home, some of which he eventually released, and which also led to his collaborations with Kíla’s Rónán Ó Snodaigh.

“For me, the process of finding notes that fit emotions happened in lockdown in 2020 and really happened out of having a nervous breakdown,” he admits. “I think I had five different film projects ready to go and then the lockdown happened and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was very afraid.

“To find out largely what I was going to do with my life, I went upstairs and made notes. It was interesting how much a drone would pinpoint an emotion and make me feel it really strongly. When they made me want to cry, I thought perhaps I should record this. With Michael D’s poems, it was very much the same process.”

When Myles returned to the world of music, he occasionally performed live, creating ambient soundscapes over which various performers and poets would recite material. This is what brought him to the attention of Claddagh Records and this project. An initial meeting led to Myles being sent one poem, ‘The Death Of Mary Doyle’.

“I knew immediately after I did the music underneath that poem that this was going to work,” he says. “Everyone’s used to soundtracks in film, which for me have always denoted scenes, and they’ve had angles and dynamics that have as many edges as the film has, to keep you engaged in an audio sense too.

“But ambient really is the opposite of that. It’s just like a smell. I chose poems specifically about his childhood because I thought, we all probably smelled a lot more back then, and had a closer association with the senses and how they interacted with each other. As we grow older we forget that; music is one way of remembering it.”

The challenge was to get the mood right, to match the music to the emotions.

“First I had to find the emotions,” smiles Myles. “He’s got such a great vocabulary. I couldn’t dream of having that many English words in my head. It took a few listens to understand what exactly was going on. I ended up listening more to his breath in between the words, where he sounded fragile. ‘My Mother Married My Father In Mount Melleray In 1937’, is a poem about his father, but I think the very last word he says is ‘love’. He says it like he’s about to burst out crying.”

Myles’ process involved visualising the scenes that the President describes, and then creating the perfect soundtrack to those visuals.

“The room that his mother’s sitting in, or the car when he’s picked up by his uncle or auntie and they’re his new parents. Visualising him in the back, and he’s not necessarily looking at anything, but vaguely at the out-of-focus back of their heads. He’s more internalising the whole experience and then recounting it as an adult in this poem. So I was able to visualise him as a child, and that led me to know exactly what the soundtrack should be; it’s the visual that got me to find the emotion.”

The challenge was often “not to be overwhelmed with words”, Myles explains: “I listened more to his voice in between the words and more to the frailty that’s there sometimes, or the strength, or the anger in ‘Against All Certainty’. He delivers that like a priest who’s giving a sermon. I really like that feel and so I intentionally gave the microphone a cheap amplifier in a church feel; it’s gorgeous.”

Within just two weeks, Myles had finished soundtracking the entire album, and Claddagh Records were so happy with the result they told him not to change a single note. Myles met President Higgins only after he had finished work on the music, cycling through the Phoenix Park to the Áras, where the sceptical gatekeeper initially tried to send him back the way he had come.

“They made a call and the gate opened and I cycled into the Áras,” says Myles. “And then I didn’t know what to do. I was up at the front door and I thought there’s absolutely no way on earth that I’m supposed to ring this doorbell.”

When he finally made it inside, Myles admits to being a little on edge.

“I don’t know if it was severe anxiety or severe excitement, probably a mix of both,” he says. “And then when he walked in, I could see that he was equally excited and nervous too. So I just loosened up and asked him a lot about his past as a poet.”

To celebrate the release and honour President Higgins’ enduring contribution to the arts, culture and society in Ireland, the National Concert Hall hosted an extraordinary evening of poetry and music on September 5 - ‘Against All Certainty: A Celebration of Michael D. Higgins’.

Against All Certainty, A Celebration of Michael D. Higgins at The National Concert Hall on September 5th, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

Hosted by Tommy Tiernan, and showcasing live performances of the President’s poetry, accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra, it featured a host of musicians and artists, from Martin Hayes to Sebastian Barry, Paul Brady to Panti Bliss, as well as Myles himself.

“I think it’ll be rewatched for generations,” Myles opines. “The musicians that have been chosen are off the scales.”

For the extremely humble Myles, being in such company is exciting and perhaps a little intimidating. However, once the initial shock of being asked to soundtrack our President’s words wore off, Myles could see a certain logic to the fact that he was the one picked for the project.

“It was daunting for a couple of seconds and I couldn’t believe it, but then it suddenly made sense. The combination of everything I’ve experienced in life has actually led to this being a perfectly fluid process, to the point that I feel maybe I’ve been put on this earth just to do this and I’m going to disappear after the National Concert Hall gig (laughs). I’ll Quantum Leap into some other life.”

Against All Certainty is available now in a number of formats, including coloured vinyl and a CD that comes with a 60-page hardback book with essays, poetry, forewords and pictures.