A total obscurity of an album, but an excellent one! Windy Corner were formed in Amsterdam in the late 60’s and played a gentle, but still quite psychedelic folk rock. There is also an epicness to some of the material here. The male vocals are wonderfully fragile and dreamy most of the time, but there is also some quiet desperation on this album. On the rare occasions when the band turns up the tempo, the music actually resembles The Doors a bit – mostly because of the organ playing in these passages. But what about the songwriting? Well, it’s wonderful from beginning to end. It all flows together so effortlessly, and the playing is simply great. My personal favourites, I guess, are ‘Waiting to fall back asleep’ (probably the darkest song on the album) and the epic 16 minutes long ‘Sitting On A Throne”, but I love it all. This is truly an album that you can get totally lost in – if you don’t mind the very lo-fi production. It should also be mentioned that the band actually used self-made instruments and amplifiers. The material was recorded in long sessions at their reherseal space in a cottage. You can tell, by listening to the album. Unfortunately the band didn’t record another album after this one, but in 1998 Buckley Records released a compilation of live reherseals recorded sometime between 1970 and 1975 with a two-track stereo tape recorder. I haven’t heard that compilation however. Anyway, ‘The House at Windy Corner’ is a true gem, and comes highly recommended to all fans of dreamy and fragile acoustic music. It is however extremely rare. Only 100 copies were pressed on the collectable Deroy label, but fortunately the album was remastered from the original vinyl (no master tapes exist) in 2014, by Sommor Records. Get it!
Windy Corner – The House at Windy Corner (Deroy 1973)
