“The Ferry Curve began with an email sent at precisely 12.39:48 on the 29th May, 2023, which flashed across the South Cambridgeshire Fens at near light speed (well, give or take) in which a certain guitarist, JB, asked a certain drummer, JP, whether he would be interested in a musical project of unspecified width, length, and volume. Possibly involving tracks lasting longer than 12 minutes, a concept album about postmodern architecture, and a smoke machine. This led to further discussion involving search parties sent out for long lost bass players, negotiating the average length of tracks to avoid shagging out said drummer, and additional material that would involve a cowbell. The Ferry Curve is partly a resurrection of the Glorious Ferry Curve which flourished in mushroom farm levels of darkness some fifteen years previously, losing its Glorious and some of its hair in the process. Dragging along the singer from another wildly successful musical project of JB’s, The Pawn Hearts, taking its name from the famous Van Der Graaf Generator album of 1971 but not much else unfortunately. Thus assembled – Will Barfield, Jonathan Burt, Jeremy Peake, Martin Wilde – the band began to rehearse, stumble around and attend Specsavers appointments in the summer of 2023. Picking up speed in the winter of 2023 with the old reunited songwriting team of Burt-Barfield flourishing again, or Barfield-Burt depending on one’s reading of the legal outcome, writing songs that bore absolutely no relation to each other or even themselves. With all the usual complications of a band of individuals not in the first flush of youth, with busy lives and other barriers to all things DIARY, what looked like an album’s worth of decent songs emerged. Entering Chris Pepper’s Saltwell Studio (up the A14 and turn right if you are coming from the south) on the 26th January, 2025 at 10 a.m. (in some cases exactly on time, and in some cases stuck at the gate) with 11 songs and an optimistic view that we will be in Berlin by teatime … we finished the final mix on the 15th October. (See under “band complications” above. By which time Burt-Barfield are already writing new songs for that all too straightforward second album because it’s taken so bloody long to finish the first one.) Incidentally, Chris Pepper is a genius. Just sayin’. The album is called The Reason and The Rhyme and contains songs about everything from disappointment and angst (all of Barfield’s songs) to ethical computer issues and the manipulation of the historical record (all of Burt’s songs). Most FAQ: what kind of music do you play? We don’t play covers. No song ends where it starts. We are influenced by everyone who has ever made music. And if we feel like putting a metal interlude in a rock song, or avant-garde insanity in a 60s style pop song, we’ll do it. We welcome the theramin, the Wurlitzer, and the cowbell. We play music in a flat land under huge skies. We don’t sound like anyone else. We don’t sound like ourselves.”
Jonathan Burt
October 2025