Earlier this year Tomos Williams made a solo video of him playing this heartache of a tune “Hiraeth am feirion”. A tune also played by the wonderful “Burum“ whilst touring India.
“Hiraeth” is a difficult word to translate from Welsh as it encompasses the huge complex emotions of longing, the sense of place and belonging, nostalgia and identity wistfulness and an earnest desire for the place what once was. In this case its for Merionethshire. Its one of those “feel it” concepts; words fail me but of course that’s one of the reasons why we have tunes, I believe, to capture some of that essence that can’t be talked about.
Tomos suggested I did a version on pipes so earlier this year I went down to slaughterhouse arches in Monmouth.
Then it gets picked up …
Then out of nowhere, Aled Williams asked if he could sample me playing the pipes from the video above to include it in his own version. I love it when this happens as you get a completely alternative personality treating your work to produce something different. I love the use of home movie footage which really adds to the sense of Hiraeth and the tune is just haunting. If anyone wants to do stuff with me along these lines please get in touch.