COINCIDENCE TIME. Just after I played The Fates (Una Baines', ex-Fall/Blue Orchids, new project) album for the first time, I put on the 'Pogo-A-Go-Go' NME cassette and noticed that the seminal 'Bingo Master's Break-Out' is credited to Smith/Baines. What price the innovators now? This collection of Celtic folk-flavoured songs, originally inspired by tales of white witchcraft through the ages, it's a pleasant enough gathering offlutes, percussion, poems, laments, vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars from a group of nine women. Ignore the Linder-type off-putting cover and delve inside to become gently bewitched by the melodic, mystical spell of this frail, proud music. Old hippies all? Maybe, but you don't need to be loud to be worth hearing. Possibly the two poems on Side Two, 'Who Am I?' and 'Ritual', slip over into pretentiousness with their 'atmospheric' backgrounds and monosyllabic vocals. But in the main, as Laurie Lee might put it, "this music has something of the quality of charm; radiance, balance and harmony."

The Legend!

New MusicaI Express October, 1985