They threw away the mold when they made this man. A long time favourite of the late John Peel, Ivor Cutler's quiet peculiar spoken and sung pieces are deliciously warm slices of home-baked surrealism, painting a world reassuringly out of time and step with everyday life. He delights in making the familiar somehow unfamiliar...often unsettling but never threatening.

Cutler's unique sideways view of the world is as engaging and entertaining as his delivery is deadpan...I suspect his charm has a lot to do with the old-fashioned austerity of his Scottish lilt, being somehow at odds with the child-like creativity and playfulness of his words...both warm yet stern, as if he is reading bedtime stories and poems to an imaginary grandchild before sending them off to their dark cold bedroom in the attic.

I'm finding it very hard to nail Cutler's ouvre in words, he has been likened to Edward Lear...and it can take a while to tune in to him, but it's worth the effort. This album is a collection of mainly short pieces (some are only one or two lines long) to savour, and to feed the imagination...as I'm sure he did when he taught at the resolutely leftfield Summerhill School.
What do we do now he's gone?...listen to all his wonderful albums of course...preferably through a hole in the tabletop, whilst lying under a pile of dirt.

Ivor Cutler entertains with his songs and monologues. He is joined by Fred Frith on Viola for some songs and Phyllis King reads some of her poetry.

See http://www.ivorcutler.org/ to get an idea of what a treat is held on this disc.