Heron — Heron

Heron formed around the Dolphin Folk Club in Maidenhead in the late sixties, a loose gathering of singers and guitarists in thrall to Dylan and the Incredible String Band. By 1970 the quartet of Tony Pook, Roy Apps, Gerald T. Moore and Steve Jones had been picked up by Pye's progressive imprint Dawn, and rather than book studio time they did something close to unthinkable: they took the label's mobile unit into a field.

The result is one of the few records where the weather is a credited collaborator. Between and beneath the songs you can hear birdsong, wind moving through hedgerows, a tractor working a neighbouring field, and the small unrepeatable noise of four people playing to each other rather than to a control room. Early copies carried a sticker on the sleeve reading, plainly and proudly, "This album was recorded live in a field."

What it buys the record is intimacy rather than fidelity. There is almost no separation, very little overdubbing, and many songs sound like single takes — because they were. Fifty years on it remains the reference point for anyone who wonders what happens when you take the walls away.