They don’t come much more arcane than this slice of 1977 acid folk. It began life as a private pressing of just 200 vinyl copies, which was then circulated among a selective audience. Far out!

Shot through with a lyrical bitterness that underlines Janaway’s apparent disgust with this mess of a world, through painfully crafted metaphor and the minimalist acid folk sound he employs, Puritanical Odes is six acoustic songs (entitled ‘Odes’ A to E and ‘Labour Pains’) performed on the 12-string guitar. There is no accompaniment other than the occasional haunting choral shriek and disconcerting bursts of erratic feedback.

As I said, miserable bastard! Which suits HFoS fine; we too are a hotbed of discontent and barely suppressed misanthropic rage.

Not really one to get the party going with a bang, Puritanical Odes is one man’s journey to the edge of darkness and the devastation that lies beyond. Janaway offers little in the way of hope throughout… in fact, scrub that; Janaway offers nothing in the way of hope, such is the pessimistic vibe that permeates every last note and every last word uttered in his rich and twilight timbre. But this isn’t an album about hope.

Puritanical Odes voices a frustration with life at an intensely personal level. Such was its limited pressing and method of distribution, one wonders whether something so abstractly intimate was ever intended to be heard by a wider public. The sketchy liner notes, supplied by Janaway himself, noticeably avoid mentioning the album altogether, instead offering a bio that briefly touches upon where his head may have been at the time of recording.

Still, Puritanical Odes is never a difficult listen, which is testament to Janaway’s skill as a musician and the searing complexity of his 12-string compositions. It’s certainly not for everyone, but within the framework of the 1970′s folk lexicon it provides a chilling counterpoint to the sanguine sojourns put out by the less cynical, hippified contingent.

As unsettling as Comus’s First Utterance, though at a deeper, more cerebral level, Puritanical Odes is well worth a listen, though maybe not as a fireside, autumnal warmer.

*^{Chance would be a fine thing. Instead of delicate grey mists and chilly mornings, we are presently nudging melting point with some of the hottest weather October has ever seen.}

Puritanical Odes by Bruce Janaway is reissued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Yes, the first – and quite possibly last – ever Head Full of Snow progressive rock mix is here to tickle your royal earholes (track listing below).

So with no further delay, hit the play button and cut a funky rug across that living room carpet, daddio.

[See post to listen to audio]

Note: The HFoS Prog Rock Summer Mixtape Thingy is neither summery nor exclusively prog rock, as it takes in folk, psychedelic and even a smattering of jazz rock along the way. It is mixed, though, by my own fair hand (with varying degrees of success, as you’ll discover when you listen).

^{Soft Machine – Hope For Happiness [live] (from Soft Machine BBC Radio 1967-1971)}

^{Dr. Z – Burn In Anger (from Three Parts to My Soul)}

^{Caravan – Ride (from Caravan)}

^{The Alan Parsons Project – The Raven (from Tales of Mystery and Imagination)}

^{Mark Fry – The Witch (from Dreaming With Alice)}

^{Giles, Giles & Fripp – Under The Sky (from The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp)}

^{Illusion – Face Of Yesterday (from Out of the Mist)}

^{Jack Bruce – Pieces Of Mind (from Out of the Storm)}

^{Trifle – But I Might Die Tonight (from First Meeting)}

^{Strawbs – Is It Today Lord? (from Grave New World)}

^{Rick Wakeman – Jane Seymour (from The Six Wives of Henry VIII)}

^{Spirogyra – The Future Won’t Be Long (from St. Radigunds)}

^{Eire Apparent – The Clown (from Sunrise)}

^{Clouds – Union Jack (from The Clouds Scrapbook)}

^{Rodney Bewes – Meter Maid}

^{The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown – Give Him A Flower}

^{Andrew Leigh – Get Myself Together (from Magician)}

^{Beggars Opera – Raymond’s Road (from Act One)}

^{Isotope – Sunshine Park (from Isotope)}

Further mixtape jobbies may be forthcoming (A live at the Beeb one is already fermenting within my fevered mind). Suggestions for themes, tracks etc. are welcomed in the comments below. See thee in September.

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Released in 1974, Loudest Whisper’s folk opera concept album, The Children of Lir, recounts a tall tale from Celtic legend, regarding a Sea god and his four children, who’re turned into swans by a jealous step-mother. Just another day at the office in Irish folklore.

Originally envisaged as a stage show and performed parochially, The Children of Lir turned out to be such an ambitious production that a pared-down version of it was featured in a primetime slot on national TV station RTE. The band, accompanied by 50 or so performers and vocalist/slide guitarist Ron Kavanagh, succeeded in wowing their audiences and the TV exposure helped bring about a record deal with Polydor, a label offering sanctuary to many a progressive artist throughout the preceding years.

Loudest Whisper comprised of four hairy Irishmen sporting names such as Paud and Bunny, who traded in a brand of progressive, psychedelic folk-rock, scented with the lightest essence of traditional influences. A recipe for success in the spirit of early 1970’s experimental acceptance, one might think, but as with other prog-folkies such as Mellow Candle, Mr. Fox and Comus, Loudest Whisper’s debut album “enjoyed” a limited pressing and sank with little trace. The Children of Lir has since gone on to be one of Ireland’s most sought after folk-rock rarities, with the original vinyl fetching hefty prices on the collector market due to its scarcity and the band’s subsequent success upon home soil.

Thankfully, for those of us whose purse strings are unable to stretch to the ludicrous amounts that some folk are prepared to pay for 2oz of plastic with a hole in the middle – or simply lack a Dansette upon which to whack the bastard – the good people at Sunbeam Records reissued it on CD a few years back, complete with bonus tracks and the audio track of the aforementioned RTE appearance.

Beginning with a dramatic overture before slipping into the achingly gentle ‘Lir’s Lament’, sung here by Ron Kavanagh prior to his departure for a lucrative solo career, HFoS is happy to report that, lyrically, The Children of Lir is as fey as they come. Imagine Donovan sat cross-legged in a woodland glade, writing songs for the pixies dancing gaily at his feet. This is the world that Lir’s offspring inhabit.

The band, led by songwriter and arranger, Brian O’Reilly, plough a musical furrow that prevents The Children of Lir from drifting into the realms of overt mawkishness, with powerful playing, some handy electric guitar that’s ably demonstrated on ‘Good Day, My Friend’, and string arrangements that add a richly seductive quality to the music. They also provide the vocals, along with the ethereal Geraldine Dorgan, who comes into her own on ‘Wedding Song’; her style familiar to, and equally as sublime as, Judy Dyble’s.

Downsides are few and far between, though the fact that The Children of Lir originally stems from a stage production does often put one in mind of creaky am-dram performed in a drafty village hall, such is the occasionally stilted nature of the narration-through-song. Nevertheless, it’s a meditative slice of prog-folk that packs power and emotion, recorded at a time when hirsute hippies of all nationalities could happily get away with this sort of thing.

The bonus tracks, aside from the RTE broadcast, comprise of a couple of demos, plus the beautifully lilting single ‘William B’, dedicated to the poet Yeats, and its jarring B-side, ‘False Prophets’, which sounds as though a dose of Leprechaun magic has transformed Loudest Whisper into Black Sabbath.

The Children of Lir, by Loudest Whisper is reissued on Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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The rules, as ever, remain the same. This is no top five and shouldn’t be treated as such. Just another pointless list that captures a few of Head Full of Snow’s favourite acid folk/folk rock albums from the moisty mists of time.

Comus – First Utterance

As unfestive an album as it’s possible to get. Comus’s songs of bloody Pagan sacrifice, murder, rape and insanity are certainly not recommended listening for the Christmas dinner table when granny comes around. Liable to cause an untoward reaction in those of a delicate persuasion, First Utterance is the Witchfinder General of progressive acid-folk. Released in 1971, this godless nightmare of an album features an astounding vocal performance by lead singer Roger Wootton, whose words form like the gnarled, twisted roots of a hanging tree against the icy, death-sodden melodies that seethe ominously away, somewhere beneath. A full review of First Utterance can be found here.

First Utterance by Comus is available as part of 2-disc anthology Song to Comus, to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Mr Fox – The Gipsy

The second and final album under the Mr Fox name by husband and wife team Bob and Carole Pegg, finds them in a far more progressive mood, with a wider arsenal of instrumentation at their disposal. The Gipsy emerged in 1971 and though not as downright sinister as the Comus debut, it does have its moments, particularly on the doom-laden, organ heavy, acid-folk tale of witchcraft that is ‘Mendle’. Elsewhere, the 13 minute title track is an unsung classic of storytelling through song and the poignant ‘Elvira Madigan’ and an excellent rendition of the traditional folk ballad ‘The House Carpenter’, all add up to a scintillating mix that picks up where the cracking debut left off.

The Gipsy by Mr Fox is available as part of the Join Us in Our Game anthology, to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Mark Fry – Dreaming With Alice

More acid-folk and more talk of witches in this, the ethereal and haunting Dreaming With Alice from 1972. With its title track split into nine verses that gently weave in and out of the other songs, it’s an album that has passed into legend due to its obscurity. ‘The Witch’ is a particularly unsettling offering, with its flutes and sitars underpinning the eerie lyrics regarding a terrifying witch at the window. A full review of Mark Fry’s Dreaming With Alice lurks here.

Dreaming With Alice by Mark Fry is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Steeleye Span – Below the Salt

Along with Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span was one of the foremost practitioners of the folk rock movement. Released in 1972, Below the Salt was their fourth album and possibly their finest. With all nine tracks being adaptations of traditional folk songs it’s very much a bucolic feel that presides throughout. Maddy Prior and Tim Hart’s interwoven vocal couplings bring life to such gems as the spectral ‘King Henry’, the old favourite ‘John Barleycorn’ and the jaunty opener ‘Spotted Cow’. A spleen-rupturing electric bass is employed throughout, often renting the hey-nonny feyness completely asunder. Below the Salt is also home to perennial festive favourite ‘Gaudete’, as much a standard of the Christmas compilation CD as Gary Glitter once was.

Below the Salt by Steeleye Span is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Heron

As pastoral an album as you’re likely to find – it was recorded in a field, for Jeff’s sake – Heron’s self-titled debut captures a little piece of English summer, courtesy of the Berkshire countryside in 1970. While the sound of birds singing in the trees can be heard between songs and the smell of warm grass drifts out through the speakers, Heron play a gentle mix of progressive folk, incorporating various styles along the way. ‘Yellow Roses’, the reminiscence of ‘Upon Reflection’ and the organ swirls of ‘Harlequin 2′ provide some of the best moments on what is, considering the arctic conditions we’re currently enjoying, a mellow breeze of balmy air in the coldest depths of winter.

Heron is available as part of the Upon Reflection anthology, to buy from Amazon.co.uk

And there we have it for another year. The start of 2011 will see the second anniversary of HFoS and reviews for albums by the likes of Peter Bardens, Locomotive, Machiavel, Meic Stevens and Mountain. That’s a lot of “M”s.

Until then, HFoS can do no more than wish both of you a very merry Christmas. May your sobriety hold off until April.

See also:

HFoS Psychedelic Rock Christmas Selection Pack 2010

HFoS Progressive Rock Christmas Selection Pack 2010

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Appearing on 1971′s From the Witchwood, ‘The Hangman and the Papist is a rich swirl of Rick Wakeman’s church organ noodling and Dave Cousins’ atmospheric vocals. A parable on religious divide, ‘The Hangman and the Papist’ is powerful stuff indeed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDy6qXIWC8

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That said, this distasteful example of anti-trade union sentiment was written by the band’s rhythm section, who would depart soon after, and despite any animosity I might hold towards the song and its writers, if the truth be known, before this affront to the working classes was vomited onto an unsuspecting world, clad in an ill-fitting overcoat of jauntiness, the Strawbs were a cracking good band. Even after this unsightly smear of a song had been foisted upon the Great British public, the Strawbs could still knock out a half-decent album, leaving the pro-Tory vaudevillian act in the gutter where it belonged.

Political rant over, the epiphany that allowed this previously despised group into HFoS towers came in two forms. Sid Smith’s Postcards From the Yellow Room podcast and Rob Young’s essential and essentially weighty tome on British folk music, Electric Eden. Rock writer Sid gave us a Strawbs special, admitting he too had held similar reservations about the band because of the abysmal ‘Part of the Union’, while the Electric Eden book dedicated a substantial proportion of a chapter to them. Whisperings of folk and prog stylings piqued the interest and voila! Here we are with a look at 1971′s From the Witchwood.

The band’s third studio album (if you discount All Our Own Work, recorded with Sandy Denny) finds them at the transitional point where the folk sound was beginning to take on a more progressive rock edge. For From the Witchwood the founding line-up of Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper were joined by bassist John Ford and drummer Richard Hudson (the two responsible for ‘Part of the Union’), expanding the sound into the rock arena. They were also augmented by a young man who played everything from the electric piano and celeste, right through to the Mellotron; a previously little known session player named Rick Wakeman.

The fluid fingers of the hirsute keyboard wizard are all over From the Witchwood, threading lush melodies and skeletal refrains into the musical tapestries weaved by Dave Cousins’ guitar.

“You’ve written 400 odd words of inconsequential fluff,” The voices in my head scream. “Just tell us, is it any ruddy good or not?”

Well, if you managed to get this far without heading for the hills, in the slender hope you might eventually collide with a very rough approximation of what a review might read like, the answer is yes. It is rather good.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that From the Witchwood is a near-perfect album. Fighting words, indeed.

From the church organ and choral opening of ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’, through to the closing ‘I’ll Carry On Beside You’ and bonus track ‘Keep the Devil Outside’, it barely puts a foot wrong.

‘A Glimpse of Heaven’ is an enchanting start, quickly followed by the haunting twang of the dulcimer on the spinetingling ‘Witchwood’; and from then on it’s a halcyon mix of psychedelic sitars and prog keyboards, as well as a fine array of baroque instrumentation, combining to form an appetising brew of progressive, acid folk rock.

‘In Amongst the Roses’ is a sure-fire contender for one of the best songs ever, such is the gently eerie atmosphere it conveys in less than four minutes. It needs to be heard to fully appreciate it beauty.

And so does From the Witchwood. Initial misgivings are well and truly swept aside, and though one can neither forgive nor forget the callously cheap shot that is ‘Part of the Union’ (incidentally, appearing on 1973′s Bursting at the Seams album), we can, at least, banish it to the corner of the room, sporting the dunce’s hat, and ignore it like the ginger-haired stepchild it is.

From the Witchwood is reissued on A&M Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Songwriter and keyboardist Peter Daltrey provides the often elegantly wraithlike vocals that place the listener within the dreamworld of his imagining, populated by not only the fairytale waifs and strays of children’s stories but also something occasionally darker – the grimmest of Brothers Grimm.

In fact, there’s a spectral quality to much of what is found on Tangerine Dream, signposted early on by the unearthly mandolin rattle of ‘Dive Into Yesterday’, which sounds as though it has been plucked by Death’s own cold finger.

‘Mr. Small the Watch-Repairer Man’, a venture into the quaint, Gordon Murray-esque realms of Toytown-psych, reaches a sad conclusion with the unnoticed death of the work-enraptured protagonist; similar in vein to Keith West’s Toytown anthem,  ‘Grocer Jack (Excerpt From a Teenage Opera’).

But things get even darker on the haunting ‘The Murder of Lewis Tollani’ and the highlight of Tangerine Dream, ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion‘, with its jarring vocal, “My god, the spiders are everywhere” sure to send shivers down the spine of anybody with an irrational aversion to the eight-legged nasties.

With the original album finishing on ‘The Sky Children’, which, running at eight minutes, is straight out of the pages of a CS Lewis book, the eleven tracks add up to something both chilling and heart-warming in turns. Like a fully amped up Tyrannosaurus Rex with a proper rhythm section, via way of Oliver Postgate.

The blacker edges keep Tangerine Dream from sliding into the overly-cloying mire of excess whimsy, perfectly balancing the darkness and light prevalent in the acid-drizzled lyrics. The fact Kaleidoscope knock out a damn fine tune to boot, goes without saying. Their evocative melodies and instrumental effects conjuring up disquieting images, tempered in turns by full-on acid-rock and lilting, folkish simplicity.

As essential an album as Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. High Praise indeed.

Tangerine Dream by Kaleidoscope is reissued by Repertoire and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Existing in one form or another for longer than I’d care to mention, the constant factor that has kept Circulus going all this time is Michael Tyack; songwriter, vocalist and medieval throwback. It is him we have to thank for the unique brand of psychedelic, progressive folk rock that Circulus purvey, like the troupe of wandering minstrels given access to electricity that they are.

The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent may not be their first release, but it is their first album and it sets out the Circulus manifesto very nicely indeed.

Imagine lutes, rauschpfeifes and crumhorns duelling away with Bob Moog’s finest, an electric bass and guitar, and you’ll have some idea as to the innocent, completely loony and unequivocal joy that Circulus bring.

If your idea of a half-decent time is listening to some nonsense regarding pixies and scarecrows, then we’re on the same page. Like a bizarre musical lovechild spawned from a brief coition between Oliver Postgate and the Tull’s Ian Anderson, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent evokes a world in which things are simpler, conflict non-existent and a magical, vaguely pagan lifestyle is enjoyed by all. The hippy dream, relived 40 years on.

The excellent ‘My Body is Made of Sunlight‘ is particularly strong, featuring the dual vocals of Tyack and the French songstress and former Circulus member, Lo Polidoro. Elsewhere, Marianne Segal, member of 70′s folk rock band Jade, features on ‘Swallow’, which, with its gentle flute melodies soaring like the titular bird across a paisley hued sky, is another contender for strongest track on an album blossoming with organic goodness.

A spot of Syd Barrett-styled fairytale humour doesn’t go amiss on the ‘The Scarecrow’ and ‘Power to the Pixies’ is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be allowed in this day and age, further cementing the medieval/60s/70s dreamworld in which Circulus exist.

When I finally get around to compiling the folk rock CD entitled Music to Burn Edward Woodward By, alongside the likes of Mr. Fox, Comus and Steeleye Span, Circulus will be a shoo-in for inclusion. Give them a blast to ensure a bountiful harvest and you may never need to sacrifice a virgin again.

The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent by Circulus is released on Rise Above Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Released in 1970, this fascinating strain of electric folk is as bucolic as a winter’s afternoon stroll along the Yorkshire Dales. Such is its rustic charm that it very nearly slips into the pewter tankard and horse brass territory of traditional acoustic folk, which, if you’re partial to the occasional spot of “hey-nonny-nonny” (ahem) is no bad thing.

Husband and wife team, Bob and Carole Pegg take the helm, crafting an album that’s occasionally jolly, occasionally dark, sometimes sombre and in the case of the title-track, downright sinister.

This beguiling brew is bookended by the pastoral tones of a tin whistle, setting the scene from the off, as Mr Fox begins with the furiously jaunty ‘Join Us In Our Game’, a number that draws us in with a promise of merriment and possibly the quaffing of real ale from Toby Jugs kept hung above the bar. But it’s a short-lived one, as the much darker ‘The Hanged Man’ sets out the stall for some of the eerier offerings to be found here on.

Halfway in, ‘Mr. Trills Song’ reignites the high-spirits of the opener, with perhaps one of the most jovial songs ever to have tickled the eardrums of yours truly. Decked out in the chunkiest of Arran sweaters, Mr. Trill and his song would be laughed out of court in these modern, some might say shittier, times. But hey, in 1970 – and even today in certain, “tighter”, communities – you could easily get away with this sort of thing without so much as raising an eyebrow. ‘The Ballad of Neddy Dick’ follows, musically in a similar vein, although with the revelry in short supply; it being based on the life of a real Dalesman farmer who died in the late 1920s.

But it’s the final brace of songs on Mr Fox that really bring the storytelling element, which this band accomplishes so vividly, to the fore.

‘Leaving the Dales’ is as bleak as it is evocative, being a mournful lament to the breakdown of communities, as those at its heart are forced to leave in search of work. A sentiment that still resonates today, particularly in the wake of the vindictive acts of wanton state-sponsored vandalism, committed in the name of efficiency during the 1980s.

The final song, ‘Mr. Fox’, is an altogether different beast. Impelled by a spectral fusion of melodeon and fiddle, and later the grinding bass of Barry Lyons, it’s the sinister tale of a philandering and psychotic ne’er-do-well living in a dark house in the middle of a wood. The gruesome subject matter puts it firmly in the realms of Comus, and is an excellent scoop of acid folk; the Jimmy Jewel in a glittering crown.

The vocal styles of the Pegg team fit the subject matter perfectly and the incorporation of a wide variety of instruments provides a rich tapestry against which their stories unfold.

If folk music in any of its forms is your bag, you can’t go far wrong with Mr Fox.

Mr Fox, by Mr Fox, is reissued by Sanctuary Records as part of a two album anthology (also including follow-up The Gipsy) entitled Join Us In Our Game. As always, it’s available from Amazon.co.uk

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It’s enough to turn a man to drink but fear not, for although there are occasions when Cockerham’s voice does sail dangerously close to the tuneless whine often heard emanating from the vicinity of the ISB’s Robin Williamson, he manages to keep it together, ensuring a listening experience that isn’t likely to leave you reaching for the bleach as a pre-bedtime nightcap.

Spirogyra also featured Barbara Gaskin on vocals, Steve Borrill on bass guitar and providing a particular lynchpin to the band’s progressive/acid folk rock sound, Julian Cusack on violin and keyboards. Whereas The Incredible String Band sounded like a particularly inept bunch of world musicians falling down a particularly steep flight of stairs, Spirogyra can play their instruments as well as hold the note they’ve just committed themselves to singing. Particularly effective is the aforementioned Cusack’s omnipresent violin, which is menacing, sinister and eerily evocative in turns.

Barbara Gaskin’s voice hits the musical spot throughout, following in the fine tradition of such ethereally toned sirens as Judy Dyble and Jacqui McShee, while acting as the perfect foil to the urgency of Cockerham’s vocal style.

St. Radigunds is lyrical storytelling at its best, seeded in the opening track, ‘The Future Won’t Be Long’, with its tale of death at home and abroad during World War II, and culminating in the epic closer ‘The Duke of Beaufoot’.

Throughout the album there are moments of whimsy, strangeness, the fantastical and Olde English romanticism, tempered by an undercurrent of left-wing political protest. A tick against each box of the “good list”, so far as HFoS is concerned. There’s even room for what sounds like Michael Palin doing a Pythonesque northerner on ‘The Future Won’t Be Long’ – though it evidently isn’t. The Repertoire reissue also offers the jaunty anti-war rant and single ‘Dangerous Dave’ as a bonus.

As with the best folk music – prog, acid, or otherwise – a listen to St. Radigunds renders a swirling mist of lilting melodies and haunting vocal arrangements, bringing to life a world that exists slightly parallel to our own, but grounded in the same harsh realities.

Don’t let any comparisons with the sonic ear-buggery of The Incredible String Band sway your judgement. Spirogyra’s strain of aromatic folk music will neither frighten the Hamster nor strip the paint from the walls.

St. Radigunds by Spirogyra is reissued by Repertoire and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Well, not necessarily uplifting (though there are moments), but something gentle, occasionally dark, fleetingly creepy and most importantly, worthy of a second listen. Trader Horne’s one and only album, 1970′s Morning Way, is, in fact, worthy of much more than a second listen.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Firstly, this may have been Trader Horne’s lone release, but they were in fact a duo comprising of original Fairport Convention vocalist and one time member of an embryonic King Crimson, Judy Dyble, and Irish folk rock underground ubiquity Jackie McAuley. The conjunction of these musical forces resulted in Morning Way, a pleasingly obscure example of psychedelically informed folk rock.

Trader Horne – who apparently took their moniker from the nickname John Peel had for his nanny (la-di-da) – provide a calming soundtrack, with the typical folk setup of male and female vocals exchanging leads and harmonies. Even so, this is Jackie McAuley’s show, with him writing the lion’s share of the tracks and taking the majority of leads, while Judy Dyble’s English Rose vocal drifts ethereally through the mix like the song of a Siren floating inland from a distant shore.

‘Jenny May’ kicks off proceedings, a jaunty nursery rhyme-style song that hints at darker meaning, putting us in fine fettle for the remainder of the album.

‘Children of Oare’ borrows its recorder driven riff from ”We Three Kings of Orient Are’, and is lyrically typical of the fey subject matter that dances like a pixie maiden in the court of King Arthur throughout much of the album. We’re in the realms of baroque folk, kicking the tyres of progressive music, specifically on the moving call and response of ‘Growing Man’, a true classic of the genre.

‘Down and Out Blues’ is the one exception to this blueprint, a cover of the blues standard ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’, delivered in a full-on Billie Holiday tempo by Dyble, which, for all its sincerity, remains unremarkable and only serves to detract from the rest of the material Morning Way has to offer.

Gems such as ‘The Mutant’ (surely written under the influence of Cream’s ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’), ‘The Mixed Up Kind’, ‘In My Loneliness’, the eerie title-track with its allusions to death, and the hauntingly memorable ‘Velvet to Atone‘.

Indeed, for all its occasional tweeness and lightness of weight in the grand scheme of things, Morning Way is one of the finest, most beautifully rendered examples of psychedelic folk music. It may lack the teeth of another great of the acid-folk movement, Comus’s First Utterance, but it’s nice to leave behind the real darkness once in a while and peer blinking, but a little more settled, into a lighter shade of despair.

Morning Way, by Trader Horne,  is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhwEzKXf5rk

With its haunting piano melody and Judy Dyble’s spectral vocal, it lingers in the memory far beyond the two and a half minute running time.

‘Velvet to Atone’ also appears on the Pye and Dawn Records compilation box set Cave of Clear Light, available from Amazon.co.uk

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Despite the ridicule fired in his direction back then and in the intervening years, Donovan was nonetheless responsible for some of the gentler and more memorable songs of the psychedelic era. His blend of acid-folk flavoured psychedelic pop/rock first found an outlet on his third album release, 1966′s Sunshine Superman.

Originally denied a release in the UK due to contractual disputes, Sunshine Superman finally saw the light of day over here in 1967, although with an amended track-listing that threw in some songs from the follow-up, Mellow Yellow, and omitted others. The 2005 EMI reissue reinstates the original line-up, as well as a further 6 bonus tracks.

Sunshine Superman is a fairytale of an album, dripping in paisley-hued imagery, mystical wordplay, far off, wistful melodies and a healthy dose of naivety. Despite the dynamic kick-off, with the familiar title track, things soon settle into a mellower groove with the seven minute enchantment that is ‘Legend of a Girl Child Linda’, its lilting orchestral arrangement by John Cameron (responsible for the score to cult 70s Brit biker-horror, Psychomania).

From then on, Sunshine Superman throws out some splendidly haunting acoustic affairs in ‘Three Kingfishers’, ‘Ferris Wheel’ and the Arthurian ‘Guineviere’, incorporating sitar and an array of percussion instruments to convey the feeling of otherworld, hallucinatory bliss.

Cranking things up again into full electrical territory is ‘Season of the Witch’, a rare excursion into the realms of the menacing, which prophesised Donovan’s soon-to-be status of being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for marijuana possession. The song would go on to be covered by Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, Sam Gopal and Vanilla Fudge among others.

Closing with the eerie, celesta and harpsichord-laden ‘Celeste’, Sunshine Superman is, with the odd notable exception, a beguiling and ethereal album, its head lodged firmly in the clouds, which glides effortlessly into the consciousness like a sea breeze drifting through a coastal village, somewhere in 1966.

The seven bonus tracks are merely cosmetic and neither add to, nor take anything away from Donovan’s first complete foray into the realms of psychedelia.

Sunshine Superman is reissued by EMI and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Strange Folk is a collection of folk songs, some from the 1960s and 1970s, and others more recent, which share a dark or decidedly unusual edge. The 19 tracks hereon range from the eerie, in Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man’s ‘Mysteries’, to the unintentionally terrifying with the Incredible String Band’s masterclass in cat-strangling, tuneless dirgemaking ‘Saturday Maybe’.

But don’t let the inclusion of those enemies of the carried note put you off – skip buttons could well have been invented with these forte-free fiends in mind – as Strange Folk manages to erase any bad Incredible String-based experiences with some shrewdly chosen musical remedies.

Magnet’s ‘Maypole’, the pagan fertility rite taken from 1973′s aforementioned The Wicker Man, is fittingly bizarre and, as anybody who’s seen the film will already know, its jauntiness belies a murky undercurrent. Of the other older stuff, Donovan’s ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, with words provided by the W.B. Yeats poem of the same name, is a spectral treat, while Forest’s ‘Fading Light’ and Tyrannosaurus Rex’s ‘Great Horse’ also stand out.

From the crop of newer material, the opener ‘Mysteries’, Eighteenth Day of May’s floral ‘The Highest Tree’, and Vashti Bunyan’s haunting ‘Here Before’ take pride of place in the winner’s enclosure. Only Joanna Newsom’s ‘Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie’ lets the modern intake down, approaching ISB levels of earache inducement with its paint-stripper caterwauling.

Undoubtedly the highlight of Strange Folk is Pentangle’s 1969 tale of devilish betrayal, ‘House Carpenter‘, resplendent in all its sitar-laced, psychedelic finery.

If the ethereal delights of the darker reaches of folk, and the many forms it manifests, are your particular bag, then you could do a lot worse than seeking out a copy of this particular collection.

Strange Folk is released on Albion Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Also in Compilation Week:

Looking Towards the Sky – Progressive, Psychedelic and Folk Rock from the Ember Vaults

Cave of Clear Light – The Pye and Dawn Records Underground Trip 1967-1975

Spirit of Joy – Tales From the Polydor Underground 1967-1974

Real Life Permanent Dreams – A cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970

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That is, deliver a comprehensive, beautifully packaged three-disc extravaganza complete with extensively detailed booklet.

Once again compiled by Mark Powell, behind both the Polydor and Harvest excursions, Cave of Clear Light shines the fiery torch on the label that’s been dismissed as a poor relation to the more dedicated exponents of the psychedelic and progressive sound. Unfairly so, one might add, as Pye/Dawn had an impressive roster of artists on the books, even if the vast majority never so much as tickled the public conscious.

Obviously, that’s the style of output HFoS thrives on.

Disc 1 boils down the psychedelic and the folk into one easily consumable portion.  The one dud aside (Neo Maya’s ‘UFO’), this starter notches up such classics as the sinister Status Quo number ‘Paradise Flats’, The Mooche’s ‘Hot Smoke and Sassafras’, Blonde on Blonde’s ‘All Day, All Night’ and, obviously,  ‘Cave of Clear Light’ by The Bystanders.

Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’ and the superior ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ inject the folk element along with the ethereal LSD vibe of Woody Kern (‘Tell You I’m Gone’) and the spectral majesty of Trader Horne’s ‘Velvet to Atone‘. Contributions by both Man and Fire help to push this first disc into essential territory, irrelevant of what follows.

Disc 2 sets its stall out early on, with ‘Tell You a Story’, another track from Fire, once again taken from their sole, but justifiably much sought after concept album The Magic Shoemaker. From then on in we’re treated to a mixture of heavy prog, acid-folk and, once again, The Status Quo.

Titus Groan heads the pack where it comes to weightier measures of prog, and the inclusion of acid-folk must-hears Comus, with ‘Song to Comus’ is more than welcome. Mungo Jerry provide a nine minute throbbing blues-explosion, with their bowel-loosening version of the standard ‘I Just Wanna Make Love to You’, but the highlight of this disc has to be Jackie McAuley’s baroque snapshot of 1971, ‘Cameraman: Wilson and Holmes’.

Demon Fuzz also make an appearance with their rendition of ‘I Put a Spell on You’, and Atomic Rooster close things with the excellent, Hammond-driven ‘Time Take My Life’.

Disc 3 is a progressive paradise, resplendent in flutes, extended solos and such rarities as Gravy Train and Jonesy. Even blue-eyed soul barker, Chris Farlowe, makes an appearance on ‘Can’t Find a Reason’, while pastoral folk bods Heron deliver ‘Yellow Roses’ from their self-titled debut.

The Status Quo are present once again with the excellent, infectiously bluesy ‘Gerdundula’, slipping straight out of the early 1970s, and the rest of this volume is taken up by equally strong acts as Icarus – with an ode to the Fantastic Four – Fruup and the always welcome Stray.

Cave of Clear Light is yet another superior compilation for lovers of the psychedelic and the progressive to sink their teeth into. So long as labels such as Esoteric keep putting stuff like this out, there’s no reason this sometimes under-tapped vein should ever run dry.

Cave of Clear Light – The Pye and Dawn records Underground Trip 1967-1975 [box set] is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Also in Compilation Week:

Looking Towards the Sky – Progressive, Psychedelic and Folk Rock from the Ember Vaults

Strange Folk

Spirit of Joy – Tales From the Polydor Underground 1967-1974

Real Life Permanent Dreams – A cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970

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Thankfully, ‘House Carpenter’ is a jazz-free zone, instead incorporating Renbourn’s sitar and Jansch’s banjo to produce one soothing psychedelic folk ensemble. Singer Jacqui McShee and Jansch share vocal duties on the unique arrangement of this traditional folk song, which, in turn, is based upon ye olde ballad, ‘The Daemon Lover’.

‘House Carpenter’ appears on Pentangle’s 1969 album Basket of Light, once voted in an Observer poll as one of the top 100 British albums of all time. This live performance  comes from a BBC special recorded in 1970.

Should settle you in nicely for the weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4jXfMEu1YY

Basket of Light by Pentangle is issued on Sanctuary records and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Now, before we crack on, it’s worth mentioning that this site was once tagged by someone out there in the sprawling wilderness of the internets as “anti-folk”. This was on the strength of a review of those warbling cat-stranglers The Incredible String Band and their so-bad-it’s-awful album The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, and to say that Head Full of Snow loves a bit of acid, pastoral or wyrd-folk is a bloody great understatement.

Which is just as well in the case of Us & Them and their brand of gentle, but dark, folk stylings as demonstrated on the Fruits de Mer Volume Eight EP.  Now if we’d been tagged “anti-jazz” that would be a different, yet fairer, matter.

As is the form with these Fruits de Mer limited edition vinyl releases, Us & Them knock out interpretations of songs from the sleepy mists of the sixties and seventies. This time around there’s three of the blighters, giving the disc EP status (extra player, for those born after 1990). These are Pink Floyd’s ‘Julia Dream’, acid-folk combo Tudor Lodge’s ‘Coming Home’ (though the song actually stems from a later reunion of the band), and American folk legend Jackson C Frank’s haunting ‘Dialogue’.

The girl-boy duo of Britt (vocals) and Anders (instruments) deliver three achingly beautiful acoustic psych renditions, maintaining the high standards set by previous Fruits de Mer singles, but it’s ‘Julia Dream (Of All the Pretty Little Horses)’ that really stands out.

The original Pink Floyd song is given an acoustic workout and seamlessly blended with the traditional lullaby ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’, the melody of which provided the basis for Roger Waters’ original composition. This unique seven-minute arrangement is a ghostly requiem, plucked from a swirling ether of abandoned souls that evokes memories of not only David Gilmour’s original vocal, but Mark Fry’s lingering brand of acid-folk and Jacqui McShee of Pentangle. Once heard, it’s hard to shift the wistful allure of ‘Julia Dream (Of All the Pretty Little Horses)’ from the mind – not that you’d want to.

Full marks, once again, to Keith and Andy on their unorthodox, yet successful labour of love, and for securing the services of the excellent Us & Them in this, volume eight of their cracking series.

Us & Them MySpace page (samples available)

You can order Fruits de Mer Volume Eight from the label’s website.

See also:

Fruits de Mer Records

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Jethro Tull look forward to another year of HFoS

2010 marks the official first birthday of Head Full of Snow, February 8^th last year being the hallowed date when all this started with a wee profile of lost psychedelic popsters and brief Beatles’ protégés, Focal Point.

To celebrate this momentous occasion we’ll be doing absolutely nothing. Should you wish to wear a sparkly hat or release a party-popper into the wild on said date, you’re more than welcome.

Which brings me to the intentions for Head Full of Snow into 2010.

Intentions being what they are – well mine, anyways – they’ll probably have bore sour, shrivelled fruit, come the revolution, but right here, right now, this is what I’m thinking.

I’m looking to diversify the content at Head Full of Snow, as at present the site seems to be weighted in favour of album reviews (occasional exceptions granted). The reviews will continue, of course, hopefully at the current rate of at least one a week, but more features wouldn’t go amiss. Whether these constitute profiles, interviews or whatever, remains to be seen.

Speaking of which, I should be getting around to interviewing -valis of excellent psychedelic website Trip Inside this House, before time is called on January. I promised him late last year, but things being what they are, I never got around to it. As is fitting, it will take the form of -valis’s own 10 Questions slot, which has become a Friday fixture at Trip Inside This House.

Elsewhere, I hesitate in saying we’ll be broadening the remit to cover more new bands, for fear of alienating those who, like me, have their heads stuck in the late sixties and seventies. But there’s every chance, so long as they’re of a psychedelic, prog or acid/wyrd-folk leaning. So if you’re one such artist or a group, looking for a spot of promotion via interview, etc. feel free to get in touch via the email address or contact form.

Likewise. if, in any way, you desire to write for Head Full of Snow, send me your thoughts via the same channels. I’m afraid I’ll only be able to offer a byline and a sincere thank you for your efforts though.

Also, making a return in 2010 will be such gems as Who is/are: and Cover of the Week, as well as more news, vids etc.

As already stated, these are mere intentions and time being of the premium, may fall flat on their collective faces before the ink has dried on this post.

If that be the case, feel free to remind me of this a year from now, when we’re staring down the barrel of a second HFoS birthday.

Happy New Year, and all that malarkey.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nPer5U-zi0

Taken from the 1971 album First Utterance, it’s the stuff bad dreams are made of, here in almost all of its ten minute glory*

So ensure the children are tucked up in bed and small animals are firmly secured as we venture onto murderous, blood-soaked grounds, with a song that seeps from the darkest, most twisted parts of the forgotten forest sitting at the back of YOUR house.

*The final, minute-long reprise is missing from this vid.

‘Drip Drip’ appears on First Utterance, available as part of Song To Comus – The Complete Collection, along with their second album, and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Comus inhabit that most spectral of sub-genres, acid-folk – A blend of the psychedelic and the folkish, underpinned by a progressive foundation. It’s an area of music renowned for its ethereal eeriness, oft-beauty, and mystical meanderings…

… Except nobody seemed to have told Comus that, for their 1971 debut, First Utterance, is, to put it bluntly, quite terrifying.

Taking their name from Milton’s 17^th century masque, featuring a wild wood ruled over by the pagan sorcerer King Comus, the band recorded, quite possibly, the most unnerving example of progressive/psych/acid –folk, or any other musical niche, ever to be committed to a waxy disc.

Subject matter ranges from sexual threat to sacrifice to mental illness, and it’s all delivered in such a freakishly disturbing way that had Edward Woodward heard it prior to landing his biplane, he’d have turned and fled Summerisle long before the flames were licking at his ankles.

First Utterance is nothing short of brilliant. It’s hell on your own doorstep – The Wicker Man soundtrack that never was. From the opening bars of ‘Diana’ to the closing barked repetition of “insane” on ‘The Prisoner’, this album grabs you by your god-fearing sensibilities and refuses to let go. This is thanks in no small part to the uniquely unsettling vocal delivery of Roger Wootton and the sylph-like female voice of Bobbie Watson drifting in and out of the mix.

As such, a song as innocuously titled as ‘Diana’ is far more disquieting with its description of the titular heroine (a metaphor for virtue) being stalked “through the steaming woodlands” by a lustful, unseen presence.

‘Drip Drip‘, with its medieval murder, is intimidating and horrific in turns – “As I carry you to your grave, My arms your hearse” – and the sinister ‘Song to Comus’ and ‘The Bite’, which nails its colours to the mast with the (undoubtedly) Pagan sacrifice of a Christian, ensures sleepless nights for all.

If Pagan murmurings in the deepest, darkest woods are your thing, then Comus’s First Utterance is undoubtedly your bag. If, like me, they’re not, but you like your music dark, edgy and seething with a undercurrent of barely suppressed malevolence, then I can’t recommend this album enough.

Comus, unlike the laughable Incredible String Band, are everything that’s right about acid-folk music.

Reassuringly creepy, once First Utterance has been heard, it won’t be forgotten.

First Utterance is available as part of Song To Comus – The Complete Collection, also featuring their more mainstream second album, and available from Amazon.co.uk

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