John Mulhearn’s fifth commercial recording The Pipe Factory, released at the height of pandemic restrictions, was made in a semi-operational Victorian-era factory in Glasgow that manufactured clay pipes. With Iain Sandilands and Keir Long, he reimagines the album in a live setting on Saturday, February 22, 7:30pm in Skye Bridge Studios.
Like his 2018 album, Pipes, Mulhearn experiments with sound, synthesizing effects from his Highland pipes in adventurous and creative ways. They also accessed percussive sounds like dripping taps and the flicking of reeds and clacking of valves, again pitched and manipulated, but with no artificial reverb, “reflecting the unique acoustics of the recording location” in Glasgow near the famous Barras Market.
“The Pipe Factory is an expression of the impulse to create new and boundary shifting music that sheds the cultural baggage of a tradition that, in many eyes, is either wrapped up in a pseudo-military straight-jacket – with every aspect of Scottish kitsch on full display – or as self-parodying light entertainment.”
The new download/stream-only album comprises ten tracks available. “The paradox at the centre of the album is that the sound world that we hear could only have been created using electronic production techniques, yet the source of all of the sounds is purely organic.”
Mulhearn is one of the most creative forces in modern pipe music. He has continually pushed boundaries of light music and piobaireachd and is a joint-founder of The Big Music Society and the ten members of the piping collective, Tryst.
https://johnmulhearn.bandcamp.com/album/the-pipe-factory