One of cycling's best kept secrets is the inspiration that comes while riding a bike. Legend has it that Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity while cycling*.
For most of us inspiration may strike in the form of solutions to everyday problems. For musician and singer Mary Erskine, it was the idea for a cycling concept album, Iron Horse. Erskine says it's just stories about human beings. While some may think 'really, a cycling concept album?', it's actually, really rather good.
Though the full album is yet to be recorded, and Erskine is understandably reluctant to share live performances recorded on iPhones, the demos are a promising array of upbeat funk, indie and folk. The album tracks a journey through the everyday cycling experience from the beauty of a sunset ride through a park to Bike with No Name, the story spanning a bike's life, to Traffic Light Crush (about flirting) to, perhaps inevitably, one about road rage.
I caught up with Erskine at Look Mum, no Hands, to talk about her band, Me for Queen, the crowd funding campaign to record the 11 tracks of Iron Horse, and the moment inspiration struck.
She says: "It started about three years ago. I've still got the text I sent to my friend Nick [the band's bassist], having just got back from Richmond Park: 'We've got to write an album about cycling'."
"We were trying to shoot some GoPro footage. It was about eight o'clock and was still almost light, and they were about to close the gates and not let anyone else in but there were so many other cyclists around.
"It was not rush hour, so no-one was trying to get anywhere, it was just people doing their laps. But there were also children, there were people on their non-racing bikes. There was almost something religious about it: everyone was there and everyone was getting something slightly different out of it.
"It was just very quiet and I was thinking [about] the deer and my horse, because my bike's called Iron Horse, that's the brand. That was it."
Me and My Horse and The Deer in the Dark is the song inspired by that ride, the demo Florence and the Machine-like (or some have said Muse-like), with a bit of Stevie Wonder thrown in, with its bouncing bassline, an ode to that line between the solitary and the solidarity of cycling, the lyrics: 'all of those voices that no-one can hear, here you can let them speak'.
There's even a mention of panniers, because, Erskine says, "if you can't say 'pannier' when you're writing a cycling album, when can you?"
"There's one called Zebra Crossing", she laughs, "which is about perspectives. I thought it could be fun to use the black and white to look at the perspectives of different road users. You can't get around it, as different road users you will be so angry at that pedestrian who steps out without looking, and as soon as you're a pedestrian you do exactly the same things."
Musically Erskine relished the challenge, and the creatively liberating process of writing around a theme, quoting The Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free, and Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid as concept album forerunners.
She says: "This whole album has come from the time on my bike. You're kind of operating on two different levels, you're going through the motions, you're hyper alert ... and at the same time the rest of your brain is off just free thinking.
"That's where all my good ideas come from, it's pretty much 99% on the bike."
She voices the frustration and the sensations of danger many of us face. White Bike is a gentle, folk-like ballad with Erskine's beautiful, soaring vocals chronicling a cycling fatality from three perspectives – 'when you rush on by that corner where a ghost is chained with flowers, you need to know that we still see you and the fate that could be ours.'
Erskine realises an album won't change the world, but hopes to share her perspective as a cyclist.
"Until you're having a conversation with someone who's of a different perspective to you then nothing's really happening, there's no real exchange. That's what I thought might be different with this album just to express a viewpoint, not to say this is the right way, just that this is how I experience the world, as someone who happens to be a cyclist."
Iron Horse: an album inspired by cycling in the city will give 5% of all sales to RoadPeace, a UK charity for road crash victims, and 20% of anything over its target.
Me for Queen will play at Look Mum, no Hands, in Old Street, London, from 10 April, and at Roll for the Soul in Bristol on 11 April.
By way of other cycling-inspired albums, there is Kraftwerk's 2003 Tour de France, recorded for the 100th anniversary of the first ever tour, with songs including the wonderfully surreal and breathy Elektro Kardiogramm. Songs-wise the Chemical Brothers made Theme for Velodrome, a Kraftwerk-inspired throwback song for the 2012 Olympics. There's a list of bike inspired songs here, all the way back to A Bicycle Made for Two.
Meanwhile, a Kaiser Chiefs album cover appears to have been inspired by designs used by hub gear manufacturers Sturmey Archer.
*Though that isn't proven
