Writing and performing are often mutually exclusive activities (a good poet can be a shoddy performer and vice-versa), but in the case of Bert Biscoe they share many characteristics – each coming naturally, incisively, instantly. Not for him the agonising over phrase or image, idea or sentiment: he just writes daily in an effortless stream, as if secretary to some inspired and irrepressible dictator. The same goes for performing: stick a microphone in front him and he’ll immediately soar and sing as easily as a skylark, without premeditation or self-consciousness. Present him with a groove or a chord sequence and he’ll as often as not come up with a perfectly-intoned melody, no matter how unfamiliar the rhythm, no matter how exotic the scale. Take the chorus to At a Corner which is forever Kernow, for example: four short lines in the poem (the patient and the hardy/the patriot and the friend/the sons and the daughters/the dry-skins and the yet unborn) have now become a profoundly emotive anthem, overpowering the listener with a firsthand experience of history. He happened to sing on half the tracks and declaim on the rest; but the declamations themselves are as mellifluous and as tonally-varied as the singing, vocal timbres swinging from the deep slow granite whispers in The Sermon of the Mount to the histrionically-edged torrent of Hawker at Bude. On all but one of the tracks The Moontones have supplied their customary quirky backdrop, invariably living up to their stated aim of being ‘tight and loose at the same time’. On the exception, Track 11, Bert performs alone; yet once again, with no more scaffolding than a touch of reverb, he erects a melodic tour de force. The Moontones: Adrian Linn, cuatro, banjo, ukeleles, guitar. Demelza Balm, fretless bass bouzouki, keyboards, electric chifonie. Udu Roi, drums. Roland Chapel, bass clarinet.