Peter Howell and John Ferdinando
Alice Through The Looking Glass

LA RECENSIONE

Ditchling, East Sussex, late sixties...

Psychedelia has also reached the most remote villages.

Peter and John, who until then had been part of bands with names like “The Three Musketeers” or “Merlin's Spell,” are tasked with composing music for an adaptation of “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll.

It's a small thing, a village thing...

...

And I seem to hear the voice of the child...

“It's too beautiful, too...”

And the tear almost falls...

You put on a record and it feels like being on an afternoon in the seventies, when you were about ten years old.

The kids' TV show, a slice of apple pie, the cat dozing, the brown living room that turns into a pink Picasso.

And then certain pauses, certain silences. The bleary eyes, the endless time ahead of you.

Images pass, suggestions.

The almanac of the next day, the little tunes from Pinocchio, the street theater, the upside-down world.

The Bidone Circus, the one that traveled in horse-drawn carriages.

And, of course, Alice...

...

Ok, yet another underrated sixties album.

Delightful psych-folk gems tousled by the wind of those years.

A vivid soundtrack all about glass sounds and castles in the air. A collection of moments, a small museum in an album of stickers.

A beautiful slightly out-of-key naivety. A strange kind of magical incompleteness. And hints of enchantment more beautiful than the enchantment itself.

And, in addition, the magical and absurd Carroll-like twist to pass through the looking glass.

All quietly and without making a fuss, as if a small Penguin Café had opened in the realm of Folkadelia.

Primarily an instrumental album, the very few songs are so beautiful that describing them is almost impossible. So I go back to the kids' TV then and those afternoons I mentioned...

And so there it is, Syd's scarecrow, the singing hedgehog from the Incredible String Band, the cloud that didn't want to be rain by I don't remember who.

...

It remains to say about the amateur recording, that this is bedroom low-fi psychedelia...

Peter and John armed with a Revox record, overdub, cut, sew, run tapes backward. Not only that, they load that gadget onto a trolley and record sounds in the field.

Thus, the practice of a small laboratory of odd sounds gives this work that naive touch that makes it so special...

For some, it's the bucolic/pastoral version of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” And I'd say that's enough reason to listen, right?

Ah, Syd's scarecrow here is not sad at all. And it has the smile of the Cheshire Cat...

Trallallà...