Merlyn is a singer songwriter and nature-focused musician.
His passion for the natural world goes back to childhood. Born in Orkney (an archipelago in the north of Scotland), and brought up on a smallholding without electricity and most other modern conveniences, Merlyn spent much of his time outdoors and only started attending the local school in his teens. He later moved to the Scottish mainland to study anthropology, and during this time got his hands on a portable soundscape recording device and a pair of headphones. This led to a transformative experience on the Fife Coastal Path with a small migratory songbird called a whitethroat - an encounter that sparked Merlyn’s enduring focus on listening, nature sounds, and interspecies exploration.
Merlyn’s music blends folk alongside more contemporary influences and diverse sounds. Inspired by his research into the endangered ‘buzz aesthetic’ of West African griot music for example, he has adapted his guitar with various vibration and sound modifiers. Nature and intercultural themes are reflected across all of Merlyn’s work, including his own music, which has been featured across BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC 6 Music, RTE, and elsewhere. His latest project is a groundbreaking multi-artist album of newly-commissioned music and soundscape recordings, inspired by one of the UK’s most iconic and endangered birds, the Eurasian curlew. The project was inspired by Merlyn’s memories of curlews calling out in the ‘simmerdim’ - the night-long twilight found in the Northern Isles around midsummer. In collaboration with the RSPB, ‘Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds’ was released in 2022, to widespread critical acclaim from The Guardian, Mojo Magazine, and others. Merlyn’s debut solo album will be released in the autumn of 2025.
Alongside his own musical projects, Merlyn has worked extensively as a cultural producer, writer, and educator. In 2019, after organising the SOAS Concert Series (London) for three years, he established Making Tracks - an annual project that brings together musicians from the UK and around the world (mostly by train) to undertake artist development and incubate new intercultural and interspecies collaborations. Since 2024 he has been helping to develop a new Sounds Archive for EarthSonic, a project that tells the story of climate change through music. Merlyn also teaches regularly for institutions including Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), and writes for Songlines Magazine and other publications.