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.