Columb Farrelly

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Composer and producer Columb Farrelly first came to prominence within the burgeoning Irish music industry of the mid 1980s through his musical partnership with singer Sinead O’Connor, creating around her the seminal act Ton Ton Macoute, named "not after the shadowy Haitian militia but for the musical sound of the name", a fact, as writer Dermott Hayes predicted in Sinead’s unofficial biography 'So Different' would be Chinese-whispered and haunt both artists for some time to come.

After the death of Sinead’s mother they both went their separate ways, Farrelly to become a jobbing composer, scoring for innumerable TV documentaries, dramas, (including RTÉ's soap theme 'Fair City') station idents and short films, and though he was effectively air-brushed out of Sinead’s official biographies, he consistently refused to discuss her with probing journalists.

Ton Ton Macoute gigged on in various lineups until folding, briefly housing artists as various as jazz singer Christine Tobin and Jimmy Corr (later of The Corrs). Farrelly and Corr met up again briefly when Farrelly took the role of a band leader in a TV drama 'The Black Knight' with Corr as his keyboard player. It was Farrelly’s salty and challenging lyrics, much more than his quirky world rhythms, that landed him in hot water after an appearance on Irish TV's top-rater The Late Late Show, performing an extract of his play-with-music 'Fangs for the mammary' that led to the station’s switchboard 'lighting up like a Christmas tree.' Remarkably, Novenas were offered up in a Catholic church for the saving of Farrelly’s soul by a scandalised group of Dublin citizenry. The band dissolved in the early 1990s.

With the encouragement of U2 manager and other Records major domo Paul McGuinness, Farrelly set up the production company Underscore in 1993, taking over the ailing Ashtown Gate Studios, where within a year his first offering was The Pale, who were the first Irish act to perform live against pre-programmed music tracks, to the horror of the rock traditionalists and to the delight of the informed punter. The Pale's first release on Underscore, 'Why Go Bald', immediately attracted much overseas interest. The debut TV appearance of the shaven-headed trio of Dubliners on The Late Late Show also set the switchboards alight, but this time it was to positive effect; it launched a battle amongst record companies to sign them. Farrelly signed them to A&M Records and the publishing went to Polygram. Farrelly co-wrote with, produced and managed the act who toured in the UK, mainland, Europe, Japan and the US to critical acclaim and modest chart success, with tracks like 'Butterfly', and 'Dogs with no tails', Farrelly himself being awarded the prestigious Smithwicks/Hotpress Producer Of the Year Award for the album 'Here’s One We Made Earlier'. The Pale folded after three years on the road, citing "exhaustion".

Farrelly had set up Underscore Multimedia in 1995 to supply the audio content for a number of Microsoft products, including the educational CD-ROM 'Ancient Lands'. After several years, Microsoft pulled out of the audio side of the Irish tax-relieved World Wide Product Group, and Farrelly folded camp and retired to remote County Kerry to compose and record. While there scoring for filmmakers, he fell into writing for screen, with a trio of shorts emerging from the period 2000 to 2004: Of Noble Blood, Vicious Circle and What If? (Blackhorse Films). Farrelly went into development under the auspices of The Irish Film Board with his feature screenplay Skinflick.

During that period, Farrelly's musical collaborations with producer-director Brendan Culleton (Akajava Films) produced scores for documentaries including the Irish language An Bothar Fada (The Long Road), 'The Shamrock and the Swastika' and 'Diarmuid and Strongbow'. Having long been considered an eminence gris, Farrelly returned to live performance in 2003, appearing occasionally with others under the name The Fortyfoot Gentlemen, and is now under the same New York representation stable as composer Phillip Glass.