King's Ransom
Album: Legends OfThe Edge
Label: Epona
Tracks: 20
Website: http://www.eponarecords.com

Joe Beard's 1983 album-length collection of songs retelling the local legend of the wizard of Alderley Edge was recorded five years later, in 1988, by Cheshire-based six-piece folk-rock band King's Ransom, within the ranks of which Joe himself played guitar and sang. (Continuity into the present-day is provided by Joe's current band Radnor, who include in their ranks original King's Ransom member Rosa Sheard and their 1988 album's producer Mike Billington.)

This 1988 version is a spirited, if slightly odd affair, somewhat of a curate's egg it must be said although it contains some pretty decent songs that suit their context and content right enough. Musically though, it's somewhat of a throwback, with often a definite mid-to-late-70s-Steeleye feel but whose ringing, chiming guitar sounds and timbres are perhaps more in tune with 80s new-wave. Rosa's soaring vocal work (on around half of the songs) proves a powerful signature, much in the approved styling that melds Annie Haslam and Maddy Prior.

The master tapes for the album having long been lost, a miracle has been performed by restoration software and digital remastering in order that this reissue brings the album an optimum sound quality; even so, there's a certain thinness of tone (and what I might term a "lack of bottom-end boost") that even the intensity of the performances can't entirely redeem. It's still rather appealing in its own way though, once you get used to the overall sound.

The attendant passages of narration and studio-generated sound-effects (mostly thunderclaps and the like) are somewhat quaintly managed, one might say in a rather 70s-BBC fashion, but thankfully these don't intrude on the impact of the songs or the storytelling. Sure, this is likely to be considered a reissue for the curio collector rather than the more general music enthusiast, but it, like its predecessor, is worth hearing, and forms a useful complement to the more generally-known Alan Garner stories based on the Alderley Edge local legends.

David Kidman