PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

Floridian acid folkers’ songs of war and space, remastered.

Amid the militant rock missiles and sonic groundbreaking that was happening half a century ago, Florida ex-pats Pearls Before Swine’s quietly mesmerising first two albums prompted Lilian Roxon to coin the “acid folk” term in 1969’s Rock Encyclopaedia. Couched in mystery on New York’s enigmatic ESP-Disk label, their leader Tom Rapp’s surreally-tainted songs of war, love and space forged a rare balance between the era’s freewheeling looseness and something deeper, darker and unfathomably ancient.

After 1967’s playfully haunted One Nation Underground debut (which was reissued last year by Drag City), the band started loosening around Rapp to include jazz musicians as he constructed Balaklava, 1968’s most finely-crafted anti-war statement and arguably the greatest of the six

Pearls Before Swine albums that he steered until he went solo in 1971.

Dedicated to the last US soldier executed for desertion in World War Two and swathed in hellish cover detail from Bruegel’s The Triumph Of Death, Rapp’s deftly-conceived song cycle begins with the field-recorded voice of Trumpeter Landfrey, whose bugle started the charge of the Light

Brigade at Balaklava – chosen by Rapp to symbolise war’s futility as the Vietnam war death toll stepped up. After its hallucinogenic tapestry has woven its course, the closing run exhumes Florence Nightingale’s voice before Ring Thing headily reinterprets JRR Tolkien and spooling tape returns to Landfrey, illustrating war’s endless cycle.

Sadly, Rapp succumbed to cancer this year, but thankfully he lived long enough to hear original producer Richard Alderson remaster his most cherished baby back to how he originally envisioned it, with textured intricacies and ectoplasmic textures shimmering like crystals in an opium den after being buried for decades. Now swoon to Translucent Carriages’ whispered counter-vocal and swooshing waves, sumptuous strings drenching I Saw

The World, summer birdsong haze coating Images Of April and jazz veteran Warren Smith’s chamber arrangement garnishing the super strange Guardian Angels (doctored to sound like a 20s 78).

Although Balaklava still sounds like a hallucinogenic arcane broadcast from a long-lost world, its crystal clear message resonates loud as ever to chime perfectly with modern times.

ITS CRYSTAL CLEAR MESSAGE RESONATES LOUD AS EVER

TO CHIME PERFECTLY

WITH MODERN TIMES.