Whilst the mainstream amuses itself by revisiting the horrors of '80s synthpop, the latest retrospective craze amongst cleverer indie bands is for British psychedelic folk of the late '60s and early '70s. You can hear its influence in records by Stephen Malkmus, Four Tet and, especially, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and The Delgados.
Those last two bands are openly in love with the work of The Incredible String Band, a wayward, odd and deeply engaging Edinburgh duo (Mike Heron and Robin Williamson) augmented by various musicians, travellers, mummers and girlfriends. Essentially, their idea was to chase the hippy dream of a bucolic idyll by mixing trad folk with various world musics and American country, all of which resulted in some terrific albums like 'The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' and 'Wee Tam'.
Nothing from those records feature here, however. In this case, 'An Introduction To… is a selection of their later, less successful sessions between 1970 and 1974, the years they spent at Island. The six albums drawn from are patchy affairs, but still, their harvested highlights make for a rich and dreamy compilation.
Anyone with an abiding hatred of whimsy, or a morbid (and often understandable) fear of back-to-nature hippies is probably better off without 'Here Till Here Is There'. The barmy medieval-meets-ragga title track and endless twisting sea shanty, 'Seagull', are terrifying and beautiful things. But that said, 'Little Girl' is simply pretty enough for fans of that tough urban rocker, Nick Drake. One for maypoles and mild hallucinogens or, at the very least, sunny days lost in the Green Fields at Glastonbury.
