Geography is a barrier if you let it. Jeremy Howard is jumping that hurdle with Distorted Perspectives, a festival concerned with "contemporary sound, psych and avant-garde art", taking place for the third year in a row this April.
Little known outside of the festival’s Donegal home, Howard, a Letterkenny native has nevertheless managed to bring some revered names of the electronic and experimental music to the wilds of his hometown including Damo Suzuki, Ulrich Schnauss, Moon Duo and ZZZ’s.
While most Irish bands know just how much of a trip it is to Donegal, Howard convinces international artists to come to Donegal with promises of experiencing the rugged landscape and the romantic notion of a far flung retreat for niche musicians.
A wild attraction
"Damo Suzuki from Can stayed with me for a week," says Howard. "He wanted to see Donegal. He spent a few days wandering about, feeding the chickens outside and playing with the dog. It was kind of surreal having one of your heroes sitting in your house for a week."
Howard says that plenty of formerly established musicians have also settled in Donegal including his next-door neighbour, who was once in 1960s English rock band The Moody Blues, while sometime Villagers’ guitarist and producer Tommy McLaughlin’s studio, Attica, is “10 minutes down the road”.
“Donegal seems to me to be this beacon for all old hippies, artists and musicians. Every second person you meet has a story about a group they used to play in.”
If you’re not familiar with those artists Howard has brought to the Distorted Perspectives festival as listed above in the previous two years, then the festival’s existence itself is even more impressive, as Howard and his colleagues are cultivating a love of the alternative side of music in a provincial place.
Building a rural audience
"Originally, there wasn't a huge audience, but you convince people to come in," says Howard. As long as they have a good time, you're building up a trust really. They might not know the bands playing the next time but the previous enjoyment influences them coming back. It's funny, sometimes you'll see two of your friends like a band on Facebook and then after the show, there'll be 40 or 50 who like the page."
Even more impressive perhaps is the festival happens in a region that is struggling to maintain its own live scene.
“A lot of the venues have closed down and changed into wine bars and tapas restaurants,” explains Howard, who works in the Regional Cultural Centre, one of two venues he says which is suitable for live music. The other is An Grianan Theatre which Howard says is better suited to seated gigs and too large for most bands.
Distorted Perspectives came about from a pub conversation that was actioned upon.
“I have a friend who always said whenever you say you’re going to do something in a pub, you have to go and do it. I try to live by that.”
Howard, along with Paul Brown, who runs the Earagail Arts Festival and his Regional Cultural Centre Director Sean Hannigan all pitch in. Funding comes from the Arts Council, and from the Earagail Arts Festival. The rest is made possible by locals, volunteers and businesses pitching in with PAs, cases of beer and projectors.
This year's festival
This year's event will feature three distinct nights. The first features American indie and alt-rock acts such as BC Camplight and Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts along with Irish act Captain A And The Commercial Monsters. The next night, things get progressively louder with the kraut-electronica of Twinkranes and the psychedelic rockers Hookworm. The final night is centred around live soundtracks with electronic artists and bands live scoring their favourite experimental films.
The festival’s visual-art strand comes from Howard who worked in animation, film and documentaries after completing a masters degree in Composing for the Screen - Soundtrack Production at Bournemouth University.
“Last year, we had an artist who made a slow-moving video piece for the gallery upstairs. It was an electronic soundscape. He filled the room with water so you’d sit down, relax and watch the reflection of the video in the water. It was meditative and a break from the loud music downstairs.”
A recession-hit town of possibilities
After returning home for a few months with plans to move to London to pursue film composition, Howard found Letterkenny, a place very much affected by the recession, a town with potential. His plans to move were soon forgotten when he took a short-term position in Regional Cultural Centre.
“I realised working in such a creative space and amazing facility during a major downturn in the economy meant that every new idea was welcomed.”
His role extended to booking artists and bands, including international visiting artists who wouldn’t normally get an opportunity to play in a rural Irish town.
“My position evolved over the next couple of years to include programming for the centre, which already had a great reputation for hosting the very top folk, bluegrass, and jazz musicians from all around the world but rarely brought in alternative or electronic acts.”
Howard’s interest in the alternative side of music came from growing up in a family where his grandmother taught piano and his father, who makes and repairs string instruments.
“When I wanted a guitar, my Dad gave me a piece of wood and told me to make it myself.”
There was always musicians in the house, including Dublin jazz stalwart Louis Stewart, who would have been be more traditional than a young Howard, eager to show off his handcrafted guitar.
“I passed him my guitar and asked him to try it out,” Howard recalls. “Then I said, you can’t play it like that, and threw him a distortion pedal. He just played a few chords and handed it back to me. It was only years later I realised he could have thrown it at me.”
Howard wasn't much of a guitarist and could barely play a chord. However, his father passed along a love of Pink Floyd and the War Of The Worlds soundtrack, which introduced Howard to music with a more experimental bent.
“He would play it really loud on his record player as a form of punishment when I was very young, which used to scare the shit out of me - but stopped working when I started to love it.”
Howard went to England to study electro-acoustic music composition and general music composition at Keele University.
“It definitely gave me an appreciate for sticking with something that doesn’t immediately jump out. It introduced me to the concept of ‘reduced listening’ where you’re listening to it as sound and enjoying the sound as an sensual experience.”
That love of electroacoustic music and music from the experimental side is palpably felt in the programming of Distorted Perspectives, a festival with a micro budget but with big ambitions.
“I wouldn’t even call it a small festival, it’s a micro-festival,” chuckles Howard but we’d love to grow it and establish Donegal as an outpost of different music.”
