Striking the right chord

Capping off a highly productive year, Bahraini guitarist and lyricist Mohammed Farija has released his latest musical project Blue Vein River’s first album, paying homage to the city which rejuvenated his fountain of inspiration.

The album, What Started in Rome, features 11 songs with themes ranging from existentialism to hope and difficult-to-express emotions, with a strong focus on the technical aspects of recording a song.

“Sometime during 2015, I hit something of a musical roadblock and writing music ceased to be a priority for me as I focused on my work as an environmental engineer, which inspired me to write a book, The Layman’s Guide to Climate Change,” the 30-year-old musician and Bapco environmental specialist told GulfWeekly.

“This inadvertently rekindled my love for writing fiction, which switched on some sort of creative mechanism in my mind that had been dormant for a number of years. I soon started writing music again but nothing clicked until I was on an extended work assignment in Rome in 2019.

“I came across a butterscotch blonde 50s style Fender Telecaster and fell in love with it. Instead of buying it, I bought a collector’s edition Stratocaster and sold it for a profit.

“With my profits, I went back to the shop and bought the Telecaster, which is the most used guitar on this album – six of the songs were recorded on it!

“When I got back to my hotel room with the guitar, I wrote All The Same. It was the first song I had written in four years that seemed to click for me. I wrote Sinner’s Lament the next day.

“What Started in Rome, in essence, is the reawakening of my musical abilities.”

Like all the music he has put out as part of this project, every song on the album has been written, recorded, mixed and mastered by Mohammed, who calls Blue Vein River a “one-man operation”.

Shortly before the release of the album, Blue Vein River also released Subliminal Reality EP, a five-track extended-play (EP) album with recordings from Mohammed’s previous musical project, Subliminal Reality.

It was Mohammed’s way of finally waving goodbye to that leg of his musical career.

Although Mohammed considers himself a musician first and lyricist second, often telling people his lyrics are ‘gibberish’, he has been integrating symbolism and nature-inspired imagery on his latest album to bridge the gap between his musical notes and his listeners’ lived experiences.

“My lyrics are rarely direct and I prefer to use symbolism and nature imagery, to put voice to emotions that I couldn’t otherwise express,” he explained.

“Some of the songs do have recurring themes but if I was to name one major theme it would be hope. For example, The Winter is about a person going through an existential crisis, with the main character of that song looking for meaning.

“By the third verse, the lyrics are ‘You look up to the sky, you’ve found the reason why,’ and this person has found their sense of meaning.”

The Winter is also Mohammed’s favourite song on the album because of its instrumentation.

“The guitar, bass, drums, vocals, everything is firing on all cylinders and the guitar solo at the end of that song is my favourite moment on the entire album,” he added.

He also enjoyed recording You, Drifting Away, The Monsters and Fading. Each song came with its own musical challenges, though overall, Mohammed still considers recording good vocals to be the toughest overall task.

Ever the relentless creator, Mohammed already has the next album charted out.

“The second album is going to be called Two Islands and I’ve already written it, but I haven’t recorded much of it yet,” he explained.

“During a recent trip to England, I wrote a lot of music - 32 songs in total. They’re the best songs I’ve ever written.

“I have enough material for two or three albums, but I’m more selective with what I put out, so we’ll see how many of those songs get recorded beyond the 10 I’ve already picked for the next album.”

Blue Vein River’s What Started in Rome and Subliminal Reality EP are now available on all major streaming music platforms.

For more details, follow @blueveinriver on Instagram.