Nick Drake Five Leaves Left ( 180g vinyl LP )

Release date29-06-2013 (Originally released in 1969)

2013 EU reissue of the classic 1969 ( 180g vinyl LP ) +download - the incredible debut album by the one & only Nick Drake. Remastered from the original quarter inch master tapes by John Wood at Abbey Road Studios and pressed using wholly analogue processes onto 180g virgin vinyl.

"Five leaves left" was his first album, and was promptly ignored by critics and consumers alike upon its release; only relatively recently has his talent started to be properly realised. Includes a voucher to downlad an mp3 version of the album presented in a sealed and stickered gatefold sleeve

Tracks:
A1. Time Has Told Me
A2. River Man
A3. Three Hours
A4. Way To Blue
A5. Day Is Done

B1. cello Song
B2. Thoughts Of Mary Jane
B3. Man In A Shed
B4. Fruit Tree
B5. Saturday Sun

Main Albums:
Five Leaves Left (1969)
Pink Moon (1972)
Bryter Layter (1970)

With every passing year, it becomes a little less accurate to say that Nick Drake has a cult following. Cults, by their very nature, tend to exist on the margins, the subject of their admiration unknown or even unloved by the vast majority of people. Mention Nick Drake to a certain generation of music fan and chances are you won’t have to explain yourself. Latterly, Drake’s name has become a byword for a certain kind of acoustic music. Gentility, melancholia and a seemingly casual mastery of the fretboard – in the minds of many listeners, any combination of these traits warrants comparison to Nick Drake.

As a result, Drake is perpetually referenced across the reviews sections of every music title. That quite often the records in question bear no meaningful resemblance to Drake’s music speaks volumes. His legacy may, in one sense, be huge. But there’s painfully little of it: just three complete albums – Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972) and a number of songs recorded shortly before his death. As his relevance increases, so does an insatiable communal yearning for their source to yield more. Somehow we cannot quite accept the fact that this was all he left behind.

Nick Drake's stunning 1969 debut album encapsulates a marriage between folk music and the singer-songwriter genre. Part Donovan, part Jim Webb, he articulated an aching romanticism at a time when progressive rock ran rampant. Beautiful melodies and fragrant accompaniment, in particular Robert Kirby's stunning string arrangements, enhance the artist's sense of longing in which warm, but understated, vocals accentuate the album's passive mystery. An aura of existential cool envelops the proceedings, accentuated by Danny Thompson's sonorous bass lines and Drake's poetic imagery. The result is a shimmering, autumnal collection that is reflective and eternally rewarding.

This vinyl reissue of Nick Drake's debut Five Leaves Left is pressed on audiophile 180g virgin vinyl remastered from the near-original master tapes by the album's original engineer, John Wood. Although the original tapes were unusable, Wood had made a safety copy of the album in 1969 and those reels were used for this latest session.

Revered British folk singer/songwriter who produced several albums of chilling, somber beauty and gained a cult following after his early death.