THE SKY BLUES

You certainly couldn't accuse sean-nss singer Iarla O'Lionaird of jumping on the Celtic music bandwagon. Under a canvas of dark brooding soundscapes, grinding industrial noises and traditional music samples, his latest solo album I Could Read The Sky, is about as far away from Riverdance and its ilk as you could possibly get.

"It's certainly not pandering to the current vogue for all things Celtic," he says, prior to embarking on a short solo tour. "Anyway, it would be impossible for me to go down that road. I work mainly with left-field people at Real World and when you're exploring new sounds and possibilities you're not thinking about trying to appeal to the charts."
The music was written for, and inspired by a new film, I Could Read The Sky, which is in turn based on Timothy O'Grady's novel of the same name.
"The book is essentially about the experiences of an Irish labourer in England and about the kind of journey this man had to make, from the rural West of Ireland to the dark industrial environment of a building site in London, Iarla explains. "Most of us have no concept of how that would affect us, to make such a dramatic change from a familiar environment to an alien one."
When O'Lionaird was first approached about working on the soundtrack he knew he could relate to the film's central theme.
"I grew up in a remote, Gaelic speaking, pre-industrial area in West Cork and I came to Dublin to go to college which was a huge change for me. It's amazing how simple life was on the farm when I was growing up. The spud-digging machine that my father bought back in 1968 was a marvel to me when I saw it first! Before it arrived, I used to help to pick the spuds by hand and I can still remember feeling the pain afterwards.
"I tried to use that imagery on the album to make the journey, sonically from one place to another. There's a broad canvas of sounds on the album from Martin Hayes fiddle to the voice of Dermot Healy who plays the main role in the film."
Siniad O'Connor appears on two tracks on the album including a typically intense version of 'Roisin Dubh' and a live duet with O'Lionaird on an old Northern Irish song 'Singing Bird'.
"I'd never worked with her before," he says "The first time we met, we sang live together at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London before people like Stephen Rea and Danny Morrisson. We included the live track on the album though we took out the applause to make it blend in with the rest."
Meanwhile O'Lionaird's "day job" as vocalist with the Afro Celt Sound System continues to take up the bulk of his time.
"It's great touring with them," he says. "We go to all these folk and world music festivals and basically blast everybody off the stage. We played the Paramount in Seattle recently and we sold more tickets than Oasis. It s true: we sold out and they had tickets left over. Sorry Liam! Sorry Noel!"
I Could Read The Sky is out on Real World Records. Iarla O'Lionaird plays Vicar St. Dublin on May 31st.