Bullinamingvase

If Stormcock was Roy Harper at his most singular, Bullinamingvase finds him pushing that singularity into something more unruly. Released in 1977, its title alone, a sly twist on ‘bull in a Ming vase’, hints at the tension within. This is a record that delights in disruption, balancing precision with a sense that everything could collapse at any moment.

Harper expands his palette here. The inclusion of the Vauld Symphony Orchestra, named after his Herefordshire farm, adds a grand, almost pastoral scale, but the album never settles into comfort. Instead, it moves restlessly between intimacy and sprawl, between traditional forms and something more idiosyncratic.

‘Naked Flame’ gestures towards folk tradition, drawing from ‘Lady Franklin’s Lament’, yet Harper reshapes it into something distinctly his own. It feels less like revivalism and more like reinterpretation, a reminder that his relationship with folk music has always been fluid rather than fixed.

The centrepiece, however, is ‘One of Those Days in England (Parts 2–10)’. At nineteen minutes, it is less a song than a journey. Structured in movements, it drifts between personal memory and cultural commentary, pulling in references that range from myth to modernity. The Alfred Jewel sits alongside Captain Kirk, Avalon alongside the dole queue. It should feel chaotic, yet Harper holds it together through sheer force of vision. The result is dense, sprawling and oddly hypnotic.

Even the album’s history carries its own mythology. ‘Watford Gap’, a biting critique of motorway culture and mediocrity, was removed from early pressings under pressure, replaced with the more subdued ‘Breakfast With You’. Its eventual restoration only reinforces the sense that Bullinamingvase was never meant to be entirely contained.

What makes the album compelling is its unpredictability. Harper refuses to smooth out the edges. He leans into contradiction, allowing humour, frustration and reflection to coexist without resolution. It is messy in places, but deliberately so.

If Stormcock felt like a carefully constructed statement, Bullinamingvase feels more like a provocation. It is Harper testing the limits of his own form, seeing how much he can stretch before it fractures.

And yet, it never quite breaks.