First Collection [LP]

After almost two years of work, we're glad to invite you to a new journey through the fog of time and enjoy the upcoming reissue of the great Ambient/Folk record from 1984. A well-known to collectors but extremely rare record by Jon Iverson a multi-instrumentalist from Palo Alto and his college friend, mandolinist Tom Walters. They shared a love for singer/songwriter fare and gigged around campus playing covers of Neil Young, CSN, and Loggins/Messina in the late '70s. 'First Collection' was recorded during the Spring of 1984 in a small garage that had been converted to a one-room apartment in the seaside community of Los Osos, California. With an instrumentation of 12-string guitar, piano, mandolin, analog synthesizers, and sampler, the duo has recorded nine bright, weightless, and diverse compositions where electronic experiments mix with ethnic rhythms, sweeping through inspired folk reminiscent of the work of William Ackerman, John Fahey, Master Wilburn Burchette, and Robbie Basho, to homemade pastoral space folk exuding sophisticated, pale, lunar sonic moods that somehow might remind of the work of Roedelius from the early 80s. Equipment used for tracking included a rented 1/2' 8-track Otari MX5050 analog tape machine and assorted mics. With only a few thousand albums pressed, First Collection has become a collectable in some circles. Now, almost forty years later, First Collection has been remixed and remastered from the original 1/2' tapes for this release. Press: 'Using such non-EM instruments as mandolin and 12-string guitar, Jon Iverson and Thomas Walters produce a distinctly folk-oriented electronic music, full of exquisite acoustic sonorities along with their lovely digital synthesis. Wonderful job of recording, too.'(Robert Carlberg, Polyphony, 1983)