Joe Boyd
“Winter Is Blue” by Vashti Bunyan
Just Another Diamond Day is the debut album by the English folk singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan, and was released on Philips Records in December 1970. Much of the album is a musical reflection on Bunyan and travelling partner Robert Lewis’s experiences while travelling by horse and wagon through Scotland in 1968. It highlighted Bunyan’s vocals with minimal instrumental accompaniment that was arranged by contemporary musical artists supervised under record producer Joe Boyd.
Upon release, Just Another Diamond Day went relatively unnoticed. Stricken by the demoralising and disillusioning outcome, Bunyan began a self-imposed exile from the music industry to live a low-profile lifestyle. Over the years, the album has received more attention among record collectors, resulting in reissues that sparked a revival in Bunyan’s music career. Although it was largely overlooked by the public at the time of its release, the album’s critical standing has improved over the years and today Just Another Diamond Day is now by many considered one of the best works in British folk.
Richard Thompson: ‘I had to put the pen down, take a deep breath, have a little cry’
The folk-rock pioneer has finally written his memoir, covering a life-changing crash and his fiery romance with Linda Thompson
It’s nearly 55 years since Richard Thompson began his career in music. A pioneer of folk-rock, hugely influential singer-songwriter and one of Britain’s most astonishing guitarists, he was only a month out of his teens on the morning of 12 May 1969 when all promise was nearly stopped short. His band, Fairport Convention, had been signed on the spot in 1967 when producer Joe Boyd saw his talent with a guitar at 17, and their mission to reconnect British rock with the older, beautiful songs of their home country was well under way.
He’d already jammed with Jimi Hendrix and supported Pink Floyd; now Thompson’s band had recently finished their third album, Unhalfbricking, with new singer Sandy Denny. A work full of ambitious originals and covers that still regularly appears in best British album polls, it got to No 12 in the charts then; decades later, it became a touchstone for the Green Man festival-endorsed folk-rock revival of the 2000s when everyone who liked Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham raved about it.
The Parts You Don’t Hear – The Incredible String Band
One of the most popular British psychedelic bands of the late 1960’s, The Incredible String Band are close to our hearts here at The Parts You Don’t Hear. Even listening to them today in our culture of been there, heard that they are an astonishing, unique listen to which we’ve never heard the likes of again. In a way they are key to the Sound Techniques studio story because their rise in the music scene mirrors the studio’s fast growing popularity.