Duncan's music career started with school and university bands. After having been drumming for a number of years, in 1993 he received some tuition from Bill Bruford. His early recorded work was with Marc Catley, with whom he recorded three full albums, and a number of contributions to other albums between 1993 and 1996. Two of the albums were Christiansatirical music, later combined into the release Char; the other was the progressive rock album November, released in 1994, featuring singer Marianne Velvart. Later in the 1990s Duncan worked with various artists, including film-maker Philip Clemo, Marianne Velvart's band, and folk singerJudith Silver.
Solo work
From the late 1990s through to the early 2010s, Duncan largely withdrew from public involvement with music, until the release of Abandoned Buildings in 2012, a collection of 18 tracks described as "a song cycle with an emotional arc telling of grace against a backdrop of falling in love and failing in love." This was followed by another, more progressive album C:Ore in 2014. Whilst Duncan plays the majority of the instruments on these albums, they also have featured guest appearances from John Hackett, Steve Hackett, Gary Boyle, Raul D'Oliveira, Ton Scherpenzeel, and Daughters Of Davis. Alongside these larger scale releases, Parsons has also released two pseudo ambient albums under the banner Music for Stairlifts, Vol.1 and Vol.2: For The Radio. When performing live, Duncan normally sings accompanying himself on a nylon strung guitar. He performs arrangements of his own works from solo albums, as well as songs by Supertramp, King Crimson, Family, Chaka Khan, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, and others.
Video
In support of Abandoned Buildings, Parsons drew an animated film to accompany the album. Ten of the eighteen album tracks were used in full to create a 45-minute animated cartoon, following the same emotional arc as the album. A DVD was released, The Abandoned Buildings Cinema Show, shortly after the CD. This included a bonus feature of an additional animation for the instrumental track Tumblé d'Amour. Further animation and video has followed for Music for Stairlifts and C:Ore of varying quality. Examples of his work are available on YouTube.
Production work
In 1995, Duncan produced a three song demo for Marianne Velvart. This generated interest from Rick Wakeman, leading to Marianne being signed to Wakeman's Hope label. The label folded before Marianne recorded a note. As well as helping local Sheffield musicians with demos and album projects, in 2011 Duncan started collaborating with John Hackett, aiding him with production on four albums released through his HackTrax label; two duet albums with classical guitarist Nick Fletcher, Overnight Snow and Hills Of Andalucia, and two of Nick's solo albums, A Moment Of Stars and Blue Horizon.
Following the release of John Hackett's Another Life, a trio was formed with John, Nick Fletcher and Duncan, which was soon expanded to a full band with the addition of Jeremy Richardson and Duncan moving to full drum kit. The band started public performances as the John Hackett Band in 2016, their debut album We Are Not Alone was released in 2017 through Esoteric Antenna Records as a double CD set of a studio album and a live album recorded in 2016.
