One of the most magical projects to have arrived out of 2020’s various enforced periods of reflection was Mirry, the incredible discovery and musical re-imagining of Mirabel Lomer, a carer who had secretly created piano compositions away from almost everyone else's gaze.
We spoke to her nephew Geoffrey Drage, the man who lovingly recorded and preserved hundreds of stereoscopic slides, super-8 films, photographs, stories, poems and further recordings some seventy years ago.Deluxe: What do you think Mirry would have made of it all?
Geoffrey Drage: Really quite pleased, otherwise it would all vanish, nobody would know about it, well nobody would know about it after I died, it would disappear.
Deluxe: Tell us about your interest in film and audio capturing technology, it feels like the images and audio that you captured at home with Mirry was really quite ahead of its time?
GD: I made my films with a little 8mm cine camera, those were quite popular you see at the time, I don't think they are much used nowadays as people have video recorders which are much better than the little cine cameras.
D: The footage is so beautiful and dreamlike though?
GD: Well, do you think the quality is as good as the quality of these videos made by the video recorders? I think they provide more detail and probably better colour too.
D: Was the equipment difficult to use?
GD: Yes actually, I didn't like them very much because if you got a hair caught in the shutter mechanism then things could go seriously wrong, it was difficult to get the hair out too, you had to partly dismantle the camera and then get it out with a tweezer.
D: Did you ever edit the footage together or did you focus more on just capturing it all for posterity?
GD: Oh yes I did edit it, I had a little editing machine. It had a magnifying glass so I could look at the individual frames and then I did the splicing, it all took quite a long time. I was using a special kind of tape a bit like Sellotape but stronger. I think I had a cutter of some sort, but it was 60 years ago and I don't remember the details of what I did, but I do remember that I spent a long time doing it!
D: A real labour of love.
““Well, I like the Beatles but the record I liked most was Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water.””
GD: It was all quite crude, I think nowadays it’s all much more sophisticated, they have much better tools and implements and all the things that you need for editing… when I did it everything was quite primitive.
D: The audio recordings have a beautiful quality too.
GD: It was a German recorder, one of the first ones that Grundig made after the war. It really was a great heavy thing, it weighed something like 60 pounds, big too!
D: Was it complicated to use? Did you just implement trial and error?
GD: I don't know whether I turned the tape over or whether I moved the tape head up or down, I think the tape head could be moved and so was in contact with a different part of the tape. The tape was divided into two with an upper and lower level and I think you could move the tapehead. I remember I had to mend that with a soldering iron, but otherwise the old recorder worked quite well.
D: Were you interested in contemporary music when you were recording Mirry, or was it more about the process of the technique that interested you?
GD: It was a lot of fun doing it and Aunt Mirry enjoyed the product very much indeed.
D: What you both captured is so evocative…
GD: Well, I think the machine was really designed to record conversation and speeches, I don’t think it was particularly designed for recording music. Although, it did record music quite well, but by no means perfectly.
D: Talking about record shops, what was your first memory of a record shop?
GD: I think I bought a few records for Adrian (my younger brother), particularly Beatles records which I used to get - if I recall - from a shop in Oxford Street. I think it was HMV.
D: What did you make of The Beatles?
GD: Well, I like the Beatles but the record I liked most was Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water. I think that's an incredible record. When played on Adrian’s hifi - which had some very good speakers - it sounded absolutely incredible. He also had a very good amplifier too, I don't remember who made it, but the huge speakers were made by a company called Goodman. The speakers were big and awfully heavy but produced a marvellous rich sound.
But I did enjoy the Beatles, I think they were wonderful.
D: And other contemporary releases?
GD: I wasn’t particularly keen on modern music, I only really like classical music. Beethoven especially, I think he's absolutely stupendous really, I like his piano concertos and violin concertos, pretty well everything that he wrote, actually.
D: Any specific pieces that resonated with you, also Mirry?
GD: Beethoven’s Romances Opus 40 and 50. They were both favourites of Mirry, she was also very fond of his violin concertos too. I think she liked pretty much everything written by him too. She had a lot of his records and she used to play them for me and herself too.
D: In some or the archive footage, I think I clocked you putting the South Pacific soundtrack onto the turntable?
GD: Oh yes, I think someone must have given me that record. It’s an attractive record and the film was nice too.
D: Mirry now has a life of its own, how does it feel thinking about people all around the world picking up a CD/LP with your images on the sleeve and your recordings on the stereo?
GD: Oh I don't mind at all. The photos were taken 60 years ago, I don't suppose photos taken of me now would be sort of thrilling [laughing] - I’m very old now.
About Mirry:
30 years ago, Edinburgh-based musician Tom Fraser was helping with the house clearance after his grandfather’s death and found an old, scratched Transco record left out on the street. He took it home where it sat on a shelf for years, until one day during 2020’s lockdown, he gave it a play; and a whole world opened up to him. With her nephew Geoffrey, his Great Aunt Mirry had recorded a number of piano compositions which she had kept secret from her family. Tom reworked and remixed her compositions with his brother-in-law Simon Tong (The Verve, The Good the Bad and the Queen, and The Magnetic North) and together with project curator Kirsteen McNish have brought the amazing music and astonishing story out of the shadows
