Donnacha Costello

Donnacha Costello launched his music production work in 1989, yet only achieved widespread recognition as an outstanding talent late in 2000. Already acknowledged among Dublin, Ireland’s leading figures in the field, he had restricted his experiments with minimal electronic music to the period around 1996, once he had finished his philosophy studies and absorbed the ideas of Steve Reich and John Cage. Those influences prompted a move from Dublin to New York City, where he extended his stripped-down electronic approach by incorporating the dub textures and crackle textures associated with producers such as Pole. He established the Minimise imprint in 2000 and issued three EPs on it before attracting the attention of the major German experimental techno outlet Force Inc., which commissioned an album. Working with newly available software-based tools, Costello devoted the summer of 2000 to the material that surfaced later the same year as Growing Up in Public. The association with Force Inc.’s extensive distribution and reputation quickly elevated the previously obscure Dublin artist into one of the most promising new names within experimental techno. He maintained an exceptionally high output for the rest of the decade, delivering the albums Together Is the New Alone on Mille Plateaux in 2001, 6X6=36 on Minimise in 2006, and Colorseries on Minimise in 2007—the last two drawn from conceptual 12-inch projects—alongside numerous additional 12-inch-only recordings. In 2009 he began working with the Poker Flat label and completed Before We Say Goodbye, which appeared at the start of the following year.