The Leyline by Alula Down

an album / a journey / a story of stops along a line

On this, their 9th full length album, Alula Down follow a compositional thread that they first presented in the series of home-based “Postcards from Godley Moor” albums released during 2020 and 2021.

This is an album of sounds and responses. It was created on a journey from Delos in the Aegean Sea, along the ancient and mysterious Michael/Apollo Leyline, across mainland Greece, up the length of Italy and across France to reach Mont St Michel.

The journey happened in the hot summer drought of 2022, pausing at six sacred and resonant sites to write songs, poetry and blog posts, and - each time - to create a piece of music. Each piece of music was made on location, the same day as the visit.

Using sound collage and incorporating field recording and processed sound, a listening practice underlies the album's musical response to the culture and ecology of place.

Exploring the sound signature of each of the sites along the Leyline in order to develop original songs and spoken word, the album is rooted in experience. Drawing from the natural world, the vernacular and location, the work can perhaps be regarded as “folk adjacent” - like the “sound poems” album from the beginning of this year.

Stopping every hundred miles to recharge a small electric car, this is slow music, made with the simplicity of instruments that could be carried alongside camping gear.

Aware of the unearned privilege to cross borders with ease, listening for ‘rhythms and patterns of movement’, recognising stories and sounds of people and land in crisis, the album describes the resonance of the leyline with contemporary migrations - a reminder of the movement of people, creatures and trees dragging homes roots and lives northwards as the globe heats.



Listening Notes -
DELOS (Tracks 1, 2 & 3):
The album opens with the waves of the Aegean Sea - recorded on Tinos, looking out towards the island of Delos, birthplace of Apollo, and subtly processed to create a constant wash of sound - a suggestion of melody emerging from amidst the drone electronics.
The seascape provides a bed for an improvisation on bowed and plucked ukulele, recorded as a single first take in an airbnb kitchen. The tone is expectation, resisting resolution - preparation for the journey ahead - and reflection on the elemental experience of dust, sea, sun and wind, in the strange slumbering of Delos.
As the waves die away, wind is heard rattling through the stiff fronds of a palm tree in Tinos town, as insistent bells chime.
DELPHI (Tracks 4 & 5):
The first response to Delphi offers three perspectives on the movement of people: walking with the Ancient Greek King Attalus, tourists driving down the A48 trunk road through the mountains, and migrants moving from North Africa into Europe and meeting hostility and rejection. A simple setting of harmonium and voice gives space for the powerful lyric story.
A steady beat of repeating chords on a warmly amplified electric guitar interplays with a delicate piano figure, with the cascading song of a rock-nuthatch recorded at the temple, and the soft tread and quiet sunburnt chatter of tourists. Observing three women in the Temple of Apollo, the lyric reflects on the intersection of the modern and the ancient, at the site where powerful mythic Oracle priestesses were once consulted.
MONTE SANT’ANGELO (Tracks 6, 7 & 8):
Crossing the Adriatic into southern Italy, field recordings capture the sound of a busy town centre beach in school holiday Bisceglie.
Monte Sant’Angelo offers a musique concrete bed - incorporating bells, processed street sounds, bowed double bass and violin - as an accompaniment to a spoken word piece which evokes the hot, dry southern Italian landscape, and the cool, magical environment of the santurio cave, hidden deep underneath the town church.
.. and then the storm breaks, recorded through an airbnb bedroom window, as bells ring out from the church tower across the street.
PERUGIA (Track 9):
Water, and the absence of water, dominate the trip through Italy. The Po valley in the North is parched beyond memory, the olive crops in the south are dwindling, and from another mountain top village, the view out across the valley shows the devastatingly low level of the reservoir which has resulted in all the water in the village being shut off. Field recordings from the village of Paganico, and of the wild abandon of their fire ceremony the previous evening - that went ahead regardless of the absence of any water in the village that night - combine with a repeating ukulele figure and phased repeating voices.
SACRA DI SAN MICHELE (Tracks 10 & 11):
The journey continues from Perugia up to the edge of the Alps in Piedmont, and a still point in the brief looping organ figure recorded in the Sacra di San Michele as occasional footsteps, doors closing, and voices are heard echoing around the soundscape.
A song, written that day, emerges alongside the voices. Re-recorded later with double bass accompaniment, the simplicity of the arrangement brings a crystalline quality to the singing, and gives emphasis to the quietness of longing for a safe place to call home.
MONT ST MICHEL (Tracks 12 & 13):
After a playful interlude of humming recorded in the car (over 3000 miles were travelled in that small car that hot summer…)
.. our pilgrims arrive in Mont St Michel. The closing song of the album has the richest arrangement of all - looped footsteps walking the walls of Mont St Michel provide a pulse for weaving guitar, ukulele and gently breathing harmonium in classic Alula Down style. The song’s melody echoes a looped fragment of singing from monks overheard from the streets of Mont St Michel.


Reflections on the uncertainty of our times, the fundamental insult of national borders, the awful reality of climate breakdown, all merge in a connection with the historical, the spiritual and the continuing stories of people on the move.

And, perhaps, an extraordinary continent-spanning line of energy. And a journey made by two people during one hot summer.

Alula Down. The Leyline.

mark waters & kate gathercole. explorations using folk song, collage, improvisation and field recording.

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