The first blossom of the year - mainly the delicate white stuff - will be emerging over the next few weeks. My favourite nature experiences are Cornish cliff-tops and beaches, Norwegian fjords and mountains... and flowering blossom trees anywhere. Which is handy, because there are lots of them here in West London. They chopped down my third favourite blossom tree (pear) in the garden across the road from our house last year, much to my annoyance, but I still have my second favourite to enjoy on the pavement opposite our bedroom window - it produces a profusion of long tubes of brilliant white flowers - and there's a late-flowering malus purpurea in Kew Gardens which is one of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen (I missed it last year through illness and the year before that because of my own incompetence - but I'm determined to catch it this time round).
"Blossom Bliss Stroll" was originally recorded about five years ago under the title "Sunday in Sapporo" because of its vaguely Japanesey feel. When I listened to it again recently, I realised it was too slow, the instrumentation was too sparse, and the overall sound was too weedy, so I've speeded it up and added a few instruments, especially percussion, and it's closer to how I wanted it in the first place. I'm getting back into music-making (pauses for roars of approval - not a sausage) by "improving" old songs I recorded while I was still unravelling the mysteries of Garageband - which explains this little flurry of musical postings featuring my own stuff. I don't kid myself that these tracks are any great shakes - but the amount of pleasure I derive from messing around with them is simply ridiculous.
Roars of approval, boy. I'm a fixin' to get the Flying Bastardos outta rehab soon to see if they can still cut the mustard, country pickin'-wise.
ReplyDeleteI hear the sound of church bells ringing out across the land!
DeleteI've ordered a case of Colman's and a pen-knife.