Ae Mak at Aiteall

Irish artist Ae Mak (Aoife McCann) debut record, Folk Songs For Mama & Papa, was released on May 29th, 2026. After years of making genre-defying, other-worldly pop music and performing visceral, kinetic shows across Europe and the UK, this record 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, Folk Songs For Mama & Papa 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, 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.

At the heart of Folk Songs For Mama & Papa is a shedding of masks. After years of classical training, character-led performance, mimicry, and joyful make-believe, Ae Mak lets her own voice lead – technically grounded, emotionally bare, and fully embodied. Teaching vocal interpretation in Berlin, and rediscovering the joy of singing folk songs at parties – Dylan, Baez, Joni – cracked something open. The title isn’t a nod to The Mamas & The Papas, but to her own mam and pappi, who raised her on folk records and harmony and left albums leaning by the turntable for easy reaching. 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.”