Key4050
As many of the world’s truly outstanding clubs have a habit of doing, Dublin’s Temple Theatre became a lightning rod for embryonic electronic music talent. Post-millennium, it acted as a beacon for a new emerging wave of Irish DJs, who – congregating in the former church’s Space and Crypt club floors, were musically schooled by a succession of superstar DJs. A temple in every sense, it was there, in 2002 that the paths of local Dublin lad Bryan Kearney and John O’Callaghan from up the road in Navan first crossed. An instant musical connection made, after hours, the pair would regularly head to John’s makeshift studio at his apartment in the city’s south inner city. To gain access to that apartment complex, a gate code was required. That code was Key4050.
Key4050’s musical lineage was influenced by several producers, but none more so though than Mauro Picotto and his inimitable BXR sound. “Like a god” is how John describes the genre-fusing Italian, and his productions were regularly dissected by the duo in the post-Temple hours. In 2003, at the peak of the Temple’s success (“the best clubbing experiences of my life”, attests O’Callaghan), restoration costs calamitously pushed it into closure. Whilst mourning its loss, conversely, it also spurred an impetus in a new wave of rising DJ/producers. They went on to recast Irish electronic music in their image. With the club playing the most fundamental parts in fomenting their careers, John and Bryan long looked for a way to pay dues to it. The solution lay on hard drives, some dating back over a decade. There, amongst dozens upon dozens of demos, ideas, half-completes, and all-but-there works lay the musical essence of their Temple experiences. So Bryan and John went to work finishing a job that – at the time – they didn’t even know they’d begun.