The Latest From Songs of Green Pheasant: Gyllyng Street

It’s been barely a year since Songs of Green Pheasant — aka Duncan Sumpner — released Aerial Days, and already, a new full-length is due out soon. The album is title Gyllyng Street, and there’s an interesting story behind the album title:

Gyllyng Street is rooted very firmly in a single, particular period of its creator’s life. Gyllyng Street was in fact the name of the Falmouth (Cornwall) road on which Duncan lived as an art student in the mid ‘nineties, alongside drug dealers and many other odd folk. As Duncan says “if you know anything about Cornwall then you’ll know that a lot of people who couldn’t get along in normal everyday life end up there because it’s slower with a more forgiving climate.” This album is in many ways an attempt to document and recollect those times — there are literal characterisations and dreamlike re-enactments within the songs. However, at the centre of the record is an essay on the self of the young man and what he describes as “the disintegration of youth, faith and the sense of ‘where you come from’ — the young, feverish, over-zealous ideas on art and politics. The many I knew at that time — whether tramps or sons of millionaires — make up the sense of the record and the general quiet drift of our lives…”

Several tracks are available for your streaming pleasure from FatCat Records’ website, and they reveal that Sumpner isn’t moving too far from the hazy, folksy atmospherics of his previous releases. But with the contributions of some new collaborators, the new songs do sound richer and fuller, with at least some of Sumpner’s previous lo-fi approach (which had its own charms) left by the wayside.

Gyllyng Street will be released on FatCat Records on August 20 (UK/Europe) and September 18 (USA/Canada).