Lipids
Artist
Barry O'Halpin

Lipids

These three works from 2014-2019 chart the evolution of Barry’s inventive and exploratory writing for both chamber ensemble and solo electric guitar, as composer in residence and guitarist with Crash Ensemble.

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TERRARIUM

Composed by
ann cleare
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TERRARIUM maps the evolving geological strata of Ireland’s Midlands into sound. From ice to lake to bog to industrialisation to contemporary hydrology, a landscape of time is sonically constructed from the memory and myth that emanate from within this post-industrial terrain.

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The Midlands have always existed in a flux between land and water, and TERRARIUM explores a unique site that encapsulates its ever-changing terrain. 

Nestled deep within Boora Parklands in County Offaly, one can find the ruin of a Mesolithic shoreline, which, dating to between 6800 and 6500 BC, is thought to be one of the earliest sites of human activity in Ireland. Situated a few miles from the main entrance to the park, the only way to access this site is by foot and the scenic route takes you through varied landscapes of bog, wood, and water. The site itself is like a puzzle that every visitor must interpret for themselves. Having lived so many lives from prehistoric to modern times, the land there is a time and energy sponge, and has an important story to tell. 

This story includes dramatic changes in matter, form, and scale, all of which guide the structure of TERRARIUM, Scroll down to explore the ‘Stratiform’.

I - ICE: 0.00

The piece begins in ‘Ice’, a frozen sonic state that gradually thaws around the listener.

II - STORM: 4.48

This thaw moves to ‘Storm’ and the formation of a pathway toward the calm waters of an ancient ‘Lake’.

III - MESOLITHIC LAKE:
10.18

The calm waters of an ancient ‘Lake’.

IV - EARTH: 17.53

From here, the music enacts the dramatic growth of 8,000 years of ‘Earth’ over the lake, the ensemble becoming stratified between layers of an evolving bog-scape.

V - MOSS: 31.04

This culminates in ‘Moss’, which sees the musical texture expand upward and outward, like a rising, breathing dome of sound.

VI - INDUSTRY: 40.11

‘Industry’ is a brief and cataclysmic happening, proportionate to the two short decades it took for industrial peat extraction to bring the surface level of the earth meters down again, revealing the remains of the Mesolithic site, a ghost lake.

VII - GHOST LAKE: 44.09

The ‘Ghost Lake’ brings us to present day, where marl, a grey dust, marks the end of the bog and the basin of the ancient lake. Engraved in this are tiny traces and echoes of everything the land has contained.

VIII - REWETTING: 48.16

In ‘Rewetting’, the final section of the piece, water returns, but this time guided by the sound of modern hydrology, and the potential futures it might offer.

The poem ‘Echoes’ by W.S Merwin was a constant companion through the years of creating TERRARIUM. Its opening lines read:

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 Everything we hear is an echo. Anyone can see that echoes move forward and backward in time, in rings. But not everyone realizes that as a result silence becomes harder and harder for us to grasp—though it in itself is unchanged—because of the echoes pouring through us out of the past, unless we can learn to set them at rest. How do we sound to the past? And there are sounds that rush away from us: echoes of future words. So, we know that there are words in the future, some of them loud and terrible. And we know that there is silence in the future. But will the words recognize their unchanging homeland?”

There are many backward and forward moving echoes emanating from the land at Boora, many of which have been engraved into the musical layers of TERRARIUM.

Even though the site has been drained, there is the echo of water and the role that water has played in the Midlands, both before any human ever set foot on it, up to the present day where Uisce Éireann are seeking permission to pump water from the Shannon to other areas of the country that are at a critical shortage. Just like the peatlands before it, the centre of Ireland continues to be a source of energy that powers the wider regions around it.

There is the returning echo of the Crane, a bird that has been extinct for 300 years. Visiting the rewilded areas of the Parklands at Boora today, one can spot many bird-watchers eagerly awaiting the return of the Crane. The Ecology team at Bord na Móna kindly shared a recent recording of a Crane call taken on Boora, which echoes at the end of TERRARIUM.

And lastly, there is the echo of the bog that once existed far above the remains of the drained lake basin, 8,000 years and many meters of growth in the making.

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Standing on the shoreline where our Mesolithic ancestors took shelter around 9000 years ago, it is difficult to comprehend whether the site is a beginning or an ending or some sort? In TERRARIUM, it is not only a site for artistic exploration, but also becomes a place for reflection, pause, and imagining on the land’s story of growth and decay, expansion and depletion, standing as a reminder of the passage of time and our capacity to imagine or invent a time to come.

Terrarium Album CoverTerrarium Album Cover Reverse

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Created in collaboration Kari Cahill and Hazel McCague from Lay of the Land, and with Laura Sheeran, Crash Ensemble’s filmmaker in residence.

‍TERRARIUM was co-commissioned by Crash Ensemble, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and November Music. Ann Cleare and Lay of the Land’s Collaboration was also supported by an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.

TERRARIUM
Audio

TERRARIUM

Ann Cleare
Postcards
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Postcards

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Crash Ensemble present Wingform by Barry O'Halpin
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Crash Ensemble present Wingform by Barry O'Halpin

Composed by Barry O'Halpin, Video by Laura Sheeran
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