With "Chain of Keys" and "The Wheel" we have at least heard the early live versions and the final album takes, but the rest is new to us, and we only getting the scraps of them from inbetween this "brilliant" BBC play... Why don't release them in full on YouTube? I really liked those snippets of "Pity for the Old Road".

It would be nice if they'd play the songs in their entirety as intros or outros, wouldn't it? I love Pity for the Old Road, or at least the parts of it we heard.

I didn't really pay any attention to the run-up to the album being released so I didn't know how many of these songs were trailed in the pre-recording performances, and was going to ask whether anyone here knew. So far I can see why the pieces which we already knew about *were* worked into fully-formed album versions, and the ones that weren't, weren't. The possible exception is 'The Red Road' which was on this morning's episode, the one that has the notoriously troublesome plum imagery: despite that, it sounds close to Balkan folksong and it might have been interesting to see where that would have gone. But perhaps that was the problem with it: maybe Polly felt it was edging too close to pastiche, and couldn't find a way of developing it. Quite apart from the plums. You can hear her almost catching back the word as she sings it, so it isn't too prominent. I think it's worth bearing in mind that all these versions are just rough working drafts which she's allowed out partly because they fit the purpose of the drama, and partly because (I presume) she still owns them whereas Island own the album versions. She probably doesn't have the same archaeological interest in them as we do.

As for the drama itself, 'enjoying' probably isn't the word, but whereas I had my doubts when it started I'm now getting used to bawling my eyes out for 15 minutes a day. That's getting something out of it.

"Dance on the Mountain" is so good. I wish Polly to put it out!Ah!I miss that minimalistic aesthetics, it is so powerful!

totally agree with both of you guys AineteEkaterini and joy
and Dance on the Mountain is the guitar riff we hear in first ep

The main riff of Dance on the Mountain reminds me of a guitar part in the demo version of Joe
(from 1:24)

yes, right

The two songs on the last episode don't seem to be related to the published poems in The Hollow of the Hand; are there any parallels in the e-book version, which I think contains facsimile pages from Polly's notebooks? Does anyone here have that?

Actually, though I was a bit dismissive of the demo versions, 'Clothes of Grief' is beautiful. Very English folk-y. But again, perhaps that's why she decided not to work it up.

Feedback this afternoon has a nice and very appreciative piece on the drama (and some music). They have Fin Kennedy on to answer questions from some listeners. He says the producer, Nadia Molinari, came to him with the seven songs and after obsessive listening he wove the play out of them, which casts interesting light on the creative process.

The programme is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b088jj6d and the relevant bit is between 15.43 and 20.21.

LISTEN DANCE IN THE MOUNTAIN

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/article ... -of-poetry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04qhgml

Thanks, Me Jane! How do you guys think - is it PJ whispering "Something terrifying" throughout the song or is it somebody else?

Here you can download all 5 episodes as 1 file: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrv5m/episodes/downloads.

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https://www.last.fm/user/xBrokenBunny

thanks!

Thanks to KickInside, indeed.

Here's what I was able to get from this radio play (8 mp3 files): http://www.mediafire.com/file/05dwxtk1vc3wx10/0-0117_kD.rar.


"The Red Road" sounds very interesting to me, but since I can't be sure about "how the song goes" I separated its bits in 2 files. And also I did my best to make something listenable out of that guitar riff from "Dance on the Mountain", which was used in the 1st episode without piano.

These are wonderful, thank you Kuk!

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https://www.last.fm/user/xBrokenBunny