Projects
The following projects showcase Daniel Merrill’s multifaceted approach as a composer, performer, and project planner. These works are shaped by his psychogeographic practice, which intertwines music with the histories, landscapes, and communities of the places he explores. In each project, Daniel serves not only as a musician but also as a researcher and planner, delving into archival records and engaging with literary, philosophical, anthropological, and ethnomusicological texts to uncover layers of meaning within each location.
From Dead Rat Orchestra to Kaddal Merrill and Nujumi, these projects reflect a commitment to understanding and incorporating the radical politics, cultural memory, and unique sonic textures of each site. This process-oriented approach enriches both the compositional depth and the audience’s experience, creating immersive performances that resonate with the identities and histories of the spaces in which they unfold.
Nujumi
Psychogeographic meditations on Egypt
Nujumi is a sonic exploration of Cai-Fi—a fusion of Cairo and science fiction—created by Daniel Merrill during the lockdowns of 2020. Anticipating this direction for years, Daniel took the opportunity to dive deeply into synthesis and sound design, setting up a rooftop studio in Tagamoa, Cairo. Living in a city with untapped potential for experimental and new music practices, Nujumi became a way to explore alternative musical forms in response to Cairo’s complex and inspiring landscape.
The project’s name, Nujumi, is drawn from Wad El Nujumi, a figure of profound spiritual and historical significance. A follower and general of the Mahdi during the Mahdist revolution against Egyptian and British rule, Wad El Nujumi refused an offer from the British to betray his beliefs, even at the cost of his life. This story resonates deeply with Daniel’s own journey and conversion of faith, inspired by the visionary and esoteric traditions of art that have always fascinated him, and by the uncompromising spirit he found in Islam. For Daniel, Nujumi captures this spirit of resistance and conviction, emphasizing both personal and collective resilience.
Informed by Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of Eternal Return, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, and the visionary works of William Blake, Rumi, Al Farabi, Al Razi, and Thomas Traherne, Nujumi is a soundscape of layered histories, mysticism, and speculative imagination. Unlike other projects, Nujumi intentionally leaves narrative details relatively bare, embracing a mystification of meaning. Daniel draws on Blake and Rumi’s practices of encoding and obscuring narrative, inviting listeners into an experience where interpretations emerge slowly, shaped by each encounter with the music.
This project is not an ethnographic representation; rather, it is a re-interpretation, combining the ancient and the futuristic, and exploring the intersections of personal encounter, dreamscapes, and Cairo’s rich cultural landscape.
Kaddal Merrill - 2019
Anglo-Egyptian Free Folk
Supported by Arts Council England, The New Arts Exchange, Colchester Arts Centre
KaddalMerrill is a unique collaboration between Egyptian flautist and ethnomusicologist Fayrouz Kaddal and British violinist Daniel Merrill, blending Egyptian, Nubian, and British musical traditions to explore themes of identity, migration, and cultural memory. Fayrouz’s work as an ethnomusicologist, specializing in Nubian music in relation to displacement and migration, deeply informs the project, offering insights into the resilience and adaptability of musical traditions within the context of Nubian history.
Daniel’s perspective as a British composer adds another layer, reflecting his navigation of folk music, tradition, and the complex British colonial relationship with Egypt and Nubia. Together, Fayrouz and Daniel create a soundscape that encourages reflection on the interplay of personal and cultural histories across continents. Their debut album, Rain Over Nubia, released in 2019, showcases their unique approach, weaving traditional melodic instrumentation of flute and violin with polyrhythmic grooves inspired by Sudanese and Nubian dance music.
KaddalMerrill performances often feature spoken word and creative retellings of personal ethnographies, adding layers of storytelling that deepen the audience’s engagement with themes of place and memory. Through this project, Fayrouz and Daniel celebrate the beauty of cross-cultural dialogue, honoring the depth and diversity of Nubian, Egyptian, and British music while expanding these traditions in ways that reveal both local and global narratives.
Tyburnia
Dead Rat Orchestra 2015 - 2017
Live film soundtrack with James Holcombe and Lisa Knapp
Supported by Arts Council England, The Serpentine Gallery, Colchester Arts Centre & Norwich Arts Centre
From 2015 to 2017 DRO worked extensively with film maker James Holcombe in the creation of a live performance soundtrack to his film work Tyburnia. The work centres aroud the site and events of the Tyburn gallows, exploring the resonances that the ideologies of public execution still have in todays political and cultural landscape.
The collaboration resulted in two realisations of the work being toured; the first in 2015 via digital projection with live musical performance, which was then expanded to include live film projection and manipulation at Spill Festival later in 2015. This extended format was toured further in 2017, with DRO accompanied by Lisa Knapp.
In total the film received 29 performances across the UK, and also resulted in DRO recording and publishing the soundtrack to the work.
For over 700 years there was a site of execution at Tyburn in London. Here those who fell foul of political, religious and judicial reforms enacted by the state were executed for public entertainment and instruction. A study of those executed at Tyburn charts a history of the UK, illustrating the twists and turns of monarchical and political whimsy, church and state, and the birth of capitalism.
At our current moment of enforced austerity and social reform, Tyburnia explores the parallels between contemporary and historical notions of crime in relation to business and property, the spectacular nature of punishment, and the state's use of the body as a site for political control.
The Cut - A Waterways Tour
Dead Rat Orchestra 2014
Supported by Arts Council England, The Canal And Rivers Trust, The Arnolfini, London Canal Musuem, Museum of Bath at Work, Braziers Park, Colchester Arts Centre & Norwich Arts Centre
With support from Sound and Music, Arts Council England, The Canal and Rivers Trust and the help of 27 partner organisations, Dead Rat Orchestra undertook a unique and audacious tour during July and August of 2014, across the canals and waterways of Southern England, from London to Bristol via Oxford.
DRO aimed to use the 273 mile odyssey to chart these inland waters, gathering an informal history of England's once thriving industrial arteries, exploring social, historical and musical roots. Having researched and developed musical material about and from this history they stopped daily to perform and interact with locals along the route, sharing stories and learning new ones, making connections. Often packing up and moving on in their boat 'Gemini II' shortly after performances, the sense of Journey was at the forefront of this tour, more than any other, with the music and performances developing in unexpected ways that reflected the nature of their movement.
They played in churches, under bridges, in boatmen's pubs, from pontoon gardens, at the London Canal Museum, the Arnolfini art gallery and even the oldest music performance space in Europe, The Holywell Music Rooms. They danced and hollered amongst victorian pumping engines and clattered through a museum of industrial heritage. The physicality of life on the boat was transformative, with the Gemini II's outboard motor becoming the forth voice in their ever tighter vocal renditions of songs that explored the hopes and aspirations of the countries first steps into industrialisation.
The journey was recorded by film maker Ian Nesbitt