It's often hard to know where Timothy O'Grady's novel I Could Read the Sky is set, other than in the splintered memory of an old, broken, spent Irish labourer, reminiscing in his London bedsit. It's the oddest of books, liberally illustrated with Steve Pyke's moody black and white photographs. It arose in part from O'Grady's own experiences, as well as conversations and vibey musical sessions with the great fiddler Martin Hayes from County Clare in Ireland and other emigrant Irish musicians and indeed labourers in England and the USA.
At the London launch, O’Grady and Pyke were joined by actor Stephen Rea, Irish singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, Sinead O’Connor, and Martin Hayes with his guitar accompanist/partner Dennis Cahill. They all did their bit, performing under Pyke’s large projected photographs - as if the subject was somehow bigger than all of them.
When Nichola Bruce approached Iarla Ó Lionáird initially as a singer, later as producer for her moody, impressionistic, feature-length film of the book, Ó Lionáird leapt at the opportunity. Ó Lionáird’s record company, Real World, didn't take much convincing to row in behind the soundtrack. They are releasing an album of music written for and inspired by the film: a thoughtful, low-temperature soundscape in its own right, with key voices emerging from the mix on different tracks. "I wanted to see if we could make a coherent, interesting album as a by-product of the film, using different structural components, short narrative snatches of what would have been longer abstract pieces..."
Click here to learn more about the book
I Could Read the Sky
by Timothy O'Grady
Working with London-based programmer Ron Aslan, the two used samples of everything from instruments and building sites "just to give haphazard texturing" to the voice of novelist Dermot Healy (who neatly fits the film's central role), Iarla also brought in London-Irish musos James McNally and Tommy McManamon, as well as Caroline Dale's lyrical cello.
Meanwhile, Sinéad O'Connor re-interpreted the 18th century Irish rebellion-hymn "Roisin Dubh" and dueted with Iarla on the old Northern Irish song, "Singing Bird." "Knuckles to the Marrow" features the native Irish rapper Rí-Rá delivering himself in the blistering, marinated rage of a sedated hip-hop routine.
The heavy texturing is respectfully broken for the naked recordings of two great Irish musical masters: the impeccable lilt of Martin Hayes' fiddle playing on "The Old Road to Garry" and Noel Hill's little concertina shaking the emotion from the air with "The Mountains of Pomeroy."
Born in 1964 as one of 12 children, Iarla grew up in west County Cork in Cúil Aodha, a remote, rural Gaeltacht area where Irish was the first language spoken by the people and emigration was as common as supper.
"Because I grew up in the countryside, I can understand so strongly that the only th
ings these men had ever really heard were birds and cows and horses. So, from a familiar world of country lanes and cottages and seasonal farm work - that's the mindscape Noel's and Martin's music comes from, a world of birdsong, of gentleness - all of a sudden, these people were hearing monstrous machines, Hilti guns, buses. The mind wouldn't have the apparatus to deal with that, it could be quite a crushing experience. That was the threshold we were trying to cross... "
"I spend a vast proportion of my working time in London now, but until recently I knew nothing about the London-Irish community, apart from old fellas in Cúil Aodha who'd worked their whole lives as navvies and their memories were very scattered. That workman's life in London had, and indeed has, quite an invisibility to it. A never-ending supply of young men who are dead by their early 60s..."
Originally, Iarla started working from a script and a cue-sheet, talking it all out with the film director Nichola Bruce to develop an appropriate musical language. "I didn't have the movie in front of me so it was very open, like an imaginary landscape you were filling in. As a producer, you work in both a musical and programmatic way, with a structure which you can actually see visually. Basically, you're responsible for everything and at the end of the day people look to you for ideas – and, thanks be to God, I wasn't short of them. I threw what I could at it, conceptually."
Although many voices and accents and experiences are brought to bear on this project, many percolate from Iarla's native Cúil Aodha where the local hinterland hosts many fine poets, storytellers, fiddlers and flute-players. Iarla's own childhood experiences with the native choir in the Cúil Aodha church tangibly influence the record. Iarla was involved with the choir until his early 20s, when he left to study literature in University College, Dublin and worked for some years as a teacher. Increasingly, however, his sean nós (literally "old style") crooning began to pop up on recordings such as on Shaun Davey's symphony "The Pilgrim and on the great accordion-player Tony McMahon's beautifully pure album with Noel Hill, "Aislingi Cheoil." Indeed, it was McMahon who coaxed Iarla back into singing after a two-year "sabbatical".
Nowadays, Iarla spends a considerable amount of his time with the big touring outfit of the Afro Celt Sound System and is currently deep into the "writing stage" of the new Afro Celt album. However Iarla also tours his own "multi-media" solo show, backed up by projected computer-generated imagery. "It's basically a set of 17 songs, about half of them accompanied by backing tracks from Michael Brook, like ambient poems. It's pretty intense, but it’s a fantastic workout for me."
"I’m extremely fortunate with my solo work, in that I can indulge myself and make the work more dreamy - and more hardcore at times. I don't have to go down the paths that people other than Real World would try and carve out for me. I'd wither away without that opportunity."
Text and images courtesy of Real World