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www.thefieldmouseconspiracy.com
Freedom & the Dream Penguin is a bunch of songs and tunes composed by Colin Harper. The Field Mouse Conspiracy is the collective assembled to make a record of them.
Yes, it’s a band, but it’s an odd kind of band: fifty members, one vision, no plans for any live performance bar a launch party at a Belfast free trade café (with guaranteed sales of at least fifty cappuccinos!). But with the traditional music business now in tatters, what’s normal any more, and who cares anyway?
Among the key collaborators are a number of recording artists in their own right: venerable folk-rock legends Judy Dyble (ex-Fairport Convention) and Alison O’Donnell (ex-Mellow Candle); Celtic soulsters Paul Casey and Sarah McQuaid; alt-rock vaudevillian Peter Wilson (a.k.a. Duke Special); white R&B/gospel diva Susie Young; Ulster ‘Americana’ troubadours Brian Houston and Janet Holmes; ‘rock god’ in waiting Joe Echo; and Irish trad icon Tina McSherry (ex-Tamalin).
Among the players are Woodstock veteran Henry McCullough on lead guitar (ex-Grease Band, Wings), Van Morrison sidemen Liam Bradley (drums), Brian Connor (piano) and Linley Hamilton (trumpet), and Irish Trad fiddle messiah Martin Hayes. And we haven’t mentioned the string quartets yet…
About Colin Harper:
He wrote about music for many years - professionally for most of the ‘90s, contributing regularly to Q, Mojo, The Independent, Irish Times and others - and wrote two well-regarded books: Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival (Bloomsbury, 2000; revised 2006) and, with Trevor Hodgett, Irish Folk, Trad & Blues: A Secret History (Collins Press, 2004).
He was the organiser and personal guarantor of two internationally released wildlife charity compilations - The Wildlife Album (2005) and Live In Hope: The Wildlife Album Vol.2 (2006) - and also compiled and annotated myriad CD retrospectives for many labels, not least the Pentangle’s widely acclaimed box set The Time Has Come (Sanctuary, 2007) which led directly to the band’s current reunion tour.
Harper decided to retire from writing about music in June 2007. “It was, like everything in life, a combination of factors,” he says. “But the short version is, I woke up one morning and just didn’t want to do it any more. I had other things I wanted to do with my spare time for fulfillment - I have a dispiritingly low-paid job at a music college to be balanced, somehow - and figured that fifteen years chronicling the adventures of various people from the ‘60s and ‘70s was quite enough of a ‘public service’ contribution!”
“The curious thing was, I didn’t plan to switch from ‘music writing’ to ‘writing music’ - though I had written and recorded a handful of things previously, in various contexts - but suddenly in the Summer of 2007 ‘the muse’ started flowing and songs just kept appearing. I decided to roll with it and record them, bringing on board a load of willing friends involved in music, meticulously matching their talents to appropriate material (I hope!).
And thus we became The Field Mouse Conspiracy. The name and the album title just came in a flash, and why reinvent a wheel that‘s just rolled through your door?
The cover picture, from a beautiful children‘s book, My Penguin Osbert, came to mind immediately and I‘m hugely grateful we were able to use it - it captures the spirit of the whole thing in one simple image.”
“I’ve been very touched at how enthusiastic all the key collaborators have been - they liked the music and liked the spirit behind it. I could ask for no more. We’re all little field mice, really, going about our business against the grinding, rusting wheels of (the record) industry.
I think J.R.R. Tolkien would have approved! Am I whimsical? Yes! Because I’ve seen the alternative at close range for years, which is an industry based on bullshitting and one-upmanship and increasingly vacuous celebrity, and I much prefer to deal in friendship and harmony. None of which means the music is any good, of course… but it might be!
Pulling it all together as ‘a body of work’ has certainly been a rewarding experience and, who knows, it may be the first in a series. And if the karma‘s good and people‘s diaries converge without a struggle, we might even play live sometime…”
The album is a thinly disguised trilogy - or the equivalent of a double LP with bonus EP, in old money:
Tracks 1- 8 are brand new 2007-2008 pop/rock/soul recordings, brimming with strength-in-adversity as a recurring theme.
Tracks 9 -17 are a kind of ’best of’ previous Harper & Co recordings spanning 1996-2007, with a generally more contemplative vibe, including several acoustic-based pieces, and featuring many of the same collaborators as the new works.
Tracks 18 - 21 are string quartet pieces, some with vocals, recorded 2006-2007.
It’s all music…
By way of a footnote, Harper’s final two CD retrospective projects - poignant yet feisty British folk balladeer Robin Dransfield’s A Lighter Touch (Hux) and melancholic progressive-rocker Vincent Crane’s Close Your Eyes (Universal) - a couple of guys whose music and personalities seem pretty close to home - were each released a week before he took delivery of finished copies of Freedom & the Dream Penguin. There has to be some kind of message in there somewhere!
Catalogue Number WMNY Recordings CD039
Freedom & the Dream Penguin is released initially via www.thefieldmouseconspiracy.com
Also available at CD Baby www.cdbaby.com/cd/fieldmouseconspiracy
Other projects by Colin Harper
The Wildlife Album MS MCD 134
The Wildlife Album 2 Live In Hope MSMCD 139
The Wildlife CD's Are Distributed by Proper Music Distribution UK
Pat Tynan Media
PO Box 785
Ickenham
Uxbridge
Middx
England UB10 8WQ
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 631336 Mobile 07985 400297
pattynan@btinternet.com + www.pattynanmedia.com
Providing recorded music to associated media, radio producers, film and documentary makers.
