Oliver
Standing Stone

What we are talking about today is a rare and incredibly expensive album, for those who are looking for it in its original vinyl form, privately pressed in just 250 copies in 1974.

Let's start with some quotes: for the English magazine New Musical Express it is "Completely original, surrealistically sublime"; for the authoritative Record Collector "A lost gem"; for Ptolemaic Terrascope "Indispensable in any adventurous person's collection".

The entire work was composed, played, and produced by Oliver Chaplin with the help of his brother Chris, who mixed it splendidly also thanks to his experience as a BBC sound engineer. Let's open a parenthesis in honor of the brother, who worked for the BBC on several recording sessions that have gone down in history, such as that of Jimi Hendrix. It's easy to understand, at this point, the qualitative value of the recording, despite its "homemade" quality, made, without pretensions, with just one microphone on a classic TEAC 4-track.

Now let's frame the atmosphere: it's the early months of 1974 on a farm in Wales; while outside the cold of the winter woods rages, Oliver works on this album which, with its disarming guitar simplicity, takes us towards fairy-tale landscapes. The general blend is folk, blues, prog, and psych. Too much, you might say. Perhaps, but listening to sounds coming from Floydian reminiscences of the film More is a pleasure, as is finding the first acoustic J. J. Cale, who in solitude, on the other side of the world, caresses his guitar, or, again, our dear Syd, who soars high with his psychedelic mind.

A fresh and genuine work with an atmosphere untouched by the mechanisms of the recording industry that the author rejected when Virgin later came forward for the album's distribution.

Put it in the player or, if you are lucky, on the turntable and spin it a few times: you will enter a magical and enchanted world and, in the end, you will emerge with a smile on your lips.

Printed by Wooden Hill on CD in 1995, I hope it is still easily available today because it deserves a strong reevaluation.