The Giant Tortoise

Second of the four Alice Island Band projects, from early 1968, originally only 20 copies made. A beautiful, whimsical, delicate, charming, sometimes childlike, self-composed collection of songs; echoes of Donovan’s Songs for Little Ones, a whiff of mid period Kinks, vapour trails from the Incredible String Band and faint resonances of the more naïve end of early Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. A genuine, utterly lost, hippy period piece stripped down and authentic, deceptively innocent with a constant Acidic undercurrent of the pervasive sadness marking the end of the “Summer of Love”. The Alice Island Band body of work is directly comparable in date, ethos, rarity, quality and overall vibe to Howell/Ferdinando: Agincourt/Ithaca, love those you’ll love these.