Dando Shaft: An Evening With Dando Shaft [TRADING PLACES]

Why you'll love it

This Trading Places reissue adds a bonus instrumental and comes with a sticker. The album drew immediate comparisons to Pentangle, with its own mix of original songs, multi-instrumental colour and Bulgarian-flavoured rhythms.

This edition

• Bonus track
• Sticker included

About the album

Dando Shaft took their name from the title character of a 1965 novel by Don Calhoun, which tells you something about the bookish, inventive bunch they were. Formed in Coventry in 1968, the quintet (singers and guitarists Kevin Dempsey and Dave Cooper, multi-instrumentalist Martin Jenkins, bassist Roger Bullen and tabla player Ted Kay) spent two years in local folk clubs before Young Blood Records signed them and they cut this debut in 1970.

The sound is acoustic but restless. Jenkins's many instruments give the songs a bluegrassy edge, Kay's tabla pushes them along, and the rhythms borrow from Balkan, especially Bulgarian, folk. "Cold Wind" and "September Wine" show off the band's songwriting, "Rain" opens the album on interlocking guitars, and producer Miki Dallon keeps everything close and natural.

Singer Polly Bolton joined later in 1970 and the band moved on to RCA's progressive Neon label, but this is where the story starts, and the album is now counted among the key records of the progressive folk revival. A Coventry folk band with a tabla player in 1970 was, let's say, a little ahead of the timetable.

Also at Kops: more Dando Shaft on vinyl · browse Folk

Tracklist

Listen

On Trading Places (cat# TDP 54083), a reissue of the 1970 album.