Tiliqua Rec 
The Tree People (US,1979)***°'
Singer-songwriter Stephen Cohen gathered around him two good musicians to work with : percussionist and recorder player Jeff Stier, and flautist Rachel Laderman, forming a trio under the name Tree People. After a year of performing and practicing the group had the chance to make a recording in a local recording studio in the forest, with additional guest musician James Thornbury, (who was going to be a member of the Canned Heat later, in their second period) on bass, slide-guitar and vocals. The recording session showed all qualities of a one chance in a lifetime where everything seemed to come together, even when they only had just one weekend to record. The album was pressed as a 1000 copies. Due to personal obligations, the group never was launched properly after the recording. Even when in 1984, they still did a second cassette-only release, “Human Voices”, this couldn’t prevent Tree People to slowly submerge. Stephen Cohen however continued with a comparable musical style interest with three more releases during this new century (2 of them I will check out later).
The first quality which I noticed immediately on the opening track, “Stranger” is Stephen Cohen’s beautiful and emotionally rich voice, a song where the lyrics becomes rich with feeling through this performance. Each track lands into an instrumental improvisation of a rare affectionate concentration. “Sliding” with handpercussion and slide-guitar has an acid folkblues feeling. Also the song “Pot of Gold” has a delicate rhythmic evolution carried out by the song with a great emotional strength, and some improvisation on flute, bass, guitar. The calmness and delicacy of the unfolding instrumental “Opus” is from a rare quality, which makes it fit well with the Ptarmigan release I also reviewed on this page. “Morning Song” on side B is based upon a happy, traditional fast Cuban rhythm with a jazzy evolution, finding its own personal way of song into it. “Space heater” once more digs back into the delicacy of the acid folk inspiration, simple and powerful, creating blushes of warmth with a vivid acoustic body. It is this feeling which is held strong during the whole recording, and makes this release so special to be appreciated wholeheartly and easily.
The CD is released in a mini LP sleeve.
PS. Tiliqua Records is run by former Antwerp Radio Centraal DJ Johan Wellens, who moved to Japan after his studies in Japanology with a case study in Japanese electronic and progressive music. He also is a record collector. This album is one of his favourite of all time. The label will bring out the 2nd Tree People, "Human Voices" soon, in a couple of months, on LP and CD. The first Tree people will be published on LP too, on subscription basis only and limited to 300 copies : gatefold & obi.
after some negociations the second album was released by Guerssen instead ->
