Incidental Music: Alison Layland
Alison Layland introduces us to a playlist of some of the musical inspiration behind her latest novel, After the Clearances.
I love mixing genres – my novel itself blends of mystery, suspense and revenge with speculative/climate fiction – and media, drawing inspiration from images and in particular, music. I’ve written before [https://crime.cymru/2022/10/21/how-i-write-alison-layland/] about my novel-based playlists, focusing on my previous novel, Riverflow, and here I’m bringing you some of the sounds behind After the Clearances.
The novel is set in the near future, 2056, in a UK where the government has implemented a ‘resettlement’ policy of deliberate rural depopulation (known to those affected as the Clearances), ostensibly to enable better distribution of dwindling resources. On a remote island, the fictional Ynys Hudol – inspired by Ynys Enlli or Bardsey Island – a small community, the Seeders, have evaded the Clearances to establish an idealistic way of life. Into this scenario comes Sandy, searching for her partner who has betrayed her and caused her to lose her job. As she gets to know her hosts, in particular 13-year-old Glesni and her Taid (grandfather), Erik, things she discovers makes her wonder if she has found a way to avenge the death of her sister many years ago in an environmental protest that went violently wrong.
You can listen to a selection of my playlist here. my actual ‘soundtrack’ is much longer, but a few examples are enough to lead you into the novel’s world…
To begin at the beginning, I listened to lots of songs about idealism and community while forming the idea of the Seeders. Among these, new-folk band Tunng’s By This, describes leaving a life behind and embarking on a new one, ending: ‘Drawing all your peace – We live and feel – By this…’ A darker feel, with the idea of cutting themselves off from the menace they face, and yet being open to people who share their beliefs, is provided by Sieben’s mysterious The Other Side of the River: ‘Everyone may share what we possess.’ I also became fascinated by similar communities from history, in particularly the short-lived Diggers, or True Levellers, a movement founded in 1649 not long after the Civil War. I love Chumbawamba’s faithful rendition of the contemporary Diggers Song.
Apart from government persecution, the Seeders, and the world they are surrounded by in 2056, are faced with the impacts of climate change, and many of the community members came from a background of protest – increasingly dubbed terrorism by a succession of governments. Numerous songs on environmental themes featured on my playlist; the ones here are a selection. In The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Brendan Perry envisages what will be lost if we don’t act. Similarly, Emily Barker mourns the loss of the natural world in the face of indifference, in Where Have the Sparrows Gone: ‘though we told them years ago, they didn’t listen to our shout.’ The love of the land and the Earth is beautifully portrayed in Kitty Macfarlane’s bittersweet Man, Friendship.
Central to the backstory in the novel is a large protest that took place in the 2030s, some twenty years before the main action of the novel. This is where Sandy’s sister, an investigative journalist, was killed, and she is horrified to discover that several of her new friends approved of it. The Irlas Dam incident, as it was known, concerns the proposed damming of a substantial Welsh valley to provide water, with the potential loss of a successful rewilding and regenerative farming project, thus uniting Welsh nationalism with the environmental movement. This has echoes of the 1960s drowning of the Tryweryn valley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryweryn_flooding], and loss of a Welsh village. Welsh protest singer Meic Stevens’ haunting Tryweryn is a tribute to the displaced community, while Underwater Song by Adrian Crowley is a haunting evocation of revisiting a drowned village.
The second thread of the novel is on the mainland, where a young woman, Bela, leads a feral existence on an abandoned smallholding in a region left empty by the Clearances. She takes in a fugitive, Winter, and their friendship develops as a connection to the Seeders is gradually revealed. Her strange character was partly inspired by Tunng’s intriguing song, Woodcat. After a difficult start, Winter’s feelings of finding sanctuary are suggested by the Waterboys’ A Pagan Place.
Back on the island, the central conflict as Sandy and Erik circle one another and Glesni tries to work out what is happening and what the consequences will be for her family and community, is encapsulated for me in Sooner or Later by Justin Sullivan: ‘Sooner or later one of us will break and say what we must not say’.
Without giving too much away, the emotion towards the end of the novel was captured by the haunting Last Mile Home by Jon Boden, with its bittersweet idea of returning to a beloved place and not knowing what, or who, you will find there.
Finally, there’s a song that isn’t on the playlist, because it’s not (yet) on Spotify. My daughter-in-law, Abi, is a lovely singer-songwriter. Last year, my daughter stayed with me on Bardsey Island and filmed a wonderful book trailer video for me; she and Abi adapted one of her songs to use for the soundtrack. You can watch the video here.
I hope you enjoy listening. I’d love to know more about the way other people use music to inspire their writing or deepen their reading enjoyment!
Find out more about Alison Layland at her website http://www.alayland.uk
Book links:
After the Clearances: https://linktr.ee/AlisonLayland
Riverflow: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1909983977
Someone Else’s Conflict: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00K9W416I