A short sound collage made for Old Tunes, Fresh Takes podcast inspired by a piece I saw performed live by John Cage in Huddersfield, I think in 1989, it was Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. I was captivated by the location recordings from places in the book that he used, this was mixed with musical excerpts played by Irish musicians and dancers.

I tried to weave my own little music excerpts into the sound recordings I made in and around Newport, plus a little bit of Dylan Thomas at the start. I was also reading a novel called ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ by RC Sherriff about a countdown to the end of the world (due to a collision with the moon) where the main character is frustrated by the way people take this devastating news in their stride, without panic etc and my wife noticed that there are modern day parallels with Global Warming etc. I used recordings of a couple of old chaps in Newport talking about rugby, and people generally just getting on with life, shopping etc without particularly thinking about their own destiny.

Lyke Wake Dirge

Julian Hayman