POST-BURNOUT
Through the encouragement of his brother, who showed him Metallica’s Master of Puppets while his friends were into dance music, the Dublin musician, Darren Farrell, learned to play the guitar as a teenager.
Through thirty-five years of grinding, Darren became a very dexterous and talented player and wrote some original tunes, but his only experience as a performing musician was in cover bands, as he kept his songs to his chest.
It was nearly thirty years later that Darren would be introduced to fellow Dublin guitarist Kevin Homan through a mutual friend. A similar age to Darren, Kevin had grown up in a musical household, and his brother was a DJ. At sixteen, Kevin began learning basic chords and was inspired by a new band who were making waves at that time: Oasis.
The mutual friend had been interested in starting a cover project, which Kevin wasn’t too interested in. Talking to Post-Burnout, he explains, “I’ve had that situation where a friend has approached and said, ‘Hey, we’re putting together a band; we’d love for you to do a bit of vocals’ or whatever, and that’s grand, but even that first time and now [Laughs], I pretty much came to the first meeting and laid the cards out to suggest, ‘Look, lads; covers is not really my thing.’”
Darren recalls meeting Kevin. “I think at the time, I think I was only out of a covers band,” he explains. “Through the mutual friend, there were talks of, ‘Do you want to start up with this lad, and this lad?’, and that’s how myself and Kev came about each other.
“Initially, I did twig that covers wasn’t in Kev at all. I knew it was just originals. […] But that was a good thing, as well, because I think Kev opened up Pandora’s box within myself, in terms of releasing all this material that I had within me for years and years, which I always thought, ‘Nah, I’m not going to show anyone this. It’s all rubbish.’ I don’t think I had the confidence, and Mr Homan here unleashed that within me.”
The two began working on songs throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and christened their project Alpine Skies. For the two, there was immediate clarity in what they wanted to achieve in this new journey: leaving a document of their lives’ dedication to music.
“We’re not on death’s door or anything!” laughs Kevin. “I mean, I have friends in bands or guys I know who’ve played in bands down the years, and they have such output, and they have a lot of stuff. I still have CDs in the house, and I have a lot of stuff by them, and it’s great to look at it. It’s great to play it.”
This want for documentation spurred them to begin work on an album as soon as the project was established. “When the pandemic hit, and it realigned everybody’s intent or journey in life, and ‘What is this life about?’, we really drew our focus into the whole idea of, ‘OK, we’re doing something here,’” Kevin says. “We’re compiling songs, we have forty tracks sitting on a hard drive, we actually have material worthy of an album or two or three, potentially.”
So, over the past few years, the two have toiled over perfecting their debut album, Inspired Conflicts, which is expected to be released soon. “Post-pandemic, we really focused our attention to go in and record it professionally,” Kevin says of crafting the record. “Because we had done it over Logic and in-home studio set-ups.
“So, from that moment, post-pandemic, into rolling into a studio and working with a great engineer and producer – a friend of ours, as well – and working with some great backing musicians to fill in with some of the basslines we had written and fill in on the drums that were necessary on the recording.
“You’re talking about a period of three or four years that it took, because it was scattered over periods of availability; we’d go into studio spaces and stuff like that. So, post-pandemic, we steadied our focus, and got it mastered, and back in our own hands by mid-last year.”
The first two singles from the album were released this year. “By Your Side” dropped in June, and “Walls” followed up in August, and, fittingly, the band consulted the people they were creating their music for to guide them on which songs to release: Their family.
“We pretty much asked our partners and maybe one family member, ‘If you were to pick three songs from this ten, which would you pick?’,” Kevin says of their curation process. “Ninety per cent came back with three of the same songs, so if it resonated with other people as much as a resonated with us, we felt we were on a good path.
“Having said that, I feel myself and Darren have figured over the years, we’re really trying to interest each other with what we do with songwriting, and we’re trying to keep each other interested with what comes out of us as a creative process. So, as long as we’re doing that, I feel we’ll be happy.”
Alpine Skies’ debut album, Internal Conflicts, is expected to drop in early November. Their singles “By Your Side” and “Walls” are on all streaming platforms now. You can keep up with the band through Instagram.
Alpine Skies will make their debut performance at The Sound House, Dublin on November 20th, with The Elusives and Al Richardson. Tickets are available here.
Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.
Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.