Alasdair Roberts

This new edition of “Gather In The Mushrooms” contains the cream of both long-deleted compilations with a few additions – Roy Harper, Fotheringay – that weren’t available to Sanctuary at the time.

Though they aren’t traditional, these songs have an authenticity of their own, an autumnal atmosphere and a naivety which proved influential in the 00s neo-folk boom (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Alasdair Roberts, Tuung et al) but impossible to replicate. For many of these acts at the end of the 60s, folk music and the hippy world that surrounded them was a way of life, a way of opting out from the Vietnam war, Angry Brigade and three-day-week early 70s. Anne Briggs lived in a caravan in Suffolk, Shelagh McDonald lived in a tent, Vashti Bunyan eschewed electricity; they weren’t part-timers.

Listening to “Gather In The Mushrooms”, we are transported to a time when no one used the term post-modernist. It may not have resonated with dyed-in-the wool political folkies, but over five decades later this music sounds very evocative of an England of yore – not necessarily one of poachers and pedlars, but one of long-haired youths in tie-dye T-shirts, bikers and hippies, acoustic guitars played in white stone cottages.

Groups such as Midwinter and Oberon made primitive, privately recorded folk albums; today they sound as distant and mystical as the field recordings of Alan Lomax. The sincerity and folk knowledge of a group like Forest becomes irrelevant once you hear something as eerie and evocative as ‘Graveyard’. Home-made, homely, warm as soup or chilling as a hoar frost, this is music of innocence and rare beauty.

TRACKS:

1. CORN RIGS – Magnet & Paul Giovanni
2. MORNING WAY – Trader Horne
3. NOTTANUM TOWN – Oberon
4. GRAVEYARD – Forest
5. THE SKATER – Midwinter
6. WINTER WINDS – Fotheringay
7. LORD AND MASTER – Heron
8. FLY HIGH – Bridget St John
9. SHEEP SEASON – Mellow Candle
10. THE BELLS OF DUNWICH – Stone Angel (LP Bonus Track)
11. THE SEAGULLS SCREAM – Christine Quayle
12. FOREST AND THE SHORE – Keith Christmas
13. ROSEMARY HILL – Fresh Maggots
14. FINE HORSEMAN – Anne Briggs
15. THE WEREWOLF – Barry Dransfield
16. ANOTHER DAY – Roy Harper
17. WINDOW OVER THE BAY – Vashti Bunyan
18. ELEVEN WILLOWS – C.O.B. (Clive’s Original Band)
19. THE HERALD – Comus

Source: gather in the mushrooms: the british folk underground 1969-1975 – various artists (compiled by bob stanley) (2025 reissue) – resident