The Iron Stone is the third of Robin Williamson's ECM albums of sung poetry, after The Seed-At-Zero (2000) and Skirting the River Road (2002). It sets verse by Walter Raleigh, Thomas Wyatt, John Clare and Ralph Waldo Emerson beside a traditional ballad, group improvisations and his own songs. Two of these, the title track and The Yellow Snake, date from his years with the Incredible String Band, but the mood here is wintry and spare.
It was recorded in September 2005 in Abergavenny, Wales, in the loft of an 18th-century mill house. The studio is kept by folk musician Dylan Fowler, who assisted engineer Steve Lowe, and Steve Lake produced. Williamson sings and plays Celtic harp, mohan vina, Chinese flute, whistles and tabwrdd drum. Violist Mat Maneri, also on Hardanger fiddle, returns from the previous album. So does the Swedish multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller, a key figure of his country's folk revival, here on mandola, accordion, shawm, flutes and jaw harps. New to the group is bassist Barre Phillips, born in California in 1934 and based in France since 1972, who had often recorded with Maneri on ECM.
The medieval Scots ballad Sir Patrick Spens, over seven minutes, is recast in coarse tunings and sung as the tale of a doomed voyage. Even Such Is Time sets Raleigh's poem to a tune by the harper Rory Dall Morison. With Turlough O'Carolan's Loftus Jones it leans towards folk-baroque, viola and bass framing the harp arpeggios. At the other end, There Is A Music and Henceforth are spontaneous compositions, and Political Lies is a bitter song of his own.
In The Observer, Neil Spencer heard "wintry meditations on mortality" and "an album of flinty integrity from an old master". Andy Robson in Jazzwise borrowed Williamson's own description, "wonderful and grim music", and noted that its "moments of redemption are rare but the more striking for their scarcity". The French Jazzmagazine made it one of its Disques d'émoi.
This is the CD edition, ECM 1969, first released in October 2006, with liner notes by Williamson.
