Music and video

The Preseli Mountains

I am fortunate enough to live not too far from the Preseli hills on the north Pembrokeshire coast. I have written a little about what this area is coming to mean to me (here and a little here), but felt I also wanted to add something more visual – hence this short slideshow.

The accompanying music is my attempt at covering Roy Harper’s beautiful instrumental ‘Blackpool’. I recorded this back in the year dot on my old Ovation-ultra (a nice guitar until our band leader inadvertently parked his 4×4 on it one dark night before a gig). I should perhaps have re-learnt it and tried to improve on this version, which is far from perfect, but there are too many other projects to attend to. As well as poetry and general ranting Roy was a master of wistful, atmospheric instrumentals and this one has always been a favorite of mine. I hope you enjoy it.

There is a little lyric, right at the end of the piece, which I did not feel up to singing, but which I particularly like. It goes like this.

"The rain falls like diamonds
pin-pricks the still water
spreadeagles it's laughter
across the green sheet 
of the sleeping sea."

(Roy Harper; lyric to Blackpool)

P.S. the proper version is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X74Ow33a1Jg

(you could turn the sound down on mine and play the pictures to this instead if you wanted! )