So what festive fare have I picked randomly from the ether for you spend your Our Price vouchers on this year? Read on, my fine fellows and fellowettes:

Rick Wakeman – Journey to the Centre of the Earth

As it’s Christmas, something supremely daft is in order and they don’t come much dafter than this live recording. A man in a cape, with enough electric pianos, organs, Moogs, Mellotrons and what-have-yous to cause an energy crisis on a small Mediterranean island. The London Symphony Orchestra. The English Chamber Choir. Narration from the preposterously eyebrowed David Hemmings (following Billy Dainty’s scheduling conflict). An audience anticipating something with the subtlety of a broken bottle to the throat… What the deuce were they all thinking?

Thankfully, it’s 1974 and this type of thing was pretty much the norm in progressive rock circles. It is also quite the delightful listen, resplendent in its scope and sheer audacity, with grumpy old Rick in fine noodling form, employing the full range of his synthesised arsenal to create a weird and alien soundscape through which Jules Verne’s 19th century tale is interpreted. With Will Malone also on hand to provide the arrangements, Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a fine, if deranged, melding of the rock and classical genres, relayed via the caped wonder’s extensive modular banks.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Rick Wakeman, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Fat Mattress

Formed by Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist, Noel Redding, Fat Mattress’s self-titled 1969 debut is a refreshing cocktail of psychedelic rock and proto-prog, with generous lashings of folk and bluesy elements for good measure. Undoubted highlights of this thoroughly invigorating mix are the darkly baleful and Traffic-esque ‘Mr Moonshine’, the gentle, trippy psych of ‘Walking Through a Garden’ and the soaring ‘How Can I live’, but with neither hide nor hair of a duffer among the original tracks (with 11 further bonuses on the anthology edition), this musical gateway to a mind-altered reality is an essential addition to any Santa’s wishlist.

Fat Mattress, by Fat Mattress, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

The End – Introspection

Included for no other reason than I wrote a feature about The End for Record Collector magazine earlier this year, 1969′s Introspection is a mellifluous collection of psychedelic pop, produced by no other than young William Wyman of popular beat combo, The Rolling Stones fame. Drifting harmonies and a fine line in organ textures, courtesy of sometime Spider From Mars and future record producer, Nicky Graham, provide an otherworldly ambience to tracks such as ‘Dreamworld’, ‘Under the Rainbow’, ‘Shades of Orange’ and ‘Loving, Sacred Loving’. They also add their own unique touch to Larry Williams’ ‘She Said Yeah’, the earlier Stones cover of which is featured on that irritating Bleu de Chanel advert. A full review of Introspection can be found here.

Introspection, by The End, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

The Idle Race – Time Is

Recorded and released in 1971, following Jeff Lynne’s defection to The Move, The Idle Race’s third and final album is often overlooked in the grand scheme of things, overshadowed by the previous offerings featuring their soon-to-be world famous, former frontman. True, it lacks the endearing whimsy of Lynne’s toytown-flavoured songs, but there’s still a good deal of mileage to be had from The Idle Race’s new folk/progressive rock direction. The folk flavourings are particularly strong, with the pastoral opener ‘Dancing Flower’, ‘I Will See You’, ‘She Sang Hymns Out of Tune’ and a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Bitter Green’, all making Time Is the perfect accompaniment to slip into a drunken, late-night Christmas Day reverie.

Time Is, by the Idle Race, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Home – The Alchemist

And Christmas would not be Christmas without a spot of the fantastic, ably provided by Home’s epic 1973 concept album, The Alchemist. A tragic tale of schoolboys, wizards, imminent disaster and a Cornish fishing village makes this a narrative worthy of hungover Boxing Day morning TV, effectively set to some thumpingly good music. Previous albums from Home had enjoyed a guitar-based, more hard/country rock vibe, but in the case of The Alchemist, the four-piece roped in a keyboardist – Jimmy Anderson – and with a range of Mellotron, organ and synth arrangements complimenting the tracks, set forth along the prog rock route. The result is an admirably restrained and a sobering reminder that not all the progressive scene was about excess and grandiose statements. Sometimes the musicianship could be understated, allowing the story to shine through.

The Alchemist, by Home, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

And there you have it, the 2011 Christmas selection pack. There should be a special Santa’s stocking prog mixtape on the way in the next few days, so I’ll refrain from wishing you a merry Christmas and making new year promises I won’t hold to, until then.

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That said, this 1970 release by the sometime Spooky Tooth bassist and future Matthews’ Southern Comfort member, does attempt to scale the heights of anticipation its somewhat wonderful artwork inspires… for the first two tracks anyway.

‘Magician’ and ‘Get Myself Together’ are a pair of corkers. The former begins with a burst of psychedelic recorder – yes, recorder!! The weapon of choice for folkies and five-year-olds everywhere – and electric sitar, before hitting a thoroughly enchanting bluesy groove that bounces heartily along beneath Leigh’s succession of tall, cautionary tales. It’s a more progressive bent that dictates the meditative ‘Get Myself Together’ (featured on last month’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘); a superior blend of ivories and mellotron that incorporates classical elements into its sumptuous arrangement via a sublimely understated electric guitar and the lilting piano coda.

An enviable start, no less. Unfortunately, the rest of the album fails to live up to these early magical murmurings, instead mostly settling into a more traditional (for the time) blues and country-rock ensemble. There are still strains of folkie seraphicalness breaking through, such as on the distant ‘Windy Baker Street’, but it’s predominately routine fare – for instance the Stones-esque ‘Solitaire’ – that Leigh produces from his wizard’s sleeve.

That’s not to say it’s a bad album. Far from it, my friend. Just not as interesting as it might’ve been. Nevertheless, Magician’s original closer, ‘Up the U.S.A.’, is nine minutes of raw, prog-blues loveliness, featuring some great guitar licks, courtesy of young Andrew, and an itchy harmonica groove from Gary Farr that augments the sleazy fug of the track perfectly.

The reissue by the meritorious Sunbeam Records includes a princely bonus track in the shape of ‘The Passing’, later to appear on the 1971 Southern Comfort album Frog City. Here in its original form and underpinned by a solemn (Hammond?) organ lament, ‘The Passing’ provides a fitting conclusion to Magician that touches upon the brilliance of its opening components.

Magician by Andrew Leigh is reissued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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300 copies of the album were originally pressed, the sessions funded by Nelson’s local record shop in Wakefield. It took the intervention of legendary bumbler John Peel – as was so often the case – to bring Northern Dream to a wider audience and set young Bill on a road that would lead to the forming of unconventional prog act, Be-Bop Deluxe, and numerous other successes thereafter.

The music on Northern Dream transverses various styles, soaking up the psychedelic, folk, blues and even a smattering of country rock (‘Sad Feelings’). As the artist himself states, in this new CD reissue’s liner notes, he “wandered the fields of Yorkshire trying to live the ‘peace and love’, post-hippie dream… some sort of psychedelic troubadour or something.”

It’s a rough-and-ready pair of mud-splashed moccasins he fits well, as the ten, mostly gentle songs that form Northern Dream – along with a brief preface and coda – drift soothingly from a musical age that, although no longer du jour, lasted well into the 70s – a decade later defined by cynicism and turmoil. Choppy, psychedelic folk guitars reinforce this self-declared hippie fiefdom on the exhilarating ode to Mother Nature’s handiwork, ‘Rejoice’.

And it’s Nelson’s guitar that provides the signature for Northern Dream, whether flying off at a tangent with some fancy finger-work at the close of ‘Everybody’s Hero’, or through the reversed looping which acts as the midsection on the album’s extended and progressive swansong, ‘Smiles’.

Elsewhere, the budgetary restraints are challenged on ‘Love’s A Way’, where the occasional phased vocals, as revealed in the liner notes, are achieved with the use of a metal bucket and handheld microphone. The effect may be no ‘Itchycoo Park’ (though that song apparently uses a technique called flanging), but it does the job adequately.

As does Northern Dream… more than adequate, in fact. Bill Nelson’s debut is a charming collection of unassuming gems that actually benefits from its economical approach to production, with Nelson using the limited tools at hand to create a full sound, which, at the same time, remains unpretentious and warm.

Moral of the tale: never judge an album by its less than impressive cover.

Northern Dream by Bill Nelson is reissued by Cocteau Discs on Monday 27^th June 2011, and is available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk

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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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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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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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The Canterbury scene stalwarts sprang from the Wilde Flowers, the band that went on to split its membership between Caravan and Soft Machine, and ‘Ride’ is a gentle breeze floating on the warm summer air of a lush pastoral setting, somewhere in England, 1968.

Pye Hastings’ vocals carry the mood perfectly and Dave Sinclair’s organ noodling is, as always, spot on.

One to be heard drifting from perfumed gardens everywhere.

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

On a separate note, next week will see part one of our interview with psych and prog revisionists, Fruits de Mer Records. So make sure you don’t miss that.

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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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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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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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How wrong could they be? Dreaming With Alice, released only in Italy in 1972, possesses a certain magic that more than exonerates the cult that has built up around it over the years. As far as obscure acid folk rarities go, this is a stone-cold classic.

In fact, the only fault that can be found in it is the fact it was released in 1972, whereas it sounds as though it were recorded at the tail-end of the 1960s. The fact that music had moved on so much in the intervening years possibly accounts for the fact it could only secure an Italian release. Of course, nearly forty years on, when it was recorded is an irrelevance.

The title track ‘Dreaming With Alice’, a gently haunting lilt, is split into nine verses that punctuate the album. This too may have been a mistake, as the recently re-recorded version by Mark Fry himself and released on Fruits de Mer Records is superior as a single piece, allowing its dreamlike quality to flow over the listener uninterrupted.

‘The Witch’ continues the fascination amongst the psychedelic/acid folk set with all things witchy – other purveyors of witch-influenced lyricism include Donovan, Fairport Convention, and the Incredible String Band – with a spookily ethereal tale of a witch at the window saturated with chiming sitars, giving it that perfect otherworldly feel.

It’s the highlight of an album that’s as melodic as it is mesmeric, darkness and light in equal measures, and one made all the more remarkable by the fact that Mark Fry was still a teenager when it was written and recorded. Maybe it’s this infusion of childlike, fairy-tale innocence, untainted by cynicism, that makes Dreaming with Alice so special.

Dreaming With Alice is reissued by Sunbeam Records with extra tracks and available from Amazon.co.uk

Mark Fry’s website

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Set to be released on October 5th (2009), On Safari is their debut album.

Hailing from Ambleside in the Lake District, the band’s press release promises a blend of dark psychedelia, folk, shanties and spoken word – “proving that the darkest music often comes from the prettiest places” – and I’m happy to say they don’t disappoint. In fact any album actively promoting shanties, has to be a must-listen in my book.

On Safari pitches its tent firmly in the camp of the surreal, with tales of time travel, dead puppeteers, the sea, and seeking out the graves of giants nestled like a bag of spiders amidst other vaguely disturbing wierdness.

The first two tracks, ‘Giants’ Graves’ and ‘The Beatification of St Thomas Aquinas’, launch the proceedings in a robust, take-no-prisoners style before easing back for the gently lilting ‘Rapture of the Deep’, a song about finding oneness with the ocean as her opacity envelopes you mind, body and soul, en route to a watery grave!

And it’s this sense of the unsettling that lies behind the much of On Safari, with seemingly innocuous enough songs (though brilliantly executed) that when examined deeper reveal something a tad more dreadful lurking below the surface. It’s Brothers Grimm fairytales rewired by the Ramsey Campbell wing of The Mighty Boosh.

For instance, ‘The Puppeteer’ is pure Quay Bothers with its dead protagonist, without eyes, feet or a mouth, doomed to relate the tale of her demise through the child-repelling puppet show she hosts at a carnival. Elsewhere ‘No Flies on Me (Ballad of the Jam Head)’ is the tale of man whose job it is to draw the flies away from rich golfers by covering his head in jam, replete with the haunting chorus of “There must be something better than this”.

This realm of strangeness brings to mind Kevin Ayers wallowing at his darkest depths of uneasiness (think ‘The Confessions of Dr. Dream’ or ‘Song From the Bottom of a Well’), while tipping a jauntily angled trilby to fellow avant-gardists Gong, or even prog rockers Web.

On Safari is indeed a delight, fusing its different styles into one tempting whole. It’s pessimistic, pastoral, frantic, psychedelic in parts, and floating face down in a lake of lost desperation – the stuff of which nightmares are seeded.

The moral of this review – Never count your chickens in August before your psychedelic-folk-wierdness has hatched.

On Safari by The Witch and the Robot is released on Atic Records and available for pre-order on CD or to download now at Amazon.co.uk

The Witch and the Robot MySpace page

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Fusing Elizabethan elements into their witch’s cauldron of evocative and pastoral psychedelia, Circulus are quite unlike anything else doing the rounds today. HFoS applauds this non-conformity and a sound that reaches out from the perfumed gardens and Jostick-scented abodes of 1971.

‘My Body is Made of Sunlight’ is taken from Circulus’s cracking debut album of 2005, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent and sets their stall out nicely, letting us know exactly where we stand when it comes to what Circulus are about.

Think Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour. Think Jethro Tull. Think Dr. Strangely Strange. Think Comus:- Circulus awaken the spirits of all these fine groups and more.

Reviews of Circulus’s three albums will follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2OavLPpPVw

You can sample more of their progressive rock delights on the Circulus MySpace page.

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John Peel favourites, the band comprised of Bolan on vocals and guitar, and the wildly hedonistic Steve Peregrin Took – a  man who’d named himself after a Hobbit – on percussion, backing vocals and anything else that came to hand. They swam in an enchanted sea of acoustic folk-rock, heavily influenced by the psychedelic scene, with tales of the fantastic straight out of Tolkien, blended with the poetry of Blake.

Unicorn, released in 1969, was their third album and Took’s last.

I’m not entirely sure where I stand with this one, suffice to say it doesn’t see a lot of stereo action round at HFoS. That’s not to say that Unicorn is rubbish… Well not all of it, anyway. As anybody who reads this nonsense regularly will know, I’m rarely scathing in my reviews. After all, if I didn’t think I’d like it, I wouldn’t buy it (yes, I do buy my own copies). Occasionally I’m caught out, such as when Robert Plant recommended The Incredible String Band’s, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, a spot of advice I did indeed live to regret. But generally I like to be fair. Plus there’s the fact that something that initially gives the proverbial earache can often take to you like lichen, following repeated listens. Sadly that’s not the case with Unicorn.

Fair enough, it’s lyrical, experimental, and so far wide of convention that it would require a skilled navigator, a master cartographer and a Native American scout to get it back within the same continent as the norm. The sort of thing HFoS usually likes. But in the case of Unicorn, there just seems to be something missing. Maybe it’s the fact that each song on the original album sounds like a demo, sorely lacking the vibrancy of an electric guitar or rhythm section. For instance, the 2004 CD reissue features amongst its mammoth selection of bonus tracks, the two singles from this era, ‘King of the Rumbling Spires’ and ‘Do You Remember’, both plugged in and easily putting everything else Unicorn offers distinctly into the shade.

That’s not to say I’ve anything against acoustic numbers… Love them, in fact. It’s just that these sound amateurish. But like I said, it’s not all bad. There’s the aforementioned singles and a certain charm runs through the likes of ‘Cat Black (the wizard’s hat)’ and ‘She was born to be my Unicorn’.

I imagine it may well be sacrilege in some circles to even question the quality of anything Marc Bolan put out, such is his cult and that of any prominent musician who died unnecessarily young, but I have to say that the bongo-beating feyness of Unicorn just falls short of cutting the mustard. On the plus side though, it’s not as bad as The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.

Unicorn [Expanded Edition] has been deleted but is available through Amazon Marketplace

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Fairfield Parlour had already released two albums as psychedelic-folk rockers, Kaleidoscope (not to be confused with the American psychedelic folk-rock ?!?!? band of the same name), and it was under this new name, in 1970, that they put out From Home to Home.

Eschewing the overt fairy-tale whimsy that had earmarked Kaleidoscope’s two albums, Tangerine Dream and Faintly Blowing, From Home to Home is an altogether more mature offering that favours the folkiness, with psychedelic elements, that was always at the root of their music.

There is also a sad, mournful feel to much of this album, rendered perfectly by Peter Daltrey’s airily haunting vocals. The opener ‘Aries‘, with its bittersweet memories and sense of regret, sets the tone for what follows, reaching its zenith with the majestic ‘Emily’. With a sentiment reminiscent of The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Emily’ manages to evoke sadness in a way that the more famous song falls short.

It’s not all downbeat though, with ‘The Glorious House of Arthur’ making a return to the fairy-tale atmosphere of previous Kaleidoscope ventures and treading the same ground of Arthurian legend as Donovan’s ‘Guinevere’ from his 1966 album, Sunshine Superman. This playfulness continues with the whimsical ‘Monkey’, featuring the somewhat random line “… And there is also a monkey,” at the end of each verse.

The Repertoire Records digipack reissue is another triumph, with great packaging (including the eerily, low-key cover) and a host of bonus tracks, though the inclusion of a 1976 re-release of the single ‘Bordeaux Rose’ in its alternate, horribly over-produced version, is for the completist only.

Kaleidoscope were never afraid to explore darker territories, as evident on ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’, and the Fairfield Parlour transformation and From Home to Home seem to be a natural progression of this. This one comes heartily recommended.

From Home to Home is reissued by Repertoire Records and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Released in 1969, the debut release from the ex-Soft Machine vocalist and bass player takes the title of one of his former group’s songs and opens a window onto a world that is uniquely English.

It kicks off with ‘Joy of a Toy Continued’, a jaunty little number – instrumental apart from some “la-la-la”-ing, the occasional comment and the briefest snippet of a verse – that does its best to convey the sheer pleasure one might have once felt when encountered by a shiny new toy. It then slips effortlessly into the altogether more aloof ‘Town Feeling’, a gentle tale of a quiet rural town, possibly harbouring a slightly darker undercurrent. The instrumentation gives it an overwhelmingly pastoral feel, like a country village fete, and it’s this rustic ambience that threads its way through the rest of the album – as well as random usage of the word “banana”.

It’s a very laidback affair,  befitting of its folk roots, and Ayers’s bassline vocals serve perfectly in the role of slightly detached storyteller. It also features his former bandmates Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper sticking their musical oars in on ‘Song for Insane Times’. However, it’s not the defining moment of Kevin Ayers’s progressive rock journey. That honour would have to wait for Whatevershebringswesing or even the excellent ‘Confessions of Doctor Dream’ suite from the album The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories.

Despite this, Joy of a Toy is still good stuff. The 2003 reissue is bolstered by a slightly thin selection of bonuses – three extra songs spread out to six, so to speak. These are two versions of the fairy-talesque ‘The Lady Rachel’, albeit superior orchestral arrangements to the album version, the dramatic ‘Soon Soon Soon’ and three alternate takes of ‘Religious Experience (Singing a Song in the Morning). The latter is a joyous celebration to be taken once in the morning and once again at night. It features the troubled Syd Barrett on guitar and backing vocals, although it’s difficult to pick him out in the mix with he and Ayers sharing similar voices and vocal styles. Ayers says in the last issue of Shindig! magazine that Barrett was there during the recording but “… already heading south”, so his contribution may be entirely negligible. However, one of the takes claims to have restored Barrett’s guitar to the mix.

Joy of a Toy is a splendid showcase for Ayers’s unique style, allowing us into the eclectic mind of a true English eccentric. Its prog, occasionally psychedelic manner, whether it be the horn-led breeziness of ‘Clarietta Rag’ or the downright bizarrity of ‘Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong’ – allegedly based on a Malaysian folksong – is, as the title suggests, a joy to hear.  Not his best, as already stated, but a good, strong debut that successfully courts the more tranquil pastures of folky, avant-garde progressive rock.

Joy of a Toy is reissued on the EMI/ Harvest label and available from Amazon.co.uk

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