TERRY HISCOCK - Falling More Slowly
Limefield Studios LFCD026
This is a debut solo album from someone who first hit the recording studio nearly a half century ago, when Terry became a founder member of the quite outstanding folk/rock band, Hunter Muskett. It contains ten largely new songs from Terry’s pen, plus a couple of covers, and has the USP of him playing short, well-known pieces as introductions to every song, leaving it to you the listener, to guess the link.
Terry’s sublime acoustic guitar is accompanied by Tom Leary’s fiddle on three tracks, and he also draws on his multi instrumentalism to add mandola, double bass and electric slide arrangements to his songs, which are on subjects that run the gamut from blues legend Robert Johnson, the student protests of the 1960s, and even the BBC’s iconic Shipping Forecast.
This last-mentioned turned out to be the subject for his title track, of which he says: “We don't pretend to understand it, but for non-fishermen everywhere, the shipping forecast reads like a radio ballad... ‘The general synopsis at midday: Low Cromarty 997 expected southern Norway 1001 by midday tomorrow’... it’s an incantatory litany of the sea around our islands, reassuring and terrifying in equal measures as we pull the duvet closer and think of those poor sods out there.”
Mr Hiscock, your last twenty words there are quite brilliant. They made me think afresh on the Shipping Forecast, and I predict that in future, I will be unable to listen to it, without your words being forefront in my mind.
www.terryhiscock.com
Dai Woosnam
This review appeared in Issue 131 of The Living Tradition magazine