Ithaca (Peter Howell and John Ferdinando) - Game For All Who Know

A beautiful, trippy album originally released in 1973, with lovely female vocals sounding glorious in a dreamy setting -- this album contains incredibly good and extremely rare home recordings from the same line-up (headed by psychedelic-folk masters Peter Howell and John Ferdinando), that had made the remarkable Agincourt Fly Away album two years earlier. There is a slightly different musical emphasis this time, as the band sounds more like a folk version of Pink Floyd. Howell had just joined the BBC (where he would later work on the Doctor Who theme), and inspired by the Moody Blues, conceived a prog-rock project exploring life's grander themes, with Ferdinando handling producer duties.The Ithaca album opens with the sound of pages turning, and follows a journey through a cycle of questions, times, feelings, and dreams. Beautiful interwoven songs with nice tape experiments and added sounds in a pastoral prog psych vein, made all the better by the fragile female vocals on offer from Lee Menelaus.

From the original quarter inch master tapes -- with the addition of three previously unreleased bonus tracks cause for much additional rejoicing! The sixteen-page booklet has a lengthy band history, lyrics, and rare photos.