Across The Water

two college students recorded this lp taking one side each. peter mckerrow's island suite is an extended neo classical progressive rock piece that covers all of one side, its characterised by heavy keyboards that verge into distortion and interwoven guitar, ending with a mass-like vocal part, its perhaps comparable to early Renaissance (Keith Relf, later Annie Haslam) and Continuum, and Italian prog too. The piece was inspired by McKerrows trip to the remote Islands of St Kilda as a 16 yr old to conduct a census on the rare and beautiful native Soay Sheep. His tent blew away in a storm on the first night, and he barely survived by clinging to the rocks as 100 ft waves pounded the crags and Soay Sheep pranced around his drenched form. He was awoken in the morning sunrays by a Soay Sheep biting his leg, he thinks to wake him, in a friendly fashion.

His canadian pal wrote the songs on the other side which are folky singer songwriter tracks of the highest order, informed by homesickness for Canada and a difficult break up with a girlfriend, the opening song is a lost classic with a gorgeous mandolin (or is it banjo ?) melody. those songs are a bit reminiscent of Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen, deeply melancholic.

the lp itself is an exquisite item hand made in 1975, just two copies, with beautiful calligraphy on the labels, and a hand assembled wraparound silver gelatin photograph of St Kilda for the covers. One was made for each artist.