Yonkers, Michael: Grimwood LP

Currently out of print on CD, Michael Yonkers’ Grimwood finally receives its long-overdue vinyl re-release on Nero’s Neptune. Yonkers’ first 4 LPS were released simultaneously in 1973, but it is Grimwood, Michael’s first, which regular commands the biggest bucks on the collector scum market. Recorded in 1969, less than a couple years after the material eventually released as “MIcrominiature Love,” Grimwood sounds like it emanates from another universe entirely. Straightforward on the one hand, yet fascinatingly and psychedelically abstruse on the other, Grimwood remains an essential “outsider” document that sits comfortably (and irreplaceably) alongside Spence, Grudzien, Tweddle and a few select others.

“It would seem that Yonkers followed a trail that psychologically parallels the sun life highway, and his private flight took place in a presumably small hut, nestled on a lemonade lake, and from his chimney wafted rainbow smoke, in the fantastical haven of the mystical, mythical grimwood town for which the rec is named, as he attempted to allow light / space into areas of his psyche that hadn’t seen enough of either in some time” (Karl Ikola, from CD liner notes)