Judy Dyble – Darkness to Light – The Recordings 2004-2006, Remastered 3CD Boxed Set (Esoteric/Cherry Red Records, 2025)
By the time Judy Dyble (1949 – 2020) returned to the studio in the early 2000s, she had already left an indelible mark on British folk-rock history. As a founding member of Fairport Convention, her voice helped define a movement, but it was in the twilight of her career that Dyble truly carved out a singular space for herself. Now, with the remastered Darkness to Light: The Recordings 2004–2006 (Esoteric/Cherry Red Records, 2025), a new 3CD clamshell boxed set, listeners can rediscover this luminous late-era trilogy: Enchanted Garden (2004), Spindle (2005), and The Whorl (2006), albums that become visible like arcane maps to unseen worlds.
Rather than retrace her early folk roots, Dyble ventured into more elusive terrain. Across these recordings, she marries the intimacy of English traditional songcraft with a painterly sense of musical experimentation, adding captivating progressive rock, spellbinding psychedelia, minimalism, and electronica. Her vocals, sometimes hushed, sometimes ethereal, never settle into one register for long. Instead, they drift through layered arrangements like mist across a moor. What emerges is a kind of acoustic surrealism, music that echoes the past even as it sidesteps easy classification.
Indeed, part of the magic here is Dyble’s refusal to be boxed in. On Spindle, she transforms Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play” into a reverie of spectral harmonies, while The Whorl revisits “I Talk to the Wind,” the King Crimson classic, with a new fragility and grace. Her collaborators, Robert Fripp (King Crimson) and Simon House (Hawkwind), add further depth and unpredictability. Fripp’s ambient minimalism and House’s haunting violin lines evoke both inner landscapes and cosmic drift. Meanwhile, acoustic instruments like dulcimer, flute, and hand percussion ground the music in the physical world, calling to mind medieval gardens, crumbling towers, and other half-remembered places.
Taken together, these three albums feel less like a return and more like a reinvention. Dyble is not content to bask in legacy; rather, she challenges it. There is an experimental courage here, but also tenderness, a sense that every sound was crafted with care and curiosity.
The remastering brings new clarity to these masterworks, while the nine bonus tracks, including alternate mixes and outtakes, offer further insight into Dyble’s restless creativity. An illustrated booklet and new liner notes complete the package, making this an essential release not just for longtime fans, but for anyone drawn to the liminal spaces where folk meets the avant-garde and progressive music.
DISC ONE
Enchanted Garden
1 Summer Gathers
2 Enchanted Garden
3 Rivers Now
4 New World
5 Nimbus Thitherwood
6 Long Way Home
7 For You
8 Stircrazy
9 Neu! Blue
10 Going Home
DISC TWO
Spindle
1 See Emily Play
2 Final Hour
3 Misty Morning
4 Finzest
5 Honeysweet
6 Shining
7 Darkness to Light
8 Wizzle Wazzle
9 Thank You My Dear
Bonus tracks
10 Shining (Robert Fripp demo)
11 See Emily Play (radio mix)
12 Misty Morning (radio mix)
13 Thank You My Dear
(Fungus LP mix)
14 Shining (Instrumental Robert Fripp mix)
DISC THREE
The Whorl
1 Starlight
2 Breathe the Same Air
3 The Teller
4 I Talk to the Wind
5 Seventh Whorl
6 Road to Somewhere
7 The Last Kiss
8 Wazzle Wizzle
9 Forever Shining
Bonus tracks
10 Shining (Ambient mix)
11 Going Home (edit)
12 Road to Somewhere
(Fungus LP mix)
13 Shining (Dulcimer mix)