Ask The Unicorn - Ed Askew

In some ways Ed Askew's story is more interesting than his music.

A folk singer from the 1960's, Askew only put out one album, Ask The Unicorn, on the very hip and very underground ESP-Disk Records. Outside of this fact fairly little is known about the singer songwriter.

He played an instrument called the tiple, something like a ten string lute. Apparently the instrument was strung so tightly that it took incredible force to actually fret and hold a chord. Because of the exertion it took to play the instrument, Askew developed his idiosyncratic strained-singing style.

His next album Little Eyes wasn't released until 2003 despite being recorded shortly after Unicorn, and even then it was in incredibly limited vinyl pressings.

So what of the music? It sounds a bit like an acid fried Bob Dylan fell through a time-warp to Medieval times and is now making his living as a bard. The lyrics are appropriately psychedelic and folk tinged in equal measure. This is not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

However in many ways I have chosen today's song not because of it's excellence, but because of what it represents: An enigma of a musician who came out of the haze and then just as quickly vanished. Listened to as a record of this event, one can't help but become enraptured by the mystery.