Some musicians get their first glimpse of superstar, flinch within the glare of the highlight, and rapidly burrow their method again underground. However Duncan Sumpner, you watched, knew from the start that fame – even fame on a really small and grassroots indie stage – was not for him.
A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has launched a string of data underneath the title Songs Of Inexperienced Pheasant with out ever fairly moving into the sunshine. The challenge’s origin story speaks volumes about his elusive strategy. A demo that Sumpner despatched to Fats Cat in 2002 grew to become a fixture on the label’s workplace stereo. However after they determined to get involved to supply him a file deal, the e-mail bounced again, and it took them years to trace him down. Within the years since, there have been just a few transient interviews, a smattering of reside reveals and completely nothing like a synergistic model partnership or engagement-boosting Tik Tok marketing campaign. On the peak of his revulsion with fame, Thom Yorke titled a Radiohead music “How To Disappear Utterly”. You think about Sumpner may write one thing comparable: “How To By no means Be Discovered In The First Place”.
Given the relentlessly hungry state of the music business, logic would appear to dictate that this type of strategy to 1’s artwork could be a street to obscurity. But for Sumpner, working at a take away appears to be understanding reasonably effectively. Through the years, Songs Of Inexperienced Pheasant has accrued a formidable catalogue of music and a small however deeply dedicated fanbase, whereas working at his personal pace and on his personal phrases, along with his uncommon releases now popping out by means of the tiny Galway-based micro-imprint Rusted Rail.
4 years on from the discharge of 2020’s warmly obtained When The Climate Clears comes new album Sings The Passing. Its seven tracks are rooted within the type of acoustic music that’s as of late generally known as folks. However there’s an more and more expansive and rules-free high quality to Sumpner’s strategy – a spirit of invention that sees songs augmented by uncommon and startling results, or come unfastened from their moorings and drift off into clouds of dreamy atmosphere. The impact is each unusual and putting. Consider Flying Saucer Assault at their most windswept and folksy, or think about the seldom-trod midpoint between Crosby, Stills, Nash & Younger and William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops and also you’ll be a minimum of pointing in the fitting course.
Make no mistake, there are some attractive songs right here. “Have Persistence” hymns the deserves of a life lived within the sluggish lane, promising that “the whole lot involves those that wait” over a lopsided drum beat and a watercolour smudge of acoustic guitar. Even in its extra typical moments, although, Sings The Passing pulls off some daring manufacturing methods. Take “By Tomorrow”: on the floor, it’s one of many album’s prettier moments, an eddy of softly sung vocals and gently spiralling fingerpicking. However Sumpner renders it with a swirling, aqueous high quality, and strange sounds might be heard issuing up from the deep, with groans of suggestions and jags of guitar noise that erupt like distant depth prices.
Elsewhere, there’s the sense of Sumpner stretching his compositional muscle mass. “The Visiting Hours And The Rain” is split into actions, commencing with a cascade of sampled voices looped and multitracked right into a homebrew choir, earlier than advancing by means of passages of shimmering echo, pastoral folks and found-sound atmosphere. “Personal Prophecy”, in the meantime, remembers the beautiful melancholy of Leeds post-rockers Hood, its 11 minutes of dolorous vocals and cloudy drones concurrently wet-weekend dreary and imbued with a desolate magnificence. Sumpner clearly relishes these moments of abstraction. However each time he’s on the threat of getting too on the market, there’s all the time some type of refined musical interjection that pulls issues again from the brink. Hear how that trumpet cuts by means of the mushy ambient lull on the centre of “Whitsun Women”, like a lighthouse beacon piercing mist.
Songs Of Inexperienced Pheasant began out some twenty years in the past with Sumpner alone, at house, tinkering with a four-track recorder. In a way, issues haven’t modified – he’s nonetheless that earnest, inquisitive solo musician, tweaking faders and twiddling dials within the hope of recreating the sounds in his head. However Sings The Passing finds him nonetheless rising and evolving, the lo-fi sketches of outdated reworking into one thing deep, wealthy and symphonic. The album concludes with a music known as “Who Wants Cash”, a mumbled however stunning acid-folk meditation that looks like a turning away from the world. This, after all, is the territory the place Sumpner feels most comfy. However it additionally captures one thing of why his music resonates. Unhurried, unshowy, totally unconcerned with consideration: all it asks from us is to nonetheless our brains, and easily hear.
