El Timbo spent his whole life acquiring, and attempting to master, a series of new instruments. He focused particularly on: stringed instruments (guitars, mandoline, banjo, ukulele, citerne…), hand percussion instruments (bongos, congas, djembes, tambourines, talking drums, kalimbas…) and his own speciality, the jaw harp. For a time, he sought to master the clarinet and piano accordion. He also worked extensively in the 1980s and 1990s with a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser, as well as a range of digital processors.
This in turn gave El Timbo a platform on which he could connect his diverse interests in: original writing (music and lyrics), live performance and recordings of his own work. He invested in his own home recording studio equipment, in order to play, sing and record original musical compositions or arrangements. El Timbo worked both in his own home and outside. In the early 2000s, he regularly carried instruments and portable recording kit up on to Mount Bermo, the hills that tower above Y Bermo. Here he played, recorded, ate and slept under the skies and shelter of a tent, with the complete freedom to experiment and play, while affording his recordings a particular sound quality. Many of the recorded musical works featured in this website were set down, up on that hilltop. Indeed the name of the website, mountbermotimbo, was inspired by this practice!
Music recordings (CDs)
El Timbo’s recordings were periodically curated into albums that he made at home and distributed freely, often at Christmas, accompanied by printed lyrics that effectively amount also to poetic works in their own right. These can be found among the pages of Poems and Lyrics.
Five of El Timbo’s albums have so far been discovered and uploaded, these are:
- Snakes or Ladders or Train out of Time (2005)
- Sad Old Ram of the Mountains, El Timbo & the Horned Sweaters (2006)
- Sea Song of the Phantom Fiddler (2007)
- Mount Bermo Timbo’s lament (2008)
Original song recordings
Other recordings are being discovered, and will be added to the site when available. However, other snatches or demos of these recordings have already emerged. These are sometimes quite raw, but very much reflect the fearless way that Timbo approached his work – what he was trying to express through his music, lyrics and poetry, even as he was continually mastering new techniques.
Snakes-Or-Ladders
Now-Available
A-Bandage-On-My-Need