Incredible String Band -1968 - Wee Tam & The Big Huge

Incredible String Band -1968 - Wee Tam & The Big Huge
@ 320

 The Incredible String Band followed up The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter with a double album (Wee Tam and the Big Huge) which was also released as two single albums - again following a trail blazed by Donovan, who'd taken a similar marketing route with A Gift From a Flower To a Garden.

Whilst Wee Tam showed a gentler side of the String Band than The 5000 Spirits or Hangman's Beautiful Daughter had showcased, things perk up on The Big Huge. The sound is livelier, more varied, and the diverse religious content more apparent, from the opening Maya providing a long sitar-laden exploration of the Buddhist concept to the concluding The Circle Is Unbroken, a sort of response to the classic spiritual Will The Circle Be Unbroken?, whilst along the way it visits quirky territory like Cousin Caterpillar. If Wee Tam was presenting a distinct sound of its own, separate from 5000 Layers and Hangman's Daughter, The Big Huge ends up blending the sound all three together to present a final, definitive statement of the band's most consistent years.

In general, both halves of the double album are more or less on a par with each other; shortly after recording the material the String Band would go on the fateful US tour during which they would be introduced to Scientology, prompting a shift in their worldview which coincided with a shift in their artistic approach and more mixed results. (ProgArchives)

LINK Wee Tam

LINK The Big Huge

 (for MoeZeke)

The Incredible String Band - 1968 - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

The Incredible String Band - 1968 -
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter @320

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter stands as the Incredible String Band's undisputed classic among critics and musicians alike -- ask Robert Plant, who touted its influence on Led Zeppelin's first album and general direction. Recorded and released in 1968, the album hit number five on the U.K. album charts, and was nominated for a Grammy in the U.S. It was produced by Joe Boyd, and engineered by John Wood using 24-track technology. Robin Williamson, Mike Heron, and Licorice McKechnie also utilized the talents of Dolly Collins (vocals, flute, organ, and piano), and David Snell (harp). Williamson and Heron employed a vast array of instruments on these songs including sitar, gimbri, pan pipe, oud, chahanai, mandolin, guitars, Hammond B-3, dulcimer, harpsichord, pan pipes, oud, water harp, and harmonica. The songs were much more freeform and experimental. Check Heron’s 13-minute “A Very Cellular Song,” which incorporates elements from a Sikh hymn and a Bahamian spiritual. Using the Hammond, a gimbri, pan pipes, handclaps, and other instruments, it begins on a two-chord vamp that employs a vocal round in five-part harmony, with secular and spiritual lyrics. It’s simply infectious. Other notables include the stellar “The Minotaur’s Song,” with its call and response chorus played on guitars, upright piano, and six-part harmonies. It melds a children's song with a drinking song to humorous and utterly memorable effect. Elsewhere, “Waltz of the New Moon,” employs two-chord drones on acoustic guitar with a meld of Middle Eastern vocal styles and Scottish field songs. “Three Is a Green Crown” is a psychedelic folk song in all its hypnotic droning glory with Williamson’s primitive sitar playing featured prominently. The tender, exotic, "Nightfall,” the album’s closer, is a lullaby, with guitar and sitar accompanying the vocal in whole tone intervals. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is the most ambitious, focused, and brilliantly executed record in ISB’s catalog. (AllThingsMusicPlus)

LINK

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