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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quite possibly the best ISB album of all, 31 Oct 2003
I assume that almost everyone reading this review: (a) already has at least one album by the Incredible String Band, (b) but not this one, and (c) is wondering whether to spend their hard-earned money on it. My advice is: don't hesitate!The style is somewhat simpler and more acoustic than on their later albums, but it's a million miles from the sort of folk music that was around at the time. Indeed, I'm not so sure I'd classify it as 'folk' at all. It's played on folk-type instruments, but all that really indicates is that they're traditional English/Scottish (etc) portable instruments, used in non-classical applications. Few, is any, conventional folk musicians had the imagination and originality of these three chraracters, and I'd put them much closer to Dylan - whose material seems far more one-paced in comparison. There's a sort of 'joy of life' that comes over in these songs, and if you could bottle that you'd surely make a fortune... The secret, maybe, is imagination, and that's here in bucketloads. One example of this that comes to mind is the Smoke Shovelling Song, but the album's full of such invention. Maybe the Incredibles were just too imaginative, recording album after album, which tended to result in this particular album getting overlooked. Also, the later line-up was slightly different, and promoting material by a non-current line-up presumably had marketing disadvantages at the time. The manufacturing run was small, and the album was virtually unobtainable - and also virtually unknown - during the band's most successful commercial period. It was almost as if the record didn't exist! William Blake gave top billing to 'Creativity and Imagination' and that's what you'll find here. Maybe today's equivalents of the ISB are computer games programmers? Whatever the case, this CD makes much of today's music look very mundane indeed.
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~ The Incredible String Band
~ The Incredible String Band
~ The Incredible String Band
~ The Incredible String Band
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