Charlie O’Brien’s music is shaped by place and history, drawing on both personal experience and a wider social memory. Having apprenticed himself to Irish traditional music more than two decades ago, he comes from that deep well with something of his own devising. In that vein, the album Where Splendour Falls (2016) took his native Killarney as a basis, using both Irish Gaelic and English speaking stores of thought. The sounds he makes straddle the land between innovation and tradition. 

“It hooked me on first listen, a breath of fresh air.” Alex Gallacher, KLOF Magazine

Charlie's work in film began in 2010 with the Irish language T.V. documentary Saol John Riley. This half-hour film followed  the trail of the leader of the "San Patricio Battalion," John Riley, from famine torn Galway to the carnage of the Mexican-American War of 1847.  In 2016 Charlie directed and produced A Captain Unafraid, a documentary feature based on the life of sea captain "Dynamite" Johnny O' Brien. A Captain Unafraid premiered at an E.U. run European Film Festival in Havana in June 2017 and had a lengthy festival run afterwards, from Santiago to New York and Calcutta to Kerry. This was the birth of Trouble or Fortune Films which morphs into Trouble or Fortune Records for Charlie's adventures in sound.

“His repertoire is contemporary in its arrangements, but rooted in a strikingly pure traditional foundation.” Sergio Kiernan, Página/12

 The soundtrack to A Captain Unafraid (released in the first months of 2017) was composed by Charlie and William Kemp. The films A Captain Unafraid and Saol John Riley  both found their beginnings in song-"Pa' los Del San Patricio" appears on his debut album Songs from an Outpost (2007), Marine Mambí, Johnny Dynamite on Hy Brasil, Songs Of The Irish In Latin America (2019). In 2018 Charlie directed The Green Fields of Cuba, an exploration of Irish traditional music in Cuba, produced by John McAuliff of The Fund for Reconciliation and Development and commissioned by The Atlantic Philanthropies. 

“Charlie O’Brien brings together music and documentary film, drawing deeply on his Irish roots.” Jorge Luis Fernández, Rolling Stone Argentina

Charlie's first fiction film, Macalla Chill Áirne,  is a recreation of a Victorian era, music infused tour of Killarney, focusing on the phenomenon of the Killarney echo. "Macalla" premiered at the Kerry Film Festival in October, 2021, and was nominated for the Consul of Ireland Award at the Chicago Irish Film Festival in 2022.  

Fire and Foam (2022) was Charlie's first album not informed in any obvious way by Irish trad. roots. Returning to Latin-American and Irish themes, since 2022 he has been in Argentina, researching and performing songs from the forgotten tradition of Irish-Argentine balladry, the culmination of which is the album The Trackless Wild, Irish Song of the Pampa (2024). This work has been supported by both the Irish Arts Council and Culture Ireland. A recently completed feature film on the same theme, The Trackless Wild: Song of a Wandering Tip, will begin its film festival journey in 2026.