LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

• Edition: Official remastered reissue
• Source: Original master tapes
• Packaging: Hard-cardboard sleeve with obi strip
• Extras: Illustrated insert with liner notes by Richard Allen and rare photographs, plus a download card

Standing Stone is one of the most extraordinary private-press recordings to emerge from the British underground of the 1970s. Created almost entirely by singer, guitarist and part-time farmer Oliver Chaplin, the album combines rural acid folk, primitive blues, heavily treated guitar and homemade psychedelic experimentation.

Oliver recorded the album during early 1974 at a remote farm in Wales, using a portable four-track TEAC reel-to-reel machine. His brother Chris Chaplin, an experienced BBC engineer who had previously worked on Syd Barrett sessions, assisted with the recording.

Surrounded by animals and the everyday sounds of the farm, Oliver performed the vocals and acoustic and electric guitars, processing the instruments through tape echo, distortion and extensive multitracking. The limited equipment became an essential part of the album’s strange and timeless atmosphere.

The short acoustic pieces and fragmented instrumental passages are interspersed with longer songs such as “Trance,” “Cat and the Rat” and “Tok Tic.” Oliver’s cracked vocals, unpredictable guitar playing and unusual production create a sound somewhere between Captain Beefheart, Syd Barrett, Robert Johnson and the most adventurous British acid folk.

Only around 250 copies of the original album were privately pressed. The record attracted interest from Virgin Records and musicians including J.J. Cale, but Oliver declined the opportunity to enter the commercial music industry and instead left Wales to travel around Europe.

Over the following decades, Standing Stone developed a cult reputation as one of the rarest and most individual British private pressings. This authorised Guerssen edition restores the complete album from the original master tapes and presents it with extensive archival material.

Track listing:

Side A
1. Off on a Trek
2. Trance
3. Flowers on a Hill
4. Freezing Cold Like an Iceburg
5. Royal Flush
6. Cat and the Rat
7. Instamatic
8. Telephone

Side B
1. Getting Fruity
2. Tricycle
3. Motorway
4. Primrose
5. In Vain
6. Multiplex
7. Orbit Your Factory
8. Tok Tic
9. Where’s My Motorbike