Ed Askew is right up there on the Astral folk chart of the late ’60s alongside the likes of Michael Hurley and the Incredible String Band. Like Hurley, he’s still very active with his latest album, Art and Life, was released only this year on Tin Angel.
The appetite for psychedelic folk is still very strong, so much so that in 2015 Tin Angel remastered and re-issued Ed Askew’s most well-known album – Ask the Unicorn, originally released in 1968 on the New York-based record company ESP-Disk run by lawyer and folk-maverick Bernard Stollman. Some find it odd that such an album released nearly 50 years ago should find such resonance with an audience today…whatever the reasons, we should be thankful that there are labels out there prepared to put the time, effort and money behind such releases which deserve to reach a much wider audience.
Stollman had a keen nose for the great and he recorded some pretty amazing players, from writers such as William Burroughs to bands such as The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine and The Holy Modal Rounders. He also dabbled in jazz, recording the likes of the mighty Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman. However, as anyone that knows their psych-folk history, ESP was losing a lot of money, eventually folding in 1974. Many releases, therefore, had a limited circulation, becoming underground classics before being re-issued much later on or lying in limbo in the label’s archive as Ed’s second album Little Eyes did – it was finally released in 2005 on De Stijl Records.
This new release ‘A Child In the Sun: Radio Sessions 1969-1970’ is out 17 Nov on Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disk! Previous joint releases include Ed’s Imperfection album (2011) as well as recordings by Michael Yonkers and the brilliant Sandy Bull & The Rhythm Ace Live 1976.
A Child In the Sun is from four unearthed reels of recordings of radio sessions of songs from Ed’s first two albums Ask the Unicorn and Little Eyes mentioned above, including a previously unreleased track. The tapes were meticulously studied and the best versions extracted for this release, some perhaps even more gorgeous than the originals. Take a listen to Marigolds below. This version still features Ed playing his signature tiple, a guitar-like instrument that is reputedly difficult to play and is more commonly associated with the music of Columbia.
Tracklist
01. Fancy That
02. Red Woman
03. Purity Chat
04. Mr. Dream
05. Peter and David
06. Accordian Man
07. Green Song
08. Marigolds 02:21
09. Tiple Talk
10. Oh The Lovely Face
11. Reasonable Man
Pre-Order via Drag City | Bandcamp