Name: The Omphalos, Sandycove by these weird isles
Duration: 7 min 14 s
Description: The Omphalos, Sandycove, near Dublin is a Martello tower and the setting of the opening chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses. 'Omphalos' is the Greek for 'navel', the centre of the ancient world. Ulysses is a navel novel.

(The Man Who Invented) Plasticine

Arthur Machen’s stories twitched the veil between our world and a disturbing underworld. On his 150th anniversary Horatio Clare explores the writer’s real and imagined landscapes. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 4th July 2013

Arthur In The Underworld

The Black Flag

Nosso terceiro disco, Transcontinental. Lançado em 2012 pela Midsummer Madness
Gravado no Missladybug Studios e no Loft Studios
Produzido, mixado e masterizado por Robert Love and Gerald Pollard

Our third album, Transcontinental. Released in 2012
Recorded at Missladybug Studios and Loft Studios
Produced, mixed and mastered by Robert Love & Gerald Pollard

Oldfield Park

One of a series of songs written during a period of loss.

Fledgling

Bram Stoker passes through a whalebone arch into a time shift, buys an ice cream from a van owned by Stranglers' drummer Jet Black. Sir Henry Irving morphs into Christopher Lee. Monkey Puzzle Trees do something even more astonishing.

Whitby

British Autumn

Quatuor Bozzini
Musicon, Durham, UK
20 November 2018 (world premiere)

recording and mixing: Mike Worboys

Leafleoht (the title means 'leaf-light' in Anglo-Saxon) arose from a memory-image of wind in the leaves of a hedge near the sea, the intricate and supple motions of the leaves, and bright (morning) sunlight refracting through the plant and reflecting off the leaf surfaces. This image is the focus of the first part of the piece; the second part is more serene and still (perhaps airier, or more concerned with the light alone) and the last is an extremely soft trembling, as of grass. The musical materials are elemental: different lengths and types of bowstroke creating different rhythmic lines and textures; Just Intonation harmony founded on the open strings of the instruments; whistling and murmured speech alongside the playing. As with other recent pieces I am interested in our relationship to what we call the natural world, specifically our embeddedness or indwelling within it. Each part is a single image; as the critic Adrian Searle wrote about an exhibition of Bridget Riley (quoted in the spoken text of the third part), the music attempts 'just to be here, in this light'.

Leafleoht

Lafferty's & The Banshee

The Omphalos, Sandycove, near Dublin is a Martello tower and the setting of the opening chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses. 'Omphalos' is the Greek for 'navel', the centre of the ancient world. Ulysses is a navel novel.

The Omphalos, Sandycove

Psychic Investigations:
exploring the weird British Isles

The Omphalos, Sandycove

these weird isles

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