This whole game is all about unravelling threads, opening doors, fitting new pieces in the jigsaw, exploring new avenues…. I can remember asking Lady June whether the name 'Siau' rang any bells because it hadn't cropped up in the Kevin story prior to 1988's 'Another Rolling Stone' on Falling Up. 'He's a Belgian guy' came the reply and then the penny dropped with the link to Starvin' Marvin and the rest is history. Kevin's guitarist on-and-off since 1993, their relationship as friends goes back as far as 1980 but for most people the best kept secret is not only that Marvin is a very nice Belgian guy but that also he is an extremely talented guitarist, songwriter and performer in his own right.

So I was thrilled to see this CD land on the mat, lucky enough to have been privileged to hear some of the songs previously on occasional tapes that filtered through. Marvin is a musician's musician and aware of the importance of his own personal musical archives where one can follow the growth of a song from its first demo through many revisions to a polished whole. Kevin's influence is there and is clearly acknowledged - Marvin stands with the rest of us as an unashamed fan - but there are also threads in Marvin's own work that is on such a similar wavelength to Kevin's that the influence must have crossed both ways. 'Don't Know What To Do' is one of those songs so full of languid, distant sorrow it begs an Ayers treatment. 'Scatterbrain' bleeds its soft anguish in similar fashion. 'Another Rolling Stone' (Marvin also knows the song in an earlier incarnation as 'Another Time Before') is a marvellous version - simple and pure in the way the song needs to be, but fused with a distant achingly blue guitar. For the train spotting completists the disc includes another Ayers/Siau composition dating originally from 1980 in Deia, 'Putting It all On Love' which has not been recorded elsewhere.

But there is a whole bag of influences here as well - power trio, jazz, Lennon & McCartney's 'Tomorrow Never Knows', the joyous rock n' roll of 'Lorraine', real music played with fingers and feet - real guitars, real drums, real bass…..

And it's music with the kind of honest integrity that the real world ought to listen to more often. I like it so much I wish I could buy the company. MW