Forest: "The Full Circle" LP

Forest were an English psychedelic-folk trio who formed in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, in 1966. They started out performing unaccompanied traditional folk music in a similar vein to contemporaries The Watersons and The Young Tradition. The band were pioneers of the nascent 60s underground acoustic-psychedelic and acid-folk scene writing unconventionally crafted songs evoking Britain's ancient groves using a variety of acoustic instruments.

The Full Circle is very similar to the eponymous debut album, but does take things a little further. The music still hovers around the late 60s folk somewhere around Fairport Convention and Incredible String Band but almost without percussions.

Forest uses a lot of instruments in the songs, like mandolin, whistle, harmonica, violin, cello, piano, harmonium, electric harpsichord and percussion in addition to guitar and bass. There are no drums on the album. This adds to the variation between the songs and keeps this album exciting the entire playing time.

There are much medieval influences as a basis, but the overall aesthetics are not luckily much idealized or fantasy related, but sincere and realistic, filled with mystery, misery and violence.

Label: Harvest

Genre: World

Release Date: 1970