INSIDE OUT

With Inside Out, we are now reaching the heart and core of Martyn's career. Should you compare to Tim Buckley, this could be the Lorca album, the most blatantly experimental, yet not the most expressive, which would Starsailor and Solid Air, respectively. Coming with an awesome recto-verso artwork about fame of mind, where you just can see the storm is the despairing state of friend Nick Drake (who would be found dead around the release of this album. On top of having the world class bassist Danny Thompson, Martyn gets also appearances of Traffic's Wood and Winwood and a few others as the album was recorded in July 73 and self-produced

Starting on the low key Fine Lines where Martyn is strumming along to a piano played by Stevie and is a fine entrance into the album. Next is a trad Scot track Eiblhi, where the Echoplex (Martyn's ace in the sleeve) is changing his guitar to fit the bagpipes normally used. Ain't No Saint is definitely more Hidalgo-inflected and Martyn's near-flamenco guitar, coupled with tables are giving this album a very world music feel, almost a decade before its appearance. The title track is monster experimental that gets stretched to incredible lengths in concerts. Here Traffic's Chris Wood pulls a few superb and chilling sax lines.

The short and unremarkable Glory Of Love opens the flipside, soon followed by the rockier Look In, but it is the superb Beverley (John's wife) that holds all of our attention, with Thompson's bowed bass setting up an atmosphere where Martyn's guitar arts (a semi-acoustic dubbed by incredible electric wailings in the background is simply stunning. Another highlight is the 6-mins Make No Mistake, a mid-tempo blues with again some Echoplex guitar lines in the back and sax wails on the side. Ways To Cry is another blues, this time slower, but again we're waiting for the excellent closer So Much In Love With You, where Winwood's piano and Wood's sax are definitely as important as Thompson and Martyn's string works.

The remastered series proposes a bunch of bonus tracks, taken from a BBC session where all four tracks present different versions of five of Inside Out's songs. As usual John Martyn's stage acts took some liberties with the original studio versions, so it's nice to hear these bonuses, but all of were hoping of three or four left-over tracks that hadn't made the cut due to time constraint. Wishful thinking.

Some ten months ago, I was about to write the review of this album and Solid Air, as I was working on the inclusion of John Martyn in ProgArchives, when the news of his death hit me like a missile. It stopped me dead on in my quest to write more reviews of the man's works and working on his inclusion. I really hope these two "new" reviews that were supposed to be what I hoped the best I'd written yet will honour the man's best works. After ten months wait and an inclusion handled by great collabs (thanks to Chris and Angelo), I just hope this pitiful text pays proper tribute to a gigantic album. So long Martyn. Even after 10 months, it's hard getting used to the idea that you'll never make us wait three hours for your appearance at a concert. May you never ??.

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