Made To Love Magic

• Music

Amazon.co.uk All the world's a stage and folk legend Nick Drake--a frail, reclusive romantic whose music was sad but beautifully emancipating and who died young in 1974 in mysterious circumstances--was one of life's reluctant players. As epithets go, the lyrics to Made To Love Magic ("I was born to sail away into a land of never, not to be tied to an old stone grave") aptly convey how Nick Drake's legend continues to gather no moss, even some three decades after his lonely tranquilised farewell. Enthusiastic newcomers should start with any of Drake's three studio albums (Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon) and Patrick Humphries' definitive biography but Made To Love Magic is, nevertheless, essential. Consisting of rare and unheard tracks (many of which have even avoided the mucky paws of the keenest bootlegger) and compiled by those closest to him (sister Gabrielle, engineer John Wood and fellow Cambridge Uni student and string-arranger Robert Kirby) the album is a labour of love. Lost amateur recordings of Nick Drake at University in Cambridge, outtakes from the Five Leaves Left album, Robert Kirby's unused string arrangements for Magic and Time of No Reply finally restored, an early rendition of "Three Hours" featuring Rebop Kwaku Baah (Traffic, Can) on percussion and remixed versions of those despairing final songs from July 1974, including the newly discovered "Tow the Line". This is surely the final word on Nick Drake; unless, of course, those Aix-en-Provences tapes and that mythical lost Peel session from August 1969 ever make themselves known. --Kevin Maidment