It started with a skull he wasn’t allowed to see. In 1979, a six-year-old in a small town in Ireland heard “Oxygène 4” on television and couldn’t let it go. His parents eventually bought the album — and kept the cover from him. The artwork, a planet peeling open to reveal a skull, was judged too much. He didn’t see it until he was thirteen. By then the music had done its work.

Then came Depeche Mode. “Everything Counts” first. Then, at thirteen, “Blasphemous Rumours” — a song that questioned God, produced like nothing he had heard. Draw a straight line from that record to Last Rites and Roulette.

In a country where more than nine in ten people were Catholic, the Church came down hard on that song. It got no radio play. The singles that followed, from Black Celebration through Violator, went unpromoted, and “Personal Jesus” never made national radio. Depeche Mode were barely seen on Irish television again until 1993. Fans found the songs anyway: “Blasphemous Rumours” still climbed to No. 8 in the Irish chart.

At home it got personal. The local priest went to his father: this music was evil, computers and synthesizers built to steer children away from God, and the boy had to be stopped. He didn’t stop. On the priest’s word he was refused communion and kept out of the church, allowed inside only for funerals. In a small Irish town, everyone knew. Years later he wrote Last Rites, Roulette and Limbo.

Kraftwerk, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream followed. With Depeche Mode gone from Irish screens, the 12-inches and mixes came by mail order from England, out of the back pages of Record Collector.

Mike Oldfield mattered too: Tubular Bells, and Ommadawn, with Paddy Moloney’s uilleann pipes and a title taken from the Irish amadán, the fool. Oldfield wrote the music, brought in voices like Maggie Reilly on “Moonlight Shadow”, and kept reworking his own songs. Black Swarm works the same way — he builds the world, Kat gives it a voice. And the uilleann pipes came back: they carry Regina’s anthem.

By fifteen he had his hands on the machines. Through a family friend he got into Windmill Lane, the Dublin studio U2 made their base, and learned the Fairlight, the ARP 2600 and the E-mu Emulators. The Fairlight was the machine Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel were building their records on. The ARP 2600 was on Oxygène, the record that started it all.

In October 1988, just fifteen, he told no one. He took the ferry from the south of Ireland to Wales, got into a car with strangers heading to London, and saw both nights of Jarre’s Destination Docklands. He slept in a bus shelter on Friday and Saturday night. After the Sunday show he found people driving back to Wales, reversed the whole journey, and walked into school on Monday morning. In 1993 and 1994 he followed Depeche Mode across Europe on the Devotional Tour. Then the DJ era: Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, The Orb, Orbital, The Crystal Method. At college in Dublin he had the new records before anyone else and played mixtape sets at parties.

Every one of those pieces is in the catalogue: Jarre and Tangerine Dream in Under the Influence and Psychosis; the dance floor in the trance and techno; Depeche Mode in Blind Faith — and in the name. “Black Swarm” is what Depeche Mode call their fans.

The songs were written over years, in the gaps of another life. When they finally came out, they came all at once: the first album in 2023, the opera in 2026.

The skulls he wasn’t allowed to see are on the cover of Regina.