This is a UK Sept. 2020 Release Vinyl LP by

'Dyble Longdon'

'Between A Breath And A Breath' NEW VINYL LP IN STOCK Very LTD Edition 150 Pcs Only



The original female vocalist with Fairport Convention, singing in their debut single If I Had A Ribbon Bow, and subsequently briefly part of Giles, Giles and Fripp and then one half of Tblerader Home, Judy Dyble left the music business in 1973. She went on to work as a librarian before making a surprise guest appearance at Fairport’s 1981 annual reunion and began writing and recording again in 2003, releasing seven studio albums (some more limited than others) along with a collaboration with Andy Lewis and a range of guest appearances. One such was in 2017 when she sang one of the songs on Grimspound by Big Big Train fronted by multi-instrumentalist David Longdon.

That, in turn, led to the two of them (along with most of Big Big Train) collaborating on this prog-rock/folk epic, a project which, sadly, has now proven to be her last work, passing away, aged 71 in July this year, shortly after its completion, after a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Featuring both lyricist Dyble and composer Longdon on vocals and autoharp with the instrumentation including 12-string, strings, flute, organ, mandolin, e-bow, harmonium, glockenspiel and much more,  perhaps inevitably there are several lines that allude to her illness, but generally speaking, it’s a work suffused with optimism.

It opens on an initial drone before tinkling keys and a drum roll arrives with Astrologers, a densely layered, at times music box, waltzing number about a lonely woman who’s had enough of fortune-tellers predicting that today is the day she finds love only to be consistently disappointed (“for that is a cruel joke to play”) in a mix of frustration and despair.

It’s followed by the part sung, part spoken Obedience with its hints of medieval and Eastern musical influences,  Dyble and Longdon alternating lines with the music swelling and erupting in surges of fluttering woodwind and soaring violins on a song that sets maternal control and oppression against a  desire to be free to find love as well as, it suggests, inheriting the madness of the father.

“Outwardly I am resigned, pragmatic and practical/People ask me how I am and how sorry they are” she sings with piercing personal poignancy in the opening of the icy piano notes of  the time signature shifting Tidying Away The Pieces, even if the song, warmed by trumpet, itself  concerns  bereavement in the loss of the narrator’s partner confessing to weeping inwardly but ending with the declaration “I will be all right”.

A duet, the title track is perhaps the simplest number musically speaking, conjuring a Lloyd-Weber West End spectacular on lyrics that speak of magic, spells, love, music and art as “we come into the light/Where the space ‘twixt this world and the next/Is anyone’s guess”.

Then comes the eleven-minute plus opus that is France, a two-part (with interlude) fantasy of memories and reflection. Part I opens with a  drum rolls and flute before an accordion-coloured carousel-waltzing melody carries the singer off into reveries of learning French in class,  marrying a man from near Paris (Dyble’s husband, DJ Simon Stable, was Count Simon de la Bédoyère), and driving through villages shadowed by the echoes of past wars and fields of poppies and the ghosts of those “fighting in secret with courage that we could not know”.

The Mirror Ball Waltz provides the harpsichord bridge to the second part where the lyrics take a fantasy turn shifting into the world of Beauty and the Beast with courtly waltzes, Brubeck-shaded rhythms and lush string, but still referencing the war, the music billowing out into dramatic flourishes before the piano tinkled coda talks of the film of their fairytale.

The penultimate track, the softly swaying seven-minute Whisper is about fading away and the art of storytelling to keep memories and hushed spoken tales alive. The music at times curiously puts me in mind of She’s Leaving Home, before it ends with the rumbling drums, trumpets, vibraphone and waterphone of  Heartwashing, Longdon singing while Dyble speaks her part, the closing lines “And she looks clearly into her future/With open eyes and a resigned and patient heart/For what will be the next adventure/Should there be such a  thing” a calm reflection on impending mortality. Over her solo albums, Dyble showed an enthusiasm to experiment with different musical forms and textures as well as the use of often metaphysical, symbolic and expressionist imagery and, while this might not prove the work for which she is most remembered, it’s a bittersweet understatement to mark what was and is her finest hour.

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