Duncan Sumpner, a 30-year-old artist / teacher from Oughtibridge in Sheffield, is about to release his album under the name Songs Of Green Pheasant. The album is a fascinating, haunting and very beautiful collection of songs that seem to owe as much to the likes of Sigur Ros as they do to Simon & Garfunkel. Amazingly, the record was made in Duncan's kitchen on a four track cassette recorder. Through the magic of e-mail, we interviewed Duncan about the album & Oughtbridge.

Where does the name 'Songs Of Green Pheasant' come from?

When I was making the record I was deeply impressed by the novels of several magic-realist writers. And whilst I recorded the songs I tried to make a soundtrack to some of the visions that these writers put into my head; and one of those writers was John Cowper-Powys. In his book Glastonbury Romance there's a pub called the Green Pheasant and in Oughtibridge, where I live there's a pub called the Pheasant. And so I made a little connection and pretended that the pub down the road was actually the Green Pheasant and I was in the novel.

What musical projects have you been involved in before?

I used to write songs and sing for a band called Redman Greenman, we were pretty good and a couple of labels were quite interested in what we did at one point...but I didn't feel ready at the time and so I left and stopped playing.

What's Oughtibridge like?

It's like rural-suburbia and like anywhere else it has its truly sweet folk and it's truly spectacular ****heads.

the album's press release mentions that you are a teacher. What do you teach?

Art.

What's your plan for the Songs Of Green Pheasant live set up?

I think it's going to be three of us - me on guitar and singing, somebody else on bass and singing and somebody else on electric guitar. Maybe some background drones/ loops if I can get them to sound any good.

How come this album has taken 3 years to emerge?

Due to the kind of petty bungle that has rather more impact on the way things turn out than really warrants it and gives it sense of exaggerated importance...it was a duff e-mail contact that I put on the demo.

What have you been up to since doing the album? Is there plenty more music waiting to be released?

Well, since doing the album I've been doing the kind of things most folk do.. domestic stuff. Of course, I've continued to write and record and, hopefully, develop. The things I'm into now are different in some ways to what appears on that SOGP record, but I think that's just natural.

I understand you originally sent the album as compressed recordings but the version released is uncompressed. Are the alternate versions likely to ever appear?

No, they're not that different.

Once the album's out, what next?

I'd like to do a few shows in the future and I'm in the process of putting together new songs, but it's not easy to get what you want and I think it'll take some time

Interview by Simon Netherwood
Thanks to Marcus @ Fat Cat