Something strange in the wilderness

At the end of the sixties and the start of the seventies, after psychedelia and the rise of the record company, and before the anger of punk, there was a surge on do it yourself record releases. A hotbed of reflective artists producing their own music. Often recorded at home or with no budget for studio retakes, and then releasing it on privately pressed vinyl, it was the embers of an underground home made musical movement.

Often tagged now as Downer Folk, Loner Folk, or Outsider Folk these homemade recording artists had very little in common musically, besides the use of acoustic guitars and heartfelt vocals, but sorrow and heartbreak seem to be an underlying theme. Their introspective and melancholic lyrics with a usual acoustic strumming has taken almost 40 years to become almost popular, and it can now be increasingly expensive to track down and purchased the handful of copies that remain from perhaps 50 or 100 original LP’s or singles produced and given out at local gigs.

This mix sits as a pair with a mix I did a few years ago called ‘Alone in the wilderness’ which deals with songs that appeared in that strange place in time, where the hangover of 60s hippie idealism cast a long shadow across fading rainbow skies and the thought of a cold nuclear wind blew into the grey concrete depression of the 70s, tracks that document environmental yearning, lost love, and a creeping uncertainty of what tomorrow may bring.