The Curious Works of Roger Doyle

While the label is an expression of respect, and while Doyle is indeed among the leading exponents and earliest pioneers of electronic music in Ireland - for example, he was one of the first people in the country to work on a Fairlight synthesizer / digital audio workstation - it hardly does justice to his wide-ranging career as a composer, musician and performer, as well as a body of work that refuses to be pinned down in any one genre. For more than half a century now, Doyle has had an almost Zelig-like presence in the Irish avant-garde, appearing in so many times and places - from gigs by early prog rock bands to the music credits on films by the likes of Bob Quinn and Joe Comerford, to acclaimed experiments in dance and theatre. In the early 1970s he studied composition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and at institutes in the Netherlands and Finland; he was also a drummer with various experimental bands including Supply, Demand and Curve, a jazz-rock group whose strange music alerted many music students, steeped as they were then in piano etudes and two- and three-part inventions, to other sonic possibilities. Despite the documentary's focus on one artist, it also draws us into a rich cultural history of alternative and avant-garde art in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, a vigorous if underfunded period of cultural production in the country.