James Joyce

Brown Wimpenny’s experimental take on Raglan Road builds a dense wall of sound around Patrick Kavanagh’s Joycean poem of longing and loss. The eleven-piece collective’s version “probes the relationship between cacophony and beauty; attempting to show that by sitting with chaos and perpetual change, we can find a new cohesion.” The track is taken from a forthcoming debut album, details of which are yet to be announced.

On Bloomsday, enjoy the words of James Joyce from Ulysses, set to music by Sonny Condell (Scullion), plus, watch a specially commissioned film by Myles O’Reilly (Arbutus Yarns).

June 16, is Bloomsday, an annual celebration dedicated to Leopold Bloom, the “every man” hero in James Joyce’s 1922 experimental novel Ulysses. To provide a soundtrack for the weekend’s activities, we asked Derek Pyle to highlight some Joyce-inspired music for our readers.

“We gathered a host of musicians and writers, artists and scholars, weirdos and generally adventurous people to set the James Joyce’s bizarre novel, Finnegans Wake, to music.” We talk to Derek Pyle, the Project Director and give you a unique first listen of several tracks from the new release.