Second Language

Released by RCA Italy with little fanfare in 1972, Mark Fry’s Dreaming With Alice is one of those very particular albums whose potency and poetry seem to owe everything to their era but whose virtues only gain traction, and with it coach-loads of interested parties, many years, if not the odd epoch, after their conception. Effectively a late-period psych-folk obscurity that became a record connoisseur’s Holy Grail once all things vaguely Incredible String Band-shaped became once again à la mode in the middle of the last decade, Dreaming With Alice, frequently bootlegged and described by Dream magazine as “one of those albums that feels like a secret you can’t wait to share”, had finally found its time and place.