Music from Peter Noble's three albums – capturing the Cromarty Firth area's natural environment and creating songs from each track – got its live debut with audience interaction at The Field Alness, part of the Dandelion project
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REVIEW: Live debut of Peter Noble's music project
The Field, Alness
The chilled set tapping into the natural world around the Cromarty Firth area – and the chance for the audience to get interactive, made PETER NOBLE’s live debut of his music project a perfect fit for one of the summer’s Festival In A Field series at the Unexpected Garden in Alness recently.
Every Saturday since July 16, at a stretch tent in The Field on the Teaninich Industrial Estate, opposite the Rycycling Centre, the space had been hosting both music and outdoors-related events, across six Saturdays – the last event to come being on Saturday (Sept 10) with a vocal workshop on Sunday (Sept 11).
The music alongside the garden project there is part of the Dandelion celebration with festivals and other events on the theme of Sow, Grow and Share across the UK.
Run by Feis Rois and The Place Youth Club in Alness, the events in The Field have produce grown in the garden there to provide free food and collected seeds to share from the plants grown by Finlay Keiller and Haley Shepherd.
Award-winning Golspie harpist and singer Jennifer Port’s clarsach and songs had warmed up the crowd at the start of the music fare with the soothing sound of the strings easing a mixed audience of families, couples and others into the afternoon.
Jennifer’s own version of Runrig’s The Summer Walkers was one of the highlights of her selection, and Jennifer shared the story of how she had started out playing the oboe until one of her teachers put together a folk band with Golspie pupils and partnered Jennifer with the clarsach.
“Thank you Mr McCarthy!” Jennifer smiled, before performing Robert Burns’ Ay Waukin O.
After a short break, musician, singer-songwriter and composer Peter Noble, played a set based on his two-year long project capturing the sounds of the natural world in unique ways and writing songs based on his own response to his experience of the landscape he had been exploring in the Cromarty Firth area.
The first of the three albums – so far – album, Walking North described his walks during lockdown, the sound of his footsteps, rain and the occasional barking dog, all part of it.
Then, that was followed by second album The Lee Of The Wind which focused on particular trees in the area and the sound of the wind through their branches. His third album – Following The Water’s Flow, was inspired by everything from the sea to raindrops, a waterfall to paddling in a canoe.
Receiving an underwater microphone for his birthday helped Peter to start experimenting, before finalising, writing the songs and recording his latest album.
And, as in the first two albums, trying to let the landscape speak for itself, inspired by the aboriginal idea of songlines and the zen spirit of journeys by the Japanese poet Basho, Peter’s songs are often about much deeper matters than the natural world around him, such as time and ageing and experiencing each one-off moment of life for what it is. He is meticulous in the ways he tries to capture the actual sounds he recorded, such as taking a metronome on some of his walks in the first album to keep an accurate beat with his footsteps.
With songs from each of the three albums woven together into the live debut of the work in front of an audience – Peter also had his crowd playing their part, to make the experience fully immersive, and very definitely fun too!
Though the albums, featuring Peter’s voice, guitar and keyboard, have been a solo project, he was joined for The Field set by Invergordon musician Liam Ross for the gig.
Liam – the Unexpected Garden’s musician in residence – was taught by Peter at the North Highland College in Alness. And Laim’s fingerstyle guitar sound and gentle banter with Peter, added to the experience.
Many of the songs – such as This Moment, Water And Me – touch on deeper matters such as appreciating each one-off moment.
As Peter's lyrics go: “This moment is unlike any other … you can’t stand in the same water twice. This moment, this water and me.”
From Following The Water’s Flow, Millions Of Small Water Droplets was a reminder how everything is connected: “Millions of small water droplets gather together in the clouds, craters, rebounding columns, heavy enough to fall now, join the water on the surface of the stream … rain falls to the river, from the river to the sea.”
And the crowd loved the immersive fun of playing their part – for that song Peter asked us to rub our palms together to create the sound of quiet rain, ramping it up by clicking our fingers.
But he did admit some ideas hadn’t worked. In the same spirit of experimentation which powered the songs from the album when he began to think about how he would perform them live, he told us he had thought of trying to get us to reflect the shape of leaves onto the tent roof at the Unexpected Garden as he performed Giving Life To One from The Lee Of The Wind, about a Goat Willow he visited.
“It was too bright to see them!” he confessed.
The challenge of creating a rainbow to match the lyrics of I Imagine A Rainbow was ingenious, Peter’s dad blowing giant bubbles which naturally bounced along towards the stage with shimmering rainbows on their surface, helped on their way by two little boys blowing the wobbling bubbles through the air.
A favourite for me was Footsteps On The Ground from Walking North. Peter introduces it on the album: “Behind the dunes near Nigg Beach, beautiful high clouds. Still walking North. Eighty-five beats a minute.”
It’s a song that – like This Moment, Water And Me from his latest album – finds Peter thinking how fleeting life can be as he walks across the sand: “Just one footprint on the earth, an imprint of my path, all I’ll leave behind … simple shadow of my presence, before I disappear.”
Maybe the most successful audience interactivity came with the last song of the set, A Signature Of Light from Following The Water’s Flow.
Peter explained that he had been fascinated to discover as a youngster that each lighthouse’s light flashes for its own unique number of seconds, so sailors know exactly where they are.
He shared out little sheets of shiny, transparent red or green acetate – to have our mobile torches behind, to flash every three seconds or, the red, 10.
All round the packed tent the little lights shone out as Peter sang: “Unlike any other place I’ve ever been, A lighted path back to my shore … When all is dark and unsure, I can look at these grounding lights… Even in the dark, an anchorstone.”
You can find Peter's albums at https://peternoble.bandcamp.com/
