The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is one of the most unimpeachably outside discs ever waxed by a pair of hallucinating hippies. The roots of The Incredible String Band lie deep in the corners of the Scottish folk scene, with Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer touting transported bluegrass around the late-night boozers of the central belt. With the addition of guitarist Mike Heron the trio cut some fairly unremarkable folk standards - alongside a couple of beautifully puzzling originals that so stirred maverick record producer Joe Boyd that he signed them to the newly-inked British wing of Elektra.

Their first, self-titled, album came out in 1966, featuring spidery re-workings of traditional material, but after it failed to do much damage the trio split and followed the hash clouds to Morocco and Afghanistan. By the time they reformed they'd lost Palmer but had glimpsed the other side and began trying to map their rewired synapses via some fantastically dislocated song forms, an approach which reached its acme with 1968's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter.

From the alluring half-light of the cover shot, via serpentine, episodic song-structures, ethnic drones and song-poems that spoke of Ur-pagan conceits and mythic archetypes, they created a truly timeless slab of mutant folk that transports you off to a never-never land that's full of whimsy and vague melancholy. Indeed it feels like it was dictated, like the duo opened themselves to the skies and just let it come down.