LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Conjoining music, poetry with visual art was a logical step in the climate of the early 70's. And when not gigging or exhibiting, 'Lady' June Campbell-Cramer - writer, painter and eccentric - travelled.
Her frequent trips around the Mediterranean were to take June into the orbit of Soft Machine's Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen, and all were to be fellow passengers on the burgeoning hippy scene of Mallorca, where both she and Ayers were to buy homes.
1974 saw the first performances of June's 'Uppers and Downers' show in Amsterdam, the poems from which would form the basis of 'Linguistic Leprosy'. The book was published by Virgin Books in 1975, sold out and ran to a reprint.
Virgin's Caroline label homed the audio equivalent. In keeping with the label ethos, the album was delightfully unfettered by hype, personality or commercialism.
Whilst a creation of the pooled talents June's musician friends, the larger part of the music and production of the album fell to Ayers, whose career was at its most commercially successful.
He had a new album, 'The Confessions Of Dr Dream', and a switch to Island Records, which also released a live set ('June 1st 1974) by Ayers together with label mates, Brian Eno, Nico (who guested on 'Dr Dream') and her former Velvet Underground colleague, John Cale.
In contrast to the pressures of a career within a mainstream channel, the gentle approach of 'Linguistic Leprosy' saw Ayers, surrounded by his oldest friends, relaxed and enjoying himself. Ayers wrote most of the music settings to June's poems, exceptions being Eno's music for 'Optimism' and Kim Solomon's tune for 'Am I'.
Recording was done in synthesizer virtuoso David Vorhaus' Kaleidophon studio in Camden High Street, London.
The album itself is an extraordinary melange of semi-spoken pastiche and nonsensical nursery rhyming. The diversity of June's vocal delivery is matched throughout the album by a delightful array of musical soundscapes.
In addition to Ayers' trademark melodies and arrangements, a percussive storm swells and erupts from the muted heartbeat of 'Everythingsnothing' whilst the most delicate of pianos twists almost inaudibly through the strange images of 'The Letter'.
There are echoes of Ayers' 'The Oyster and The Flying Fish' in 'Mangel / Wurzel' and the rumble of his beloved calypso can be heard in 'Bars', with Pip Pyle on drums.
Brian Eno's influence is strong particularly on the short 'Optimism' and the longer, Gong-like meanderings of Tunion', the latter combining a foretaste of Eno's later 'ambient' music with a hypnotic space whisper where voices blend eerily and inseparably into the language of the synthesizer.
David Vorhaus mixed the final 'Touch-downer' around a whispered tape loop that will surprise headphone listeners with its strange subliminal harmonies.
The album proved one of Caroline's most successful, selling its entire run of 5,000 and lending it subsequent collectable status.
This reissue on Market Square re-presents these timeless recordings together with revised booklets notes by Ayer's archivist Martin Wakeling and personal and humorous recollections of June, who sadly in 1997, by surviving relative Tim Campbell-Todd.
Timeless beyond its genesis, the originality of this work together with its Canterbury connections have ensured the collectable status of "Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy".
TRACK LISTING

1. Some Day Silly Twenty Three
2. Reflections
3. Am I
4. Everythingsnothing
5. Tunion
6. Tourist
7. Bars
8. Letter
9. Mangel/Wurzel
10. To Whom It May Not Concern
11. Optimism
12. Touch Downer