Sunbeam Rec. 
Bread, Love and Dreams : Amaryllis (UK,1971)*****
After having noticed this reissue, I gave a second listen to the two previous releases, and confronted me with how I remembered them. The first self-titled album, "Bread, Love and Dreams" (1969)***°' is a really great original folk album, with self-penned songs, with some dual vocals, and sweet solo (and mostly female) vocals, and some orchestrations on "the least said". "Mirrors" is more traditional in style and has orchestrations as well. Also very nice is the spoken word story with acid/psych folk improvisations, on "the yellow bellied reback". Last track was a bluesier folk interpretation. The album was reissued unofficially by Si-Wan and lately Hugo-Montes. After years in my collection I appreciate it more.
On the second album, "The Strange Tale of Captain Shannon and the Hunchback from Gigha" (1970)***°' the group is just the duo. They had help from Dave Richmond, Danny Thompson & Terry Cox (Pentangle), Alan Trojan and Graeme Robertson. It starts, with the first side, a bit rockier, in a rather acoustic way, which has less emotional subtleness compared to the previous album. From the 3rd track on the B-side, it starts to change. "Butterflyland" starting with a spoken word introduction, it is sunnier and dreamier. "Purple Hazy Melancholy" is again a more delicate song, sung by Angie, with some classical brass arrangements and acoustic guitar. "Sing me a Song" is like an early Elly & Rikkert-like hippie happiness (influenced by flower power). Also the titletrack, by David, in a simple way, is a very long tale-to-tell in a Dylan fashion, and is nice original folk.
That last album was recorded together with "Amaryllis" on the same 5-day sessions in Decca studios. Decca didn't make too much money with the first album, so had decided to publish both albums separately. When the second album didn't sell better, they lost all interest in bothering much more about the duo, but still released "Amaryllis" in the UK only despite interests outside the UK. It received also again good critics, but without support the duo wasn't able to continue. A shame, because Amaryllis was their most ambitious album, with the one side long titletrack. The album was one of the first to get appreciated by the real music lovers in Japan and Korea.
The titletrack, an unusual piece of almost 22 minutes is a real unique piece with delicate fingerpicking guitars that fuse the different sections, beautiful vocals and so on. There does not exist many such ambitious folk tracks, and although Incredible String Band was one of their influences, the style was much more independent. There were not too many long tracks of this calibre (Madden & Harris I think were one the best who did this succesfully as well, but there were of course just a few others who might also come to mind, eg. Mountain Ash Band..). The track builds up from guitar-driven with solo vocals, to dual vocals with band, to more improvised acid passages (tabla,..). The subtlety and emotionality from the first album is still here, and with strong building tensions and emphases. A small "church"-theme is included in (organ & harmony vocals). The whole album sounds very much like THE perfect folk concept album, which makes it unbelievable that a band who created such a good work were neglected by a label because they did not immediately have the response expected in their own country.
Nice to mention also, according to the liner notes in the cd booklet, the first time "Amaryllis" was played was in a chapel in Antwerp in 1970 (I wonder which chapel it must have been). They had already appeared in Brussels the previous year, with several radio broadcasts and creating a Belgian following. They did also mention what an emotional performance they experienced when having performed one of the first allowed concerts in Spain during dictator Franco's years.
Audio : "Brother John" (WMFU)
