VA - Acid Folk, Chronicles of the Woven Vale (A Butterboy Compilation) CD1+CD2+CD3+ Bonus

ACID FOLK

VA - Acid Folk, Chronicles of the Woven Vale (A Butterboy Compilation) CD1+CD2+CD3+ Bonus

Acid folk, often called psychedelic folk or freak folk emerged in the mid-to-late 1960s like mist rising from the forest floor. It blurred traditional balladry with hypnotic instrumentation, modal tunings, and lyrics that felt conjured rather than composed. You might hear sitars next to dulcimers, voices echoing like incantations, and melodies that seem unearthed rather than written. This wasn’t folk with flowers, it was folk with shadows, spells, and surreal devotion.

Early boundary-breakers like Donovan, The Holy Modal Rounders, and The Incredible String Band laid the groundwork, with ISB’s The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion often cited as a defining work. In your compilation, Way Back in the 1960s stands as a whimsical and satirical relic from that album, sly, playful, and dripping with countercultural reverence. Other cornerstone artists like Comus (Diana), Trees (The Garden of Jane Delawney), and Forest (A Fantasy You) and (Graveyard) helped steer folk music into visionary, ritualistic terrain.

The genre never exploded commercially, but it built a devoted cult following. By the late ’70s, it mostly vanished, living quietly in private pressings and dusty record store corners delighted by cult circles, diggers of forgotten vinyl. 

Across 63 core tracks and 21 bonus selections, this is not just a listening experience, it's a living archive. Many entries are genuine rarities. Take "Prisoner" by Marie Celeste, a fragile track from a UK private press that floats somewhere between séance and lullaby. Or "If Words Were All I Had" by Bobb Trimble,a home-recorded masterpiece of outsider melancholy. There’s "Epitaph" by Oberon, pulled from their near-mythical 1971 LP, and "Sea Song" by Caedmon, glimmering with medieval modernism. "Dancing at Whitsun" by Stone Angel, a quietly devastating reflection on war and remembrance, is another deeply buried treasure now restored to light. And then there’s "I Feel the Sun" by Extradition, an Australian gem that opens like a sun prayer and ends like a breeze through ancient gums.

To listen to acid folk is to leave the road and follow mossy paths through story, sound, and spirit. It’s not just a genre, it’s a gateway. And once you cross through, something in you changes. 

As a Bonus I have included a 21-track compilation titled VA - Proto Acid Folk, Before the Bloom (A Butterboy Compilation)

This compilation doesn’t just anticipate acid folk, it listens for it in the distance, like birdsong before rain.

Before acid folk unfurled into phantasmagoric pastoralism, a quieter revolution brewed in the margins. Drawing exclusively from tracks recorded before 1967, proto acid folk emerged between 1962-1966 as a spectral whisper of psychedelia meeting tradition, haunting modal guitar lines, mystical lyricism, and esoteric ballads delivered with emotional rawness.

Artists like Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch, and Joan Baez offer stark acoustic meditations, rooted in centuries-old melodies and delivered with emotional precision. Paired with avant-garde folk voices like Sandy Bull and the Holy Modal Rounders, whose experiments with form and tuning break the boundary between tradition and surrealism, the set captures a transitional moment in folk music’s evolution.

Lyrical sorrow, environmental dread, and mystical longing are recurring themes, from Bonnie Dobson’s apocalyptic "Morning Dew" to Karen Dalton’s fractured lament "Katie Cruel", each track whispers at the threshold of deeper psychedelic transformation. The sequencing arcs gracefully: starting with Appalachian lament and folk purity, moving through experimental cadence and poetic narrative, and culminating with the Incredible String Band’s "October Song", a quiet prophecy of the acid folk era to come. (B)

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Track lists

Acid Folk, Chronicles of the Woven Vale

CD1

01 Forest - A Fantasy You 2:41 1969

02 Adam & Eve - Desert Song 3:10 1969

03 Shelagh McDonald - Peacock Lady 3:29 1970

04 Malicorne - Dame Lombarde 3:11 1974

05 Subway - I Am A Child 4:19 1972

06 Lesley Duncan - Love Song 3:09 1969

07 Chimera - Lady With Bullets in Her Hair 2:47 1969

08 Marie Celeste - Prisoner 3:31 1971

09 Mellow Candle - Silversong 4:29 1972

10 Folkal Point - Once I Knew a Pretty Girl 4:03 1971

11 Shide&Acorn - Under The Tree 4:28 1971

12 Caedmon - Sea Song 5:35 1978

13 The Incredible String Band - The Minotaur's Song 3:22 1968

14 Ken Saul - Warm Summer Rain 2:41 1970

15 Mr Brooks - The Family 3:08 1974

16 Peter Sinfield - The Song of The Sea Goat 6:08 1973

17 Trader Horne - Morning Way 4:36 1970

18 Holy Modal Rounders - Generalonely 4:00 1971

19 Oberon - Epitaph 3:35 1971

20 Mr. Fox - Mendle 7:12 1970

21 Trees - The Great Silkie 5:11 1970

CD2

01 Bread, Love & Dreams - Hymn for Sylvia 5:46 1970

02 Extradition - I Feel The Sun 1:20 1971

03 Comus - Diana 4:36 1971

04 Bobb Trimble - If Words Were All I Had 4:27 1982

05 Stone Angel - Dancing at Whitsun 3:15 1994

06 Vashti Bunyan - Rainbow River 3:22 1970

07 Forest - Graveyard 5:45 1970

08 Magic Carpet - The Phoenix 3:19 1972

09 Spriguns - Trysting Tree 4:05 1976

10 Skybird - Queen Magdalena 3:26 1973

11 Jan Dukes De Grey - Sorcerers 2:42 1970

12 Ithaca - All My Life 2:38 1973

13 Incredible String Band - The Water Song 2:50 1968

14 Meic Stevens - Yorric 8:48 1970

15 Dr. Strangely Strange - Strings in the Earth and Air 2:01 1969

16 Spriguns of Tolgus - Flodden Field 6:42 1975

17 Big Lost Rainbow - Ocean 5:02 1973

18 Simon Finn - Butterfly 3:27 1970

19 C.O.B. - Soft Touches of Love 4:46 1971

20 Mark Fry - The Witch 6:41 1972

21 Carol of Harvest - You and Me 2:26 1978

CD3

01 Time - A Song for You 5:34 1968

02 Bob Brown - Baby Child 5:35 1971

03 Pearls Before Swine - Ballad to an Amber Lady 5:14 1967

04 Mad River - Equinox 1:49 1969

05 Curved Air - Elfin Boy 4:16 1973

06 Amazing Blondel - Love Sonnet 4:02 1970

07 Incredible String Band - Koeeoaddi There 4:46 1968

08 Trees - Little Balck Cloud 2:13 1969

09 Ithaca - Questions 4:10 1973

10 Extradition - Song for Sunrise 5:47 1971

11 Steeleye Span - The Blacksmith 3:39 1970

12 Spirogyra - Time Will Tell 5:38 1971

13 Tony, Caro and John - There Are No Greater Heroes 3:46 1972

14 Water Into Wine Band - Waiting for Another Day 6:23 1976

15 Roger Rodier - While My Castle Burning 4:19 1972

16 Trees - The Garden of Jane Delawney 4:07 1970

17 Judee Sill - The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown 3:16 1972

18 Midwinter - The Waters of Sweet Sorrow 3:08 1973

19 Heaven & Earth - Feel The Spirit 4:47 1973

20 Jan Dukes De Grey - Sun Symphonica 18:59 1971

21 The Incredible String Band - A Very Cellular Song 13:09 1968

BONUS VA - Proto Acid Folk, Before the Bloom

01 Jean Ritchie - Black Waters 4:09 1977

02 Malvina Reynolds - What Have They Done to The Rain 2:15 1964

03 Elvis Presley - Tomorrow is a Long Time 5:21 1966

04 Joan Baez - The Trees They Do Grow High 2:56 1961

05 Anne Briggs - She Moved Through The Fair 2:19 1963

06 Donovan - Guinevere 3:42 1966

07 Ian Campbell Folk Group - The Sun is Burning 2:25 1963

08 Bert Jansch - Needle of Death 3:19 1965

09 Karen Dalton - Katie Cruel 2:33 1963

10 Rosalie Sorrels - If You Love Me 3:19 1962

11 Tom Rush - Urge for Going 5:47 1966

12 Richard & Mimi Farina - A Swallow Song 2:54 1965

13 Incredible String Band - Way Back in the 1960s 3:13 1967

14 Sandy Bull - Blend 21:56 1963

15 Donovan - Legend of A Girl Child Linda 6:52 1966

16 Holy Modal Rounders - The Cuckoo 3:08 1964

17 Anne Briggs - The Snow it Melts The Soonest 2:18 1665

18 Buffy Sainte-Marie - Cod'ine 5:04 1964

19 Bonnie Dobson - Morning Dew 3:20 1962

20 Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind 2:20 1965

21 Incredible String Band - October Song 4:09 1966

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Music weaves itself into the fabric of our emotions, dances through the corridors of memory, and whispers to the soul of who we are. Sharing these stories deepens the connection, turning the experience into something timeless and profound.

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