The Bat-Light Series #13: Clannad

"In this strange land… this strange land" — The Bat-Light Series Edition 13 turns the bat-light toward Clannad, a group whose music feels rooted in mist, memory, and ancient landscapes. Emerging from Ireland with a sound shaped by traditional folk, ethereal harmonies, and

"In this strange land… this strange land" — The Bat-Light Series Edition 13 turns the bat-light toward Clannad, a group whose music feels rooted in mist, memory, and ancient landscapes. Emerging from Ireland with a sound shaped by traditional folk, ethereal harmonies, and a deep sense of place, Clannad carved out a world where the past and the unseen quietly converge. Their music moves with a hushed, almost sacred presence — timeless, introspective, and gently otherworldly.

Formed in 1970 in Gweedore, County Donegal — a Gaeltacht region where Irish remains a living, everyday language — Clannad emerged as a close-knit family ensemble built around siblings Moya Brennan (Máire), Ciarán Brennan and Pól Brennan, alongside their twin uncles Noel Duggan and Pádraig Duggan. Shaped from the outset by traditional Irish music, Gaelic song, and the communal atmosphere of their family-owned Leo’s Tavern, Clannad’s earliest recordings were firmly rooted in folk traditions and Irish-language material. Their continued and deliberate use of the Irish language — even as their audience expanded internationally — added an additional layer of distance and mystery to their music, allowing emotion, tone, and atmosphere to carry meaning where words remained unfamiliar. Over time, their sound expanded far beyond its acoustic origins, gradually incorporating richer harmonic layers, subtle electronic textures, and a cinematic sense of space that would become central to their identity. This evolution became especially pronounced across albums such as Magical Ring, Atlantic Realm, and Lore, where traditional instrumentation and mythic themes merged with modern production to create music that felt suspended between the ancient and the contemporary. The early 1980s also marked the brief involvement of their younger family member Enya, who contributed keyboards and backing vocals before departing to pursue a solo career — a path that would later bring her worldwide recognition and further echo Clannad’s atmospheric foundations in a more solitary, studio-driven form. Clannad’s own international breakthrough arrived in 1982 with Theme from Harry’s Game, a haunting single sung entirely in Irish that defied commercial expectations and introduced their ethereal aesthetic to a global audience. Their growing connection to visual storytelling became equally defining through their music for the television series Robin of Sherwood, released as the album Legend, which earned them a BAFTA and firmly established their reputation for creating sound that feels inseparable from landscape, myth, and memory. In hindsight, Clannad’s work laid much of the groundwork for what would later be described as Celtic ambient music, influencing not only artists that followed but also the broader language of atmospheric folk and cinematic sound. Across decades of activity, their music has remained marked by restraint, emotional clarity, and a hushed, almost sacred quality — a sound that does not seek to dominate, but to quietly envelop, evoking place, history, and the lingering presence of something ancient within the modern world.

Selected track: Strange Land — written in 1984 for the television series Robin of Sherwood, one of my all-time favourite shows and, for me, probably the most atmospheric and compelling adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. Rather than functioning as a conventional song, Strange Land unfolds as a suspended mood piece, built on repetition, restraint and quiet tension. Its sparse structure and haunting vocal delivery evoke displacement and uncertainty, mirroring the series’ darker, myth-infused portrayal of exile, forest and fate. The recurring line “In this strange land” functions less as a conventional lyric and more as an invocation, reinforcing Clannad’s ability to transform narrative context into something timeless, inward and almost ritualistic.

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