Our dearest Concreteweb’s headquarters did recently receive a cd-r / mp3 with seven Folk-oriented albums. As a matter of fact, Strawberry Oracle Promotions will give some renewed attention to seven bands / projects within the Folk scene by having this material put on the foreground again. It deals with both recent as well as pretty old recordings, and in order to give this stuff a boost, I will be so kind to have it reviewed.
This review deals with material once recorded in 1970 and 1971 (!). The mini Pearls Of Amber has been compiled in 2011 through German Folk / Psychedelic / Hippie-label Merlin’s Nose Records and consists of six tracks.
Apparently the history of this release - the only thing ever done by Amber - is pretty interesting for fans of the genre. More than forty years ago, a certain Mister George Harrison gave a sitar as present to Donovan. Since Donovan was a friend of Mac McLeod, he passed that sitar through to Mac. At that time, Mac and his friend Julian McAllister (and session member Ray Cooper) wanted to form a Folk-project, and Amber were born. And of course, as you did guess, the sitar started playing a leading role in Amber’s Hippie Music.
Pearls Of Amber (the actual release date was: September 5th 2011) consists of material from the very early seventies, done by Mac and Julian (and Ray). They did record some stuff, but in the vein of ‘true Hippiedom’, the guys travelled the world (Mac went to Scandinavia, and Julian visited some Arab countries - where to find the best drugs, he might have thought), so this material is everything they ever did under the Amber-moniker. It was finally produced by Keith Relf of The Yardbirds, Renaissance and Armageddon, and some of this guy’s material appeared on The Incredible Musical Odyssey Of The Original Hurdy Gurdy Man, an anthology by Mac (with material from other projects he was involved with).
Musically, this release brings acoustic up-tempo stuff with both a ‘Hippie’-attitude as well as a proto-Folk sound. There’s a slight hint of The Incredible String Band, but one cannot ignore the influential presence of Donovan either. And since this project has been a modest but undoubtedly important influence to many other bands, this stuff must be a necessity for those who are (etc…)…