HUX RECORDS
2008
Lighter Touch
About This Album
Robin Dransfield is primarily known as (with his brother Barry) one-half of the British folk duo the Dransfields, who recorded several albums in the 1970s. Although Robin performed intermittently as a solo act for several periods in the 1960s and 1970s, Tidewave, released in 1980, was his only solo LP. The two-CD set A Lighter Touch is essentially an expanded version of Tidewave, with the first disc presenting that album, and the second offering a previously unreleased live show recorded in Kent on November 14, 1972. Though Tidewave was actually started in 1974 in Paris, five years passed before work resumed and the sessions were finished in London in 1979 and 1980. It's a low-key, pleasant affair split between traditional folk songs and more contemporary material, some of it written by Dransfield, with other tunes written by esteemed cult folk singer Anne Briggs (who penned the title track) and the yet more obscure Steve Sproxton and Paul Parrish. The arrangements are generally inclined toward sparse acoustic folk, despite others (including Procol Harum keyboardist Chris Copping) helping out on piano, cello, hurdy-gurdy, concertina, bass, trumpet, bass trombone, and euphonium. The jaunty, banjo-driven "When It's Night-Time in Italy, It's Wednesday Over Here" and brass band-backed "Spencer the Rover" make for the most adventurous departures from the more conventional folk arrangements typical of the rest of the album.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,3,4,5,9,10 and 11)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 2,4,6,7,9,10 and 25)

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