Album Reviews  -  Mid January 2003 to date

Reviews of wyrd-folk albums

In this section reviews of albums will be added regularly.  Once they have been shown for a while they will move into the old reviews area.  The artists database which is coming soon will also contain all album reviews for easy use.  Please scroll down for links to the other areas.   Reviewed albums may be purchased using the 'On-line Retailers' section of the Useful Information area.  If you have trouble finding an album let me know using the 'Meet the ...' link under 'Lord of Misrule' and I'll be happy to help.  Click any of the small thumbnail sleeves to enlarge.

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Reviews currently on this page (click on the hyperlinks below or scroll down the page to read).

Simon Finn - Pass The Distance    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

UK 1970, released 2002

On this page of reviews we have covered some very strange albums and so this album should find itself in a sympathetic environment.   It starts with a wild dulcimer and discordant guitar and violin before a strummed folk song commences with a drugged out sounding, almost Dylan like vocal.  It then quickly goes into track two 'The Courtyard' which has acoustic guitar, haunting psychedelic slide and pattering percussion. The vocal is a little more controlled reminding of Tom Rapp from Pearls Before Swine.  There is a deeply psychedelic atmosphere with Pink Floyd styled string bending echoing guitar soloing over a rambling folk instrumental section.  The music never seems to quite connects as thought heard through some drug trip.  Musically is is like a surreal prototype for 'Christian Lucifer' by Perry Leopold or a Syd Barrett solo album where he was just left to his own devices.

'What A Day' is more controlled with flute and acoustic guitar, it sounds like the early David Bowie from around the same time. 'Fades' commences with a strange organ pattern and chiming guitar.  It moves into a psychedelic hymn styled song with organ, probing electric guitar and intimate but intense vocals that sound as though they are sharing a long held secret.  With the organ and folk-hymn melody it could almost at times be The Incredible String Band.  Wah Wah joins in then the song seems to collapse before an insane vocal finishes off the strange song.

'Jerusalem' has the brooding lyrical religious drama of Leonard Cohen around 'Songs From A Room'.  Musically it has swirls of organ and thrashed acoustic guitar and is quite strikingly done.  The vocal builds to a crescendo of intensity where you fear for the singer's mental health, by the end he's wailing and screaming over musical chaos.  When it abruptly ends you realise that the singer really has gone mad, it's disturbing and quite obviously insane.  'Where's Your Master Gone' is simpler and almost a nice song but has a deliberately off-key and unsettling arrangement.

'Laughing 'Till Tomorrow' has a droning acoustic quality that John Lennon explored well in his late Beatles and solo work.  "Hiawatha' has accordion and throbbing hand drums behind the by now trademark intense vocals.  'Patrice' is a genuinely nice late 60s sounding flute and guitar folk song in the style of Moths or Heron.  It sounds strangely contemporary like a low-fi indie-folk track such as by Lone Pigeon.  'Big White Car' returns to the droning style with obvious Indian touches in the percussion, once again it's borderline insane and not easy to listen to.

Albums such as this aren't easy to review, if you're attracted to wild strange and often mad music then you'll want it.  It's not easily found but some will make the effort.  However for most people it's not an album I could recommend, you won't be moved or enlightened by it but you'll be bemused and unsettled instead.  So what is your choice?

Changes - Fire of Life    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

US 1969-1974, released 2002

This album has never been issued until now and is taken from tapes made during 1969 to 1974 by Robert Taylor and Nicholas Teslak.  In theory they make simple acoustic guitar based folk music similar to Tir Na Nog, however this is much stranger and darker concern.  The two performers were part of the 'Process' church, a cult like group that was obsessed with apocalypse, gothic doom and was also interested in Satan.  They had a curious uniform of black clothes, clocks shoulder length hair and goatee beards.  Taking themselves very seriously they were part of the proliferation of such post-hippie groups and were much seen in London and New York in the late sixties before splintering and falling apart.

Musically this album is stark, very dark folk based songs with acoustic guitar, intense vocals, gothic lyrics and occasional harmony vocals and flutes. Fans of dark folk groups like Current 93 or Nature and Organisation will find much here that they will enjoy.  Also fans of Comus, the legendary pagan psychedelic-folk band of the same era will find a companion album of similar sound and strangeness.

Because the artists take themselves so seriously this music can be slightly intimidating.  I is fine musically but doesn't stand out emotionally, it is more haunting than moving.  The first song 'Fire of Life' taken from is intense and unsettling with it's lyrics of 'the world if burning, in fact it sounds just like late period Swans and Michael Gira their leader singing.  The second song 'Sweet Eve' is more normal sounding like Tir Na Nog with flute and delicate melodies.  'Bleeding Out Your Feelings Evermore' is a baroque ballad style song with a female joining on the vocals to excellent effect.  'Early Morning Hours of the Night' reminds of early Steve Tilston with a distant quality.  'Horizons That I See' has nice folk picking guitar and was written in a desert. A song fragment from a lost fuller work 'Satanic Hymn #2' is churning in the Comus style.  'The Stranger In The Mirrow' is a pagan Medieval styled ballad  Last track 'Twilight of the West' is a ten minute epic recorded poorly but strangely this seems to add to the air of incense and intensity.

This won't be an album that will appeal to everyone, but those attracted to the darker and stranger edges of psychedelic folk will find much to enjoy.  These are essentially amateur tapes but there is enough here to entertain and occasionally put a chill up the spine.

Jan Dukes de Grey - Sorcerers    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

UK 1969

Until recently this album was almost mythical amongst most folk fans and impossible to get hold of.  Wounded Nurse records in the US have released a very high quality bootleg with full colour sleeves that is probably going to be our only opportunity to ever get hold of this rare release.

The band released a second album on Transatlantic that is eccentric deranged progressive rock with the occasional folk touch, however this album falls more into the acoustic psychedelia of Incredible String Band or Dr Strangely Strange and fans of these types of artists will find much to enjoy here.  It's probably fair to say that it doesn't have the unifying vision or ISB but it is whimsical, sometimes spiritual folk typical of its time.  It reminds of Fresh Maggots or Milkwood Tapestry with it's fantastical lyrics and hippy vibe.

Instrumentally the songs are based around acoustic guitars and often bongo.  Indian touches abound as were popular at the time.  Clarinet and flute are liberally used which broadens the sound considerably.  In song writing terms they are often about small town concerns with a narrative perhaps like Al Stewart or even the more pastoral elements of Ray Davies around the time of 'Arthur'.

'High Priced Room' introduces dual lead vocals, organ and pattering bongos.  The title song has lovely celeste and flute and a rolling feeling of the meadows, unfortunately it has a high pitched pixie like voice in the middle that manages the ruin the song.  'The Cheering Hills' shows a morbid introspective side that was realised perfectly by Tir Na Nog on their first album.  'Out of the Eastern Hills' has an interesting melody and an air of beguiling strangeness.  'Yorkshire Indian Sitting In The Sun' is an atmospheric track, mostly instrumental but with a whispered refrain of the title at the end.

The album's second side starts with a beautiful eastern folk track 'Wonder Child' that has cymbals, bells, rain, water and chimes in the background, it is far and away the best thing they ever did and reaches a different place than most of their songs manage.  'Trust Me Now' is overtly Indian in form and has more rhythmic emphasis which is very welcome.  'City After 3 AM' has an Indian chanter playing snake charmer like over the strummed instrumental folk.  'Butterfly' has a slight Pink Floyd like feeling with it's sustained organ backing.  The album ends with 'Turkish Time' that marries their sound with tablas and clarinet playing Turkish melodies.

An enjoyable album then but one that doesn't reach many peaks.  It's rarity probably came about through it's lack of eccentricity and poor sales not through avid collecting.  It's worth picking up especially for collectors but not a pinnacle of the form.

These Trails - s/t    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

Honolulu 1973 Sinergia records

Whilst doing this review session I seemed pick to pick a number of highly idiosyncratic strange releases and none more so than this absolutely unique album.  Albums from Honolulu are rare without their merging folk music, electronics and the surreal.  However this sole album from the band combines all these elements perfectly.

Soundwise the album is acoustic based but with shimmering, often quite weird early 70s synths over the top or such instruments as dulcimer or sitar.  Recorders are often used over the top too providing an air of folk innocence.  The synths are very good for the time when they were still only in their infancy within popular music and are used in such an individual way that they don't sound dated like many records from the time.

However it is impossible on this album to talk about the instruments separately from the frankly unsettling vocals of 'Margaret Morgan' who combines innocence and intensity to sound like some kind of witch.  When singing there is some kind of musical spell weaved that reminded of Mary Margaret O Hara or Jane Sibbery but in more remote, even more uncompromised surroundings.  The vocals are highly accomplished but like no other singer I have heard.

'Psyche I and I Share Your Water' starts with a soft guitar instrumental before washes of synths and terrifying vocals come in.  Some of the songs such as 'Our House in Hanalei' are fun and gentle but these are generally in the minority.  Others like 'Waipoo' sound completely unaffected by Western society, as though bringing forward some ancient lost music.  'These Trails' combines recorders, synths and those vocals to provide an initial unsettling and then quite beguiling sound.

This is an album that you will either enjoy a lot or not at all, it is different and highly individual and it provides a glimpse potentially into a completely different way of song writing and living.

Wigwam - One Star Awake    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle    Check or Buy this album at Amazon UK     Check or buy at Amazon.com   

UK 2003 Peace Corps Records

Before becoming interested in folk music I had an enduring appreciation of electronic music, a fascination that carries on today.  Over the last couple of years a number of bands have started incorporating folk melodies or touches in electronic music such as Mum, Sigur Ros, Minotaur Shock and Bronze Age Fox.  The process was started by Ultramarine in the early 1990s and has carried on since then.  Wigwam merge folk songs with electronic processing to create a new music and this mini-album is their first release.

The prospect of 'Corn Riggs', the Scottish poem done to devastating effect on The Wicker Man soundtrack produced using digital processing is intriguing in concept but unfortunately it is not carried off successfully.  It starts well with flutes and digital stutters but descends into over complexity fairly quickly.  Listening it sounds as though the person producing the effects has been listening to Oval or Microstoria and producing purely digital soundscapes rather than listening for example to Icland band Mum  who integrate them into a sympathetic context.  The key for this reviewer is demonstrating an empathy with the music and bringing this out in new ways.  So while the initial glitching digital effects done through hard disk sound manipulation seems fascinating it is taken too far even introducing robotic vocoder vocals that are stunningly out of context with the song.  This married to a seeming inability of the male singer to carry the melody properly leaves the song adrift, not different enough to be unique and not close enough to the original to stand comparison.

Blackwaterside is a clever choice as it stands for folk music being taken into other forms through the Led Zeppelin version.  This version is closer to the initial Anne Briggs version with a delicate female performance and processed and plucked various stringed instruments providing an almost ambient background.  it sustains an air of expectation and suspense that is very enjoyable and when the vocalist is joined by the band in backing vocals this further swells the sound.

With the third track the intent becomes clear, each track is meant to be performed in a different style so track one was digital glitching, track two was David Sylvian styled vocal ambience, in which case 'Down By The Salley Gardens' is Massive Attack styled trip hop with slow low-fi beats and a heavily processed distant lead vocal.  The original song seems almost to be ignored and sadly this doesn't work as folk or as trip hop.

'Dear Shepherd' has a more indie strummed guitar and jazzy drums feeling that does work reminding of The Field Mice.  It has a languid rhythm with drawled vocals that aren't very strong.  Last track is an extended version of 'She Moved Through The Fair' that is clearly inspired by the German rock of the 70s from Can or Neu.  It seems an exercise in setting up hypnotic prowling riffs and then bringing the song over them.  The vocals are processed in such a way to sound as though they are from some distant dream state such as pioneered by Spacemen 3 who also sounded similar to this song.  However once again they haven't grasped the song itself which is almost imperceptible although they do build up a hypnotic trance state.  To be honest if the song was called something else you wouldn't really notice.

I am a fan of progressive psychedelic folk music and of electronic music and so had high hopes for this album which I saw might be the conjoining of the forms.  Unfortunately the songs themselves haven't really been adapted very well on the whole and the music while performed suitably for the styles chosen wouldn't compare with the best in any of the particular genres they adapt.  Too often it sounds derivative or of novelty value.  The second song, the version of Blackwaterside seems to show the way.  Their female singer is good and the instrumentation suits the song and is subtly innovative rather than garish.  The song itself has been adapted well and there is demonstrable empathy.  So the attempt to fuse styles and innovate is to be lauded and on their full length release it is hoped that their potential can be realised.

The Trees - The Christ Tree    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

US early 1970s

Before reviewing this album it's perhaps important to point out it is not by the UK folk-rock band known as Trees (although often referred to erroneously as The Trees).  This is a US Christian communal recording and what a strange and fantastic affair it is.

In reviewing the album it is not my intent to denigrate any religion or belief but I think that most people would accept there is a point where devotion crosses over into obsession, where the people concerned are unable to focus on any other aspect of their lives and lose touch with reality.  This has been shown in countless tragic examples such as the mass suicide-murder of Reverend Jim Jones commune in the late 1970s.  Listening to this album the performers have clearly crossed a line.  On the cover we have the commune in ceremonial dress, with ecstatic looks on their faces which gives some indications of where we are going.

The album merges Indian sitar, harp, guitar, pump organ, koto, dulcimer and massed vocals.  The instrumentation is accomplished and often stunningly beautiful weaving intricate patterns that bring together eastern and celtic, religious and folk music into a cohesive style.  There are countless instruments listed on the sleeve from around the world which give the album a broad sonic palette with excellent production to give a sound that is fairly unique.  The instrumental sections are heart warming and have only recently been matched in the 90s by Stephen Bacchus who is highly recommended often in a similar fusion of world wide styles into a fantastic whole.

Vocally it is so intense that you will either love or hate them, there is no compromise here as these are the songs of the completely obsessed sounding like hippies who left behind the drugs and became devoted.  However they have thought about vocal arrangements with groups of vocalists swooping in and out, dropping to a soloist then building up to huge crescendos.  You could make the case that this either is or isn't folk music, however it's so strange that I don't imagine it will ever find another home (apart from modern cultists who rediscover the album).  Those who imagine The Wicker Man soundtrack is about as strange as it gets would fell propelled to a whole new level here, often you just sit back and think 'these people are demented' almost as though it's beamed to them from elsewhere...

Lyrically if you're not exactly sympathetic to Christianity unless you can look past this then it will be an uncomfortable listen as the songs are either parables of their own disturbed making or psalms.  However taken at face value or ignored it becomes hypnotic and entrancing, it really is a wild and strange journey, it's intensity even becoming unsettling and scary at points.  If the massed sound and vocals of the US band The Polyphonic Spree have interested you recently then they will sound like pre-school listening when you hear this.  In fact they share a vocal technique of using ever building fast repetitive wordless vocals 'na' na' na' Na' Na' NA' NA' that really are quite disturbing.  Last track Psalm 46 is a peak and is quite amazingly beautiful, eventually seeming to reach the state of bliss they have sought throughout this album

Rating an album like this is somewhat superfluous, it is beautiful and cleansing, it is almost disturbing and insane.  Once heard you will never ever forget it, it is unique in the way that few are.  Only Taj Mahal Travellers, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane and a few others have gone so far out, the question is - do you want to join them? (and will you get back).

This album is being prepared for a reissued commercial release by SomeDarkHoller records.  To obtain it in the interim contact us through this site.

Bobb Trimble - Jupiter Transmission    Windows Media 7+ users play an online track now

Review by Mark Coyle

US 1995 Parallel World

This is another strange album that crosses boundaries from folk into psychedelic rock and beyond.  This CD brings together songs from a couple of the artists albums and the cover shows him receiving transmissions from Jupiter shown in computer created shapes on this guitar.  His head has a sort of astral halo and it's apparent we're off into strange territory again. In fact looking at the preceding reviews I have written today a theme seems to have formed of the most eccentric, strange albums I could find for review.

'Glass Menagerie Fantasies' starts has radio static, lovely acoustic guitar, female siren vocals, bubbling synthisizers and an alien, disconnected air about it.  "Night At The Asylum' is incredible, like peering into the mind of someone clearly deranged.  That's not to say it doesn't have structure, it just seems to fit together in a way that only reveals the surface and that below the surface is a surreal confused world we cannot grasp.  Spoken word, whispers and more float in and out of the mix like Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side Of The Moon'.  'When The Raven Calls' is a piercing psychedelic guitar led epic that is based around a progressive dark folk tune at it's heart, however this reaches out into weirdness almost like no folk you've ever heard with voices from other dimensions, wild guitar and electronic effects.

'Premonitions' starts like Bob Dylan when he was produced by Daniel Lanois, shimmering and suspended in the air.  The female sounding vocal (although it is actually Bobb) is quite beautiful and it reminds of 'Blue Bell Knoll' era Cocteau Twins.  'If Words Were All I Had' has stunning Bert Jansch style guitar and those haunting female vocals over the top in a fairly normal and lovely song.  "Armour Of The Shroud' is another epic, folk guitars with telephone operator spoken word, backwards vocals, vibraphone and a rolling expansive quality that reminds of Perry Leopold's seminal second album 'Christian Lucifer'.  When the vocals enter they are flanged and distant, almost slurred and out of touch.

'You're In My Dreams' has a simple chord structure and a beauty like early songs by The Sundays.  'Selling Me Short' has a soft folky song at it's heart but it's almost buried beneath indiscernable layers of processing, effects and instruments.  In it's second half it has burning fuzz guitar and a swirling psychedelic feeling and at the end a ranting male comes in which by now seems entirely expected.  'Another Lovely Angel' takes a country-folk song and adds a demented vocal and John Fahey styled guitar.  The album ends with 'One Mile From Heaven' that is like a long lost song from The Velvet Underground's redempetive third album, simple, direct and trying to get home.

I don't know if Bobb Trimble is or was genuinely mentally ill but if not on these songs he reaches the kind of intensity and solitude that only the likes of Syd Barrett and Nick Drake have reached in popular music.  He is a talent of amazing proportions who operates in his own world, one I am glad to have visited but worry for its creator. 

For more information about Bobb Trimble read http://www.psychedelic-music.net/pmdb/db3/db_band.php4?id=479