AUSTRALIAN SUN by HARRY MERRY

"Who the hell is Harry Merry? ask the culturally cloth-eared dolts. Drum your fist gently on top of their heads and direct them to the following short paragraph from the biog on his website, where they can learn some of the basics:
I was born on November 15th 1971 in the West of Rotterdam. My aunt was the happy owner of a pub in Delft. When I was a few years old and when my mother and me were visiting that place regularly, I always went to stand on a chair in front of a juke-box, which was situated there in a corner with the purpose of overviewing the happenings that occured behind the glass. I was hypnotized by all these vinyl-singles constantly rotating with those specifically coloured lable-etiquettes in the middle. You know how it was in the seventies. My most favourite ones were from Apple-records, Pye Records (especially the dark pink one) and CBS-records (the old orange one; not the ugly later one). So whenever I hear a song from Mungo Jerry I see the Pye-emblem turning round in my thoughts. At home my parents bought me a small record-player with singles, that granted me many an hour of pleasant distraction. A few years later I began to play the piano.
Harry’s current entertainment weapon-of-choice is the Roland E-86, but on this new single on idiosyncratic and confidently-wayward Dutch/Belgian imprint Meeuw he utilises a barrel organ called “De Pansfluiter”. In keeping with the Benelux origins of the bodies involved in the production of this wax work, the organ was made in Belgium but has found a home in Gouda in the Netherlands, where my bike is from. I’ve seen a photo and it’s a lovely-looking thing (the organ – my bike has seen better days). Apparently Harry doesn’t play this organ, but rather the organ plays Harry, because this is an old Merry composition that the organ reads mechanically from a score of holes cut into a special orgelboek. At first I struggled to make sense of what lyrics I could pick out and imagined The Australian Sun to be the kind of light that contrasts with a rueful Old World shadow of complication, contradiction and compromise, but then I might just have been standing in Harry’s merry light, or hearing the long history in the pipes. Actually it appears be about global warming, and as such recalls another piece of holy foolery, The Other Side of Tiny Tim. Check the YouTube, you. Flipside is the instrumental, deservedly showcased in its joyous sadness, a tune that pulls at
my time-worn heart.
A year or so ago someone asked me to guide Harry on a tour of the charity shops here in Cambridge, but I couldn’t do it. I’ll always regret that. Maybe I’ll get another chance, or maybe not.
Pete Um (2012)"

"Various friends of mine go wild over Harry Merry. They think he's witty, a genius, an outsider, a true composer in a new tradition or anything something alike. I don't belong to those people. I think Harry Merry, a singer and keyboard player, is a clever man, who carved with weirdness a niche for himself, performing at alternative art locations and every now and then releasing a new record. Here he has one on Meeuw Muzak - now there's a favorite label of mine! - produced by Dear Listener Martin Luiten, who by now has the role of in-house producer for Meeuw - and which label does have such a producer these days? Here he has a song where he sings along a barrel organ, with a song someone carved into the organ book. There are microphones everywhere, so we also hear the pages going through the organ, which add a very weird quality to the song. In fact it's so weird that this easily might be the very first record I hear from Harry Merry that I truly like. Perhaps because I can't stand barrel organs out on the street? Will I listen to these differently next time I pass one? Negative plus negative makes positive? Curious little record with an instrumental version on the flip - now there's a daring move. Crazy indeed.
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (2012)"