Mancunian trio Harp & a Monkey have been pushing the boundaries of traditional British music for more than a decade, and we are delighted to have an exclusive preview of a track from their long-awaited fourth album – The Victorians.
Released on November 25, the album features a collection of street, parlour, music hall and popular songs from the Victorian era that the experimental song and storytelling trio have reworked for contemporary ears. The result is a thought-provoking and musically stimulating insights into the period – one that takes in tales of wife auctions, political corruption, bare-knuckle boxers and naked life-savers.
To accompany the arrival of the album (their first in three and a half years), the trio’s harpist and award-winning photographic artist and animator Simon Jones has created a series of videos. The first they are going public with, which Folk Radio UK is exclusively premiering (and is also their Song of the Day), is a street ballad from their native Lancashire, Calico Printer’s Clerk, that dates back to 1863.
Frontman Martin Purdy explains: “On the surface, this is a song about a wealthy gent duped by a young girl, but – as with so many Victorian street songs – there is a deeper message. The old order is changing, the average man can now get an education, respectable white-collar work as a clerk and, most importantly of all, get the girl!”
The video itself reaffirms the value the trio place on the aesthetic elements of their work, and why they have always been as likely to be found sound-tracking an art film about Van Gogh as appearing in-session on BBC Radio 2.
In fact, those with an interest in the arts will be excited to discover that a limited pre-order run of special editions of The Victorians CD includes signed art cards and broadsheets from Harp & a Monkey as well as items from the internationally-renowned Christian Brett and Alice Smith from Bracketpress (who have worked with the likes of Damien Hirst, Yoko Ono, Crass and Sleaford Mods) and a previously unpublished treatise on ‘wonder’ and what it means in the modern age by Boff Whalley of Commoners’ Choir and Chumbawamba fame. (Find out more about this at the trio’s website: www.harpandamonkey.com)
Another stellar collaborator involved in The Victorians project is Darren Jones, the go-to studio engineer for the likes of Stormzy. Darren, who is a long-standing admirer of the trio, looked after the final mixes and mastering of the record. It’s a perfect fit for a collective whose members were weaned on the songs of Ewan MacColl while going to warehouse raves at the weekends – an outfit who blended the traditional with the modern, the organic with the electronic from their very first release back in 2008.
Watch this space for further exclusives…
Harp and a Monkey Gigs
Harp & a Monkey have a number of dates left this year at which they will perform new album tracks as well as old favourites:
October 30: The Ship Inn, Lowdham, Nottingham
November 2: Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Cambridgeshire
November 8: Chapel Arts Centre, St James Memorial Hall, Bath, Somerset
November 9: Silver Street Sessions, Wiveliscombe, Taunton, Somerset
December 6: Village Pump Folk, Lamb Inn, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
http://www.harpandamonkey.com/