Inspired by 'At Hawthorn Time'; released on Jeff Barratt's label, Rivertones. Artwork by Lucie Murtagh.

Babb Hill

The Boundway

Inspired by 'Rain: Four Walks in English Weather'. Image by Lucie Murtagh.

Plash

This track was produced to mark the publication of the novel ‘All Among the Barley’ (Bloomsbury, August 2018). The vocalist is Helena Ward: www.helenawardmusic.com

The Ripe and Bearded Barley

The Ripe And Bearded Barley

This track was produced to mark the publication of ‘All Among the Barley’ (Bloomsbury, August 2018). Recorded on location in a Suffolk barley field, it's a companion piece to 'The Ripe And Bearded Barley', which can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/mzharrison-1/the-ripe-and-bearded-barley. The vocalist on both tracks is Helena Ward: www.helenawardmusic.com

The Ripe And Bearded Barley (reprise)

Clay is a novel set in and around a small city park: a couple of nondescript acres of grimy and litter-blown grass next to an estate. Over the course of a year the book follows five people who live near or pass through it: Sophia, a widow, who loves it and secretly plants daffodil bulbs and feeds the birds that nest there; TC, a nine-year-old boy from an unhappy home who skips school to look for animals in its forgotten corners; Linda, Sophia's daughter, who thinks the park is ugly and untidy, if she thinks of it at all; Linda's daughter Daisy, who is nearly the same age as TC but whose wealthy upbringing means she exists in a very different world, and Jozef, a Polish immigrant who misses the family farm he left behind and struggles to make sense of life in a foreign city.

It's been called an 'urban pastoral' and a 'nature novel' – both ways of reconciling differing ideas – and that dichotomy is also why this playlist contains dubstep and dancehall but also classical music: the gritty reality of urban life, sure, but also the beauty and tranquillity of nature for those with eyes to see. It will take you through a day and a night in the book's district: 'The rough territory of a dog fox; the distance an old lady with a stick could cover in an afternoon; the area a small boy could come to know and call his own.'

Click here to see the full track listing and notes on the brilliant Largehearted Boy site: http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2013/02/book_notes_meli_3.html; to discover more music by Peter Rogers, who made this mix, click here: http://soundcloud.com/technimatic

Clay: a literary playlist

Writer, ex-Londoner, club trash, festival mascot, Mixmag survivor

M_Z_Harrison

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