SONGS OF GREEN PHEASANT – gyllyng street

(CD / digital, Fat Cat)

The cover if the third album by Duncan Sumpner aka Songs of Green Pheasant reminds me of one of my most favorite paintings: James Whistler’s “Nocturne in Silver and Blue” from somewhere late 19^th century. The atmosphere of dark blue and silvery loneliness and stillness is the same and there is also the schematic figure of a young boy at the beachside in the colours. It is interesting to note, that Whistler called his painting a “nocturne”, a musical term brought to perfection by his close contemporary Chopin and still one of the best things to listen to in a late summer evening, with the windows open and the cricket’s noise coming through the window with a cool breeze. That kind of living at ease and laid back closeness to the soil in isolation has always been an important part in the songwriting and especially in the recording of Sumpner’s music.

“gyllyng street” has a photography as a cover not a painting, though, but just as much as I don’t care about the difference of electronic and analogue music or sound production I don’t care about the difference between painting and photography in visual arts. Of course I am interested in the production part but only as much as it has an influence on the outcome. If it does not change the sounds or the visuals I don’t care if a computer or a handbrush was used. I don’t even care if the work-process was very industrious or exhausting, I am mostly interested in the result. Though I can find admiration for people who undertake big and exhausting feats, spending years and years towards some end, if the result is not interesting this kind of admiration is a nicer word for pity. Anyway, Songs of Green Pheasant has ostentatively changed its production style: from the homerecorded songs of the first self-titled album and especially the collection of demos and here and there recordings called “Aerial Days” and released a year later, the sounds have been polished, shined, polished, shined, polished, shined, and so on. No more 4-track hissing and rolling and spur of the moment ideas, but deeply thought and constructed sounds and songs.

On the new album the songs and sounds and the atmospheres they all add up to are even more shoegazing than before. Does anybody remember the English band Ride? They also had a picture of waves on the cover of their most important record, and here is a picture of a low tide coming in on the back cover. The kind of shoegazing that makes you sit at the beachside for an hour watching the waves and nothing but the screams of the seagulls in your ear and the gentle sounds of the waves filling your mind. Songs seem to flow into each other like the waves breaking on the beach, only much slower and in much longer structures. The rhythms are not beats but rather pulses, sometimes waking up and dynamic like a walk along the shore and then almost fading like falling asleep. Musicwise the wonderful trumpet additions of Clive Scott for “Alex drifting alone” should be mentioned, a song evolving so slowly it seems to stand still. Verging on the edge of the definition of what a song still is, as opposed to a track, the trumpet holds the guitars fading at the horizon back to the safe haven of the song. Do you remember the ephemeral, late night dissolve arrangement of Pink Floyd’s “us and them” (on “Dark Side of the Moon”), just like that but without the blandness and pathos their over the top arrangement and with a wonderful trumpet instead of the ugly mid-eighties saxophone solo. Boy, I used to like that song, but now I wonder what I ever found in that?