Operating Theatre Spring is Coming With a Strawberry in the Mouth (1986)
The 1980s in Ireland was a decade of recession, unemployment and mass emigration. The economic boom didn't reach the Emerald Isle, and the Troubles in the North dominated headlines nationwide. Going against the grain, a young Spanish singer named Elena Lopez relocated to Dublin. There she met composer Roger Doyle and theatrical performer Olwen Fouere—and so Operating Theatre was formed.
Leading the charge for electro-acoustic composition and experimental theater during that period, Doyle was once dubbed "the Godfather of Irish Electronic Music" by Hot Press magazine. “Spring is Coming With a Strawberry in the Mouth” might be the best entry point to Doyle’s vast catalog, an iconic proto-synth-pop power ballad with a scintillating synth and electro-acoustic brass melody alongside Lopez's haunting vocals that always floor me. Doyle created it using a Fairlight sampler, an instrument favored by both Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel for their seminal albums around the same era.
Doyle's Fairlight productions caught the imagination of a young Bono, who subsequently tapped Doyle for piano lessons. This eventually led to Operating Theatre's signing to U2's imprint Mother Records, a label set on promoting Irish talent.
But lackluster advertising of Operating Theatre's big single had the group more or less fizzle out as a result. Thanks to Dublin's Allchival doing almighty work in reissuing the music of Operating Theatre, this outstanding single is experiencing a second spring, after all.