Mulberry Harbour's blog

Red Wharf Bay

Mulberry Harbour - Red Wharf Bay

Mulberry Harbour

Last summer I visited Benllech in Anglesey for the first time in many years. I used to go there as a kid to visit my grandparents, who retired there, and going down to the beach brought back lots of happy memories. We walked along Benllech beach to Red Wharf Bay, which as a child seemed an enormous distance away, but now is just a pleasant ten minute stroll to a wide inlet with sandbanks, beached fishing boats, and a decent pub overlooking the bay. I always liked the name, and associate it closely with my grandparents' Welsh collie Bryn, who when he wasn't trying to round up gulls used to slip off out of sight, and would invariably be tracked down hours later somewhere in the bay. It's a beautiful spot that inspired something uplifting and celebratory.

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Photo by icyblue

The Brown Study

Mulberry Harbour - Brown study

Mulberry Harbour

 Sometimes phrases that are very familiar to others manage to bi-pass your radar for years and years, slipping by unheard, unread or never spoken in your presence or direction. I only recently heard the phrase "In a brown study",  which is odd as I'm sure there have been plenty of opportunities for someone to use it around me, as I slip off into another introspective daydream - and as always happens with a new word or phrase, once it's out the bag you can't stop coming across it in the following weeks, jumping out at you left, right and centre, making you wonder how you ever avoided exposure to it in the first place.

So when this short track was in progress, there was no question of what it should end up being called.

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photo by TheeErin

The Tinker

Mulberry Harbour - Tinker

Mulberry Harbour

Here's a new track which grew out of tinkering with a repeated guitar figure - double-tracked, harmonised and looped to within an inch of its life...

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Photo by botheredbybees

Weaver

Mulberry Harbour - Weaver

Mulberry Harbour

This instrumental was written for a recent soundtrack project, and features violins and cellos at the heart of the track - something I hadn't done for a while, spurred on in part by getting hold of the the Miroslav Philharmonik library for Reason. I expect there'll be more on the way soon as I explore it. So far I've been mostly impressed, apart from the over-elaborate vibrato on some parts.

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Photo by Pandiyan

The Water Boatman

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Mulberry Harbour - The Water Boatman

Mulberry Harbour

The melody on this track is played on a bowed saw, or 'singing saw' as it's sometimes known. Bend a saw blade, find the sweet spot with a bow, and away you go. I love the sound you can make with it, almost like an acoustic version of another personal favourite, the theremin. Compared to the theremin, it's physically more demanding - and perhaps not as much fun as waving your arms about - as you have to maintain an 'S' shape to make a note, but the advantage is once you have a note it's a little easier to control the pitch. I also think the saw is harder to reproduce electronically than the theremin because of the fragility of the note's tone and sustain, and the sound made by the brushing of the bow hair on the metal.

Electric Candle Machine

Electric Candle Machine: Download the mp3

Mulberry Harbour - Electric candle machine

Mulberry Harbour

Does 'harmonica electronica' exist as a genre? If so, here's one for the archives. And if not... well, maybe it does now.

The name comes from a machine I saw in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. Pop a coin in and ping! on comes an electric candle. A poor substitute for the real thing, and something of a disappointment in such a famous medieval church. But I guess churches have to find cost savings as much as anyone.

Manifiesto

Manifiesto: Download the mp3

Mulberry Harbour - Cuatro Estrellas - Manifiesto

Mulberry Harbour

Here's another of the Cuatro Estrellas Spanish covers. This one's by Victor Jara, about whom it's difficult to refer without thinking about the manner of his death. Taken to the sports stadium during the military coup in Chile in 1973, the guards crushed his hands when they found out who he was, before he was killed and his body dumped in the streets. It's difficult to reconcile those events with the spirit of his music; on hearing what happened Pablo Neruda is said to have compared it to killing a nightingale.

Manifiesto was the first Victor Jara song I heard, an appropriate starting point as he sets out his aims for his canción nueva (sincerity and truth, uplifting and uniting) after praising the corazón de tierra and feeling of the guitar.

Saturday

Saturday: Download the mp3

Mulberry Harbour - Saturday

Mulberry Harbour

The re-acquiantance with an old amplifier came in good time to do this more traditional track recently for a production company. In some ways a step backwards but enjoyable all the same.

It was used in the BBC3 programme Amy: My Body for Bucks

Photo by Lady Vervaine

Tú Dónde Estarás

Tú Dónde Estarás: Download the mp3

Mulberry Harbour - Cuatro Estrellas - Tu Donde Estaras

Mulberry Harbour

Late last year, I decided to indulge a whim, take a break from what I was doing, and spend some time recording some Spanish cover songs. The list was chiefly Latin American music that had influenced me one way or another, the common thread being that they had all played a part in sparking an interest in playing acoustic and "Spanish" guitar. After many interruptions, delays and other commitments I thought it was about time I finished them off, so here's the first.

I first heard this track on a tape that was a copy-of-a-copy, without track listings, which just had the name 'Congreso' on it. The previous copy had been given to my friend Omar by someone from Chile, and he duplicated it for me. That was about all I knew, but I was grabbed by this song that opened the album. I couldn't track down the album for years, though I did find a more recent album from what I presumed was the same group, which turned out to be a disappointment. As for more information on the band, I just knew they were from Chile, and were some loose collective with a vague connection to a music professor at some Chilean university; they took traditional Andean music and mixed it with rock, haunting harmonies and complex rhythms, without shying from a spot of dissonance here and there. I still haven't got the album this comes from, but did manage to track down an mp3 of it recently. My version here is pretty faithful in structure and melody, but with a few instrumentation changes including a spot of theremin and glass harmonica.

Across the Sea

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Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

Mulberry Harbour - Across the sea

Mulberry Harbour

I got my old Orange amp fixed with a view to selling it, as it's just been taking up cupboard space for the past 5 or 6 years. It's also big and very heavy, and nearly puts my back out just moving it to get at anything. So to the local amp repairman it went. But as soon as I got it back I needed to check it was alright, which also meant having to get new strings for the electric guitar which was also gathering dust and cobwebs. Before I knew it a quick check had turned into a few hours of rediscovering the old sounds and settings, going on a trip back in time. Not the original intention at all, but a couple of recordings came out of the reacquaintance, of which this is the first.

And now I can't bring myself to sell the amp.

Photo by sun dazed, creative commons