Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air

The record

At a glance

Artist

The Incredible String Band

Released

October 1971

Album

Ninth album

Original tracks

Twelve

Label

Island ILPS 9172

Producer

Stanley Schnier

Why it matters

A new four-person lineup finds structure without losing multiplicity

Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air presents a substantially revised Incredible String Band without treating personnel change as a reason to abandon the group's multi-instrumental method. Malcolm Le Maistre replaces Rose Simpson in the four-person lineup, adding bouzouki, clarinet, recorders, mandolin, organ, harmonica, percussion and voices. The twelve-track design restores concise songwriting after the large-scale U project and the mixed concert-film album Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending. Six tracks per side create formal balance, but Darling Belle occupies almost eleven minutes at the end and changes the weight of the second half.

Gerry Conway supplies drums on Dear Old Battlefield, Painted Chariot and Adam and Eve; Stan Lee adds pedal steel to the opener and bass to Adam and Eve. Those guest roles bring a clearer rhythm-section and country color to selected arrangements without becoming an album-wide formula. Williamson's oud, cello, oboe, recorders and strings coexist with Heron's organ, piano, electric piano, guitars and bass, making electric expansion part of a wider timbral exchange. The record matters because accessibility and strangeness reinforce each other: compact forms make each unusual handover easier to hear.

London, 1971

After U and Be Glad, a return to the studio album

The Incredible String Band entered 1970 as the quartet of Williamson, Heron, McKechnie and Simpson. I Looked Up offered a six-track studio album, while U expanded into a double-album music-and-theatre work. Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending followed on Island as a soundtrack combining concert performances with a studio sequence. By the sessions for Liquid Acrobat, Simpson was no longer in the lineup and Le Maistre had become the fourth member.

The group recorded in London during August 1971 at Sound Techniques and Island Studios. Stanley Schnier produced and Roger Mayer engineered; the band also carried a production credit. The move to Island placed the group inside a different label period without erasing the instrumental habits developed under Joe Boyd. Island released ILPS 9172 in October 1971, with Earthspan following in 1972.

A revised quartet

Le Maistre arrives; Conway and Stan Lee remain bounded guests

Williamson writes six full tracks and the original Eyes Like Leaves portion of the jig sequence, taking lead roles from the opening through the extended close. His bowed strings, reeds and recorders give the album an unusually broad middle register, while oud and guitar retain continuity with earlier records. Heron writes five tracks and co-writes Cosmic Boy with McKechnie, concentrating electric guitar, keyboards and concise melodic forms. McKechnie's lead vocals on Cosmic Boy, Here Till Here Is There and Darling Belle make her an authored dramatic presence rather than a background color.

Le Maistre changes the group's grammar immediately: his bass and keyboards can support conventional song motion, then whistle, recorder, kazoo or bouzouki can redirect it. Conway's three drum appearances are bounded to tracks two, six and seven, preventing a false claim that the whole album uses one permanent rock rhythm section. Stan Lee's two credits are equally exact: pedal steel on the opener and bass on Adam and Eve. Schnier and Mayer give amplified bass and drums definition while leaving the crowded acoustic instruments individually legible.

Acoustic-electric exchange

Electric rhythm meets oud, oboe, cello, recorders and jigs

Talking of the End opens with Williamson's oud, violin and whistle beside organ, harmonium and pedal steel, making ending a beginning through incompatible colors held together. Dear Old Battlefield brings Conway's drums and Le Maistre's bass under Williamson's guitar-led song, giving memory of conflict a firm forward tread. Cosmic Boy places McKechnie's lead vocal over piano and layered voices, making the celestial scale playful and intimate. Worlds They Rise and Fall and Evolution Rag compress large historical ideas into short arrangements, the first through Heron's melodic rise-and-fall and the second through theatrical rhythm and kazoo color.

Painted Chariot closes side one with electric drive, organ, oboe and Conway's drums. Adam and Eve restarts with electric piano, bass and drums before Red Hair contracts to Heron's two-minute character miniature. Here Till Here Is There uses recorders and flute to make spatial wordplay airy; Tree returns to piano, mandolin, bouzouki and tambourine. The jig sequence restores dance continuity before Darling Belle turns voices, strings, winds and changing scenes into the album's eleven-minute destination.

Track guide

Twelve pieces from Talking of the End to Darling Belle

Change across scales

Endings, conflict, evolution, origin, place and a human lifetime

The album has no continuous plot, but it repeatedly moves between very large processes and particular human lives. Talking of the End and Dear Old Battlefield approach endings and historical damage through direct address. Cosmic Boy and Worlds They Rise and Fall bring cosmic scale into compact song form rather than treating size as a demand for length. Evolution Rag and Adam and Eve make biological and mythic origins playful, rhythmic and open to reinterpretation.

Red Hair and Here Till Here Is There return attention to embodied identity and the instability of place. Tree and the jigs treat inheritance as something performed again by new people, not preserved unchanged. Darling Belle finally gives the album's longest duration to a human life rather than to world history. The liquid acrobat title captures the method: balance exists, but only through continuous change of form and position.

Island 9172

An Island gatefold with Shankman-Williamson design

The original British Island LP carries catalogue number ILPS 9172. Six tracks occupy each side, with Painted Chariot and Darling Belle as the respective endings. Janet Shankman-Williamson is credited with cover design and artwork.

Mitch Walker supplied the cover photography and Mike Blore assisted. The gatefold package gives the revised lineup a distinct Island-era identity rather than reusing Elektra visual language. The full title should be retained: shortening it to Liquid Acrobat loses the balancing phrase as Regards the Air.

A brief chart return

Number forty-six in Britain and number 189 in America

Island released Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air in October 1971. It entered the UK chart on 30 October, peaked at number forty-six and remained listed for one week. In the United States it reached number 189 on the Billboard album chart and remained there for three weeks.

The British entry marked a chart return after Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending did not place. Contemporary discussion noted the album's more structured songs and its mixture of humor, electric weight and unusual instrumentation. Retrospective reviews frequently describe it as one of the more approachable later records while preserving reservations about the band's characteristic vocal and lyrical eccentricity.

The ninth album

An accessible late-period balance of song and experiment

Liquid Acrobat stands as the clearest introduction to the Le Maistre lineup because every member has audible instrumental and vocal agency. Its electric elements are important, but the record cannot be reduced to an electric turn while oud, oboe, cello, recorders, fiddle and autoharp remain structural. The six/six side balance makes its variety easier to navigate than the larger U project. Cosmic Boy gives McKechnie a co-writing credit and prominent lead, making the album's collective identity concrete.

The jig track places an original Williamson tune beside traditional material without disguising their different authorship. Tree links the revised group to the debut-era repertoire through rearrangement rather than nostalgia. Darling Belle proves the concise album can still sustain one large closing form, reserving duration for a human temporal arc. Its lasting achievement is controlled plurality: a more regular rhythm section appears where needed, but no single arrangement becomes the template for the next.

Original programme

Preserve the six/six sides and the complete jig track

The original album contains twelve tracks. Six tracks occupy each LP side. Painted Chariot closes side one. Darling Belle is the original ending.

The four jigs form one album track. Conway drums only on tracks two, six and seven. Stan Lee appears only on tracks one and seven. Be Glad is not part of the original album.

A listening path

Follow two balanced sides toward the long final portrait

1. Hear pedal steel complicate the opening oud-and-violin texture.
2. Notice the rhythm section change on Dear Old Battlefield.
3. Follow three compact transformations into Painted Chariot.
4. Restart with Adam and Eve's electric pulse.
5. Move from one human detail through unstable place and a renewed Tree.
6. Keep the four jigs together.
7. Give Darling Belle the uninterrupted final eleven minutes.

Research trail

Sources and further reading

• Official twelve-track digital programme — Apple Music / Island
• Track list, writers, detailed personnel and production — AllMusic
• Original Island catalogue, sides and durations — Original UK LP archive
• Original issue, writer and artwork records — Bertelsmann Vinyl Collection
• Official UK chart history — Official Charts Company
• US album chart history — Billboard
• Contemporary December 1971 review and ILPS 9172 record — Beat Instrumental archive