Incredible String Band

Since 1965 · United Kingdom

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The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968)

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter moves through more instruments and moods than most albums attempt in a whole career, sitar and gimbri sitting next to acoustic guitar without any sense of novelty for its own sake. "A Very Cellular Song," its closing epic, drifts through several distinct movements over more than thirteen minutes, ending on a repurposed hymn that has nothing obvious to do with what came before it. "Koeeoaddi There" packs an entire childhood's worth of imagery into five minutes. It's a record built on the idea that a song doesn't need to resolve to be complete.

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Incredible String Band

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter · 1968

Formed in Edinburgh in 1966 by Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, the Incredible String Band expanded British folk far beyond its usual instrumentation, incorporating sitar, oud, gimbri, and whatever other instruments the pair could get their hands on, alongside lyrics steeped in mysticism, whimsy, and a loosely psychedelic worldview. Their music resisted the traditional song structures of the folk revival almost entirely, favoring long, meandering pieces that shifted mood and instrumentation freely.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968) is generally considered their high point, recorded at the peak of their popularity — they played Woodstock the following year — before the band's later turn toward more overtly religious material alienated much of their audience. Their combination of pastoral folk and unbounded experimentation has made them a persistent reference point for later psych-folk and freak-folk artists looking for a model outside conventional song form.