From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
This is the final song on "The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter", the third Incredible String Band album. The ISB sought to position themselves outside of time: on this record they espoused “Living the timeless life” and did their best to detach themselves from the earthbound concerns of 1968, the year it was released.

However, so much of the music they made now seems tethered to the flowering of the hippy era. That’s when I listened to them most: religiously, barefoot in my red trousers with my legs crossed and my eyes closed. I would carry their music around with me everywhere on my little portable record player, trying to intensify my life by transcending it. And Mike Heron and Robin Williamson did write some great songs that could get, at times, obscured by their mystical ISB schtick. Their live shows were always a joy - I came away feeling glad and grateful to be alive, every time.

In later years I came to know their producer and mentor of a kind, Joe Boyd: he told me how they and their girlfriends Liquorice and Rose (who were both also in the band for a while) became hijacked by Scientology when he unwisely left them alone for an evening in New York. Scientology saved them from prolonged drug use, but lured them into writing songs that perhaps reflected who they felt they should be rather than who they actually were.

Long after the ISB was over I met Mike and Robin themselves: both genial fellows a decade older than myself. In this instance I’m really glad I met my heroes, and I’m happy to see them living long and full existences on this earth with their partners Bina and Corrina.

‘Nightfall’ is one of Robin’s briefest and best songs: serpentine but quick. I still crumble inside when I hear it or sing it: it distills the poignant surrender to darkness at the end of our day and our life. it’s really sad, in its crystalline way.

I’m doing my best to echo Mike’s sitar part on my ancient Kay acoustic with its buzzing strings.


From Robyn on Patreon in 2024
Nothing is forever: after decades of biding their time quietly in boxes and cupboards, a selection of my old cassette tapes have been transfigured into pure digital form, so now I can share them with you via the airy magic of the Cloud.

The first tape, hauled at random out of the box, is from 1987/88 and contains three Incredible String Band songs which Joe Boyd recorded me performing in a mobile studio somewhere in North London. I had recently met Joe through R.E.M. and found myself intersecting with him a lot. He had discovered and produced The ISB, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and Pink Floyd, which ticked a lot of my boxes.

We hatched a vague plan together to record an ISB tribute record, for which this session would be the opening salvo. However, it also turned out to be the last one: we couldn’t find anyone else in the venal 1980s interested in these pantheistic Scottish minstrels who had peaked two decades earlier.

I discovered that Joe’s whole production technique appeared to involve doing the crossword in the corner of the room. At the end of each take he would either say “Great!” or “You can do it better than that.” Nonetheless, his ears are sharper than a bat’s when it comes to it.