On the back of the late-60s freak/folk boom Fahey joined the likes of Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe & The Fish, Peter Walker and Richard & Mimi Farina on Vanguard and recorded two great albums, Requia and The Yellow Princess. Of the two, 1968's The Yellow Princess remains the strongest side, showcasing some of his most dazzling playing while including experiments in electric group composition with members of Randy California's Spirit and one-time Byrds drummer Kevin Kelley. If the album feels a little more self-consciously adventurous than the last few Takoma titles - and the electric group tracks a little out of synch with the rest of the record - Fahey's solo playing is uniformly jaw-dropping, especially on the gloriously ornate title track and the ferociously atonal "Lion". "The Singing Bridge Of Memphis, Tennessee" is one of his eeriest compositions for turntable, guitar and tape, giving voice to architecture in the way that only Fahey could. Highly recommended.

Reissue of a very hard to find double 7” set, originally released in 1997 and long out of print. Recorded in Fahey’s Oregon hotel room, this set works as some kind of bridge between his earlier compositional style and the more overtly damaged sound of Womblife and City Of Refuge while remaining more straightforwardly beautiful than either of those two. Fahey’s acoustic guitar has a stationary gamelan quality which sits real nice and his whistles and wordless vocals work in much the same way as the train recordings did on his earlier sides. Other tracks are more abstract, with attacks of steel slide mutated by a storm of F/X. Great to have this back in print and the package is further bolstered by the inclusion of a full-colour booklet with a bunch of snaps of rarely scene original art by Fahey. Comes in deluxe letterpressed sleeves.