Dust on the Nettles: A Journey Through the British

With 63 tracks and a total running time of just under four hours, Dust On The Nettles examines the metamorphosis that British folk underwent during the late 1960s, when the influence of psychedelia and the counterculture saw the idiom being twisted into all kinds of new and exotic shapes, as the finger-in-the-ear folk clubs of yore were inexorably drawn into a brave new world of Arts Labs, free festivals and the nascent college/university circuit. Our anthology incorporates the various overlapping strands of the underground folk scene: the acid folk experimenters, the folklorists and trad song updaters, the more metaphysical element of the burgeoning singer/songwriter genre, the newly-electric folk rockers, the elemental paganism exemplified by Comus and The Wicker Man, even the early 1970s Jesus music movement that spawned the likes of the sitar-wielding Parchment. Balancing the familiar with the obscure, we feature acknowledged brand leaders like Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, Pentangle and Steeleye Span alongside acts who made music purely for the local communities that nurtured them: Shide & Acorn on the Isle of Wight, Folkal Point in Bristol, Music Box in Coventry, Chrissie Quayle in Cornwall. We incorporate a large number of recordings that weren't issued at the time, sample impossibly rare albums by the likes of Oberon, Dry Heart and Benjamin Delaney Lion, and feature key recordings from a number of bands who underpinned the thriving live scene of the era. Housed in a clambox featuring a lavishly illustrated and annotated 36-page booklet, the painstakingly-assembled Dust On The Nettles is surely the most comprehensive and wide-ranging anthology to appear thus far of the UK underground hippie folk movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s.