For the first time, the recently discovered masters for this long thought vanished 'music concrète classic' from 1968 are finally presented here to the general public. Many thanks to Sherwin Galper for his assistance and generous spirit in bringing this amazing artefact to light.

Some contextual information from ‘Places to See, People to Be: The Various Truths of Crispin Mallweather’ by Constance Harper:

"I came across this guy in the downtown chitlins bar performin' some real 'out there' stuff. He was throwin' raw shrimp at himself whilst recitin' some amazin' poetry about ritual sacrifice. He was callin' himself Papa Remus at the time. The crowd went crazy as batshit for it. I knew then that I had to sign him up."

In Derek Quix, Mallweather finally found a creative partner who was willing to put up with his unpredictable behaviour and numerous idiosyncrasies, but more importantly, genuinely believed in the projects Mallweather wanted to bring to life, and had the connections and know-how to make it happen.

"Yeah, sure, he was nuts," Quix confessed in an interview shortly before his death. "But by that point, so was I. We hit it off straight away an' spent a month or so just hangin' out on Bourbon Street, listenin', talkin', drinkin' I never got a sense of where he came from [originally] but at one point he told me his parents was immigrants too an' I called bullshit on that. I told him he didn't have to make shit up an' he just smiled an' laughed an' said somethin’ like ‘what else am I supposed to do?’, like it was in his blood. So I told him just to be himself an’ he laughed at that too, but I think he got the message 'cos that's when he told me his real name was Mallweather, an' if he got to make one record in his life, that was the name he wanted on it. He still preferred me introducin' him to people as Lord Remus' or 'John Jeremiah Joshua Johnson' or some such, though."

Quix made New Orleans his home and began to make plans for some kind of collaboration with Mallweather. "I can't tell you what he described to me in them early days...it was never a complete, concrete thing the way he described it, more like an idea of a sound, somethin' that no-one had made yet. You could say it was like a hundred ideas all fightin for attention at once. He just needed to focus on a few of 'em." Quix, by this point a veteran producer, was used to managing the wilder eccentricities of the artists he worked with and found that Mall weather was able to channel his weird energies if Quix gave him just enough latitude. "I let him do his own thing. The more time I spent with him, the more I understood why he never recorded or finished writin' anythin' - he was just all over the place. He was livin' ahead of himself. Like the thing he wanted to do was already there in his head, fully formed but he had no fuckin' clue how to get it outta there. That was the challenge for me. I wanted to be the one who got it out an' on to a record. In my head, it was like I'd found a rare, untamed animal an' I was gonna bring it back to civilization."

The album - provisionally titled Down On The Sky - was to be a mixture of spoken word, automatic poetry, improvised jazz and freeform electronics, a mélange that might also veer off into ethnic rhythms or tonal destruction at a moment's notice. "I didn't know what Crispin had or hadn't heard or was aware of, in terms of other music. There was a lot of weird stuff comin' outta San Francisco at the time, tonal stuff... it was a bit fuckin' highbrow for me sometimes, a bit theoretical. Crispin was never into that stuff as far as I knew but he was tuned into some weird frequencies, so who knows? Some of what he talked about made it sound like he knew what those people was up to, except when Crispin talked about it to me, it was things like alien birdsong an' rivers of light, but somehow it all made sense."

The album was to feature a host of musicians including Per Wainwright, Mitchell 'Stands' Wilson, Ernie Pelman, Carver Monroe and Milton Hague, with Quix as credited as executive producer and everyone else conducted by Mallweather. None of these musicians actually existed; they were all Mallweather, finally enacting his multi-persona performance piece, channelling a few of his inner demons by giving them a name and a purpose: He never pretended to be any of those people in the studio, but they was definitely a part of him. The use of an outwardly normal sounding band name - The Crispin Mallweather Group - would provide the final inside joke. On the one hand, perhaps to lure in the unwitting listener, it gave the impression of a jazz ensemble, while at the same time quietly acknowledging that this was a group of one man.

Partway through the extended recording process, Quix met Harry Munt, who’d got wind of a new sound in town, and who would become a pivotal force in the project, in more than one way. Quix had his concerns about who would end up with control of the final version of the record he and Mallweather were putting together. "I had an idea to start a record label but the recordin' sessions were suckin' up all the spare money an' I didn't know jack about distribution or nothin'. Crispin didn't care what happened. I think he would've been happy if we pressed one copy or a thousand."

Harry Munt appeared at what seemed to be just the right moment, with the offer of additional funding for another month in the studio, a period of post-production and mastering, and the promise of access to an existing distribution network that would get the record to the right places, and heard by the right sets of ears. "I was never a hundred percent on the guy but it would've been the same for any money man. Crispin was protective [of the work| as well. I remember when I bought Munt into the studio to meet him for the first time. Crispin was halfway through recordin' a track and literally dropped everythin', came into the booth, stared Munt up an' down, then went back to recordin' the track."

Munt appeared to be legitimate, as well as genuine in his understanding and support of the project - that it was something new that people needed to hear - though Quix still had reservations about their new acquaintance.

"He always came across as a classical [sic] shady character. I thought it was mostly an act, somethin' to make him seem more interestin' than he actually was. I was just used to Crispin bein' a weird ass so I let Munt's shiftiness go. I kinda wished I'd been more on the ball but I was wrapped up in finishin' the album. Crispin was in his element, so he didn't know or care what was goin' on around him."

Munt had been enthusiastic about the album and told Quix and Mallweather that he saw this project as the beginning of something much larger. To that end, he offered to fund and equip their own independent studio facility, which they moved into for the final stages of production on the record. Once the LP - now called Mainline Gumbo - was released, the studio would be used as a space for nurturing new acts, with income 30 generated by hiring out the space (and Quix) to established musicians. The mixture of old and new, raw young energy and seasoned artists would lead to new collaborations and recordings, all of which would be released on Munt's fledgling Riddell's Classics label. "It sounded too good to be true, an' it was."

With the album close to completion and the new facility up and running, Quix and Mallweather had no reason to think that anything was amiss with Munt or the financing for the project. Mallweather began to oversee the creation of the artwork for the LP, and an initial mock-up of the sleeve was produced as Quix put the finishing touches to the album itself. "Then it all went to shit. We was so close."

Neither Quix nor Mallweather had heard from Munt for some time but this was nothing out of the ordinary. He occasionally came by the studio from during the recording sessions but never interfered, and Quix was more than happy to have a silent partner. "We just assumed he was off somewhere, makin' money, doin' deals, whatever it was he did."

By July 1968 the masters for Mainline Gumbo were completed, slightly behind schedule but to the high standards that Quix and Mallweather had set for themselves. "Given who was involved, it was mostly painless. I think gettin' some of his madness outta him allowed Crispin to almost be normal for a stretch, maybe for the first time ever. We had a good time makin' that record but I suppose we paid for that."

The jubilant pair celebrated the album's completion with a night out on the town, which carried on into the early hours of the next morning. By the time either of them was in a fit state to return to the studio, it was late the next afternoon. A day had passed since they were last there, but in that short time, their whole world had changed.

"At first we thought we'd been robbed. The whole place was emptied out, all the equipment, the mixin' desk, the instruments, all gone. Even the fuckin' chairs. After a minute we realised that we'd let ourselves in with the key an' that the lock on the door wasn't busted... an' then we both died a little bit on the inside. He didn't even leave a fuckin' sorry note."

Their assumption was that the perpetrator was Harry Munt - the only other person with a key to the studios. Had he been watching them, waiting for his opportunity to sneak in, unnoticed, and spirit everything away? Having invested so much money in the project, why take everything now, when it was almost complete? In many ways, it didn't matter. Equipment could be replaced. The masters for Mainline Gumbo could not, nor could they even be replicated. And they were gone. As Quix himself noted with some sadness, the album contained "some truly one-off shit."

After Munt vanished from the face of the earth, rumours eventually began to circulate as to his eventual fate. Most of them concerned his financial dealings: he'd accrued considerable gambling debts during a run of bad luck in Las Vegas, or he'd invested in too many projects at once, borrowing from less-than-reputable organisations but only ever digging himself in deeper as he went, finally being made an example of when he couldn't pay up. As for the Mainline Gumbo masters, they became the stuff of urban legend, sought after by collectors, either buried with Munt under a skyscraper somewhere or turning up damaged and beyond salvage in a garage sale decades later. As with everything Mallweather, these rumours should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Mallweather was despondent and this betrayal proved to be the final straw for him. When it was clear that Munt, along with the masters, had gone for good, he embarked on a month-long drinking binge. It was here that he and Quix parted ways.

"Sure, we was both fucked over. Crispin took it real personal. I just took it as a sign that some things ain't meant to be." Unwilling to watch Mallweather self-destruct and feeling too old to start again, Quix eventually retired from the music business, settling for a life of quiet anonymity in the English countryside. Mallweather, having finally found somewhere he could do "his thing" and be himself, this time found his plans in ruins thanks to someone else disappearing. The irony was probably of little consolation.

With Munt gone, there was no-one to fund the studio or any of the proposed future projects. New Orleans became a painful reminder to Mallweather of what could have been, and probably never would be. Quix lost contact with him, only hearing the occasional rumour through the few industry contacts he kept in touch with. "I knew not to trust everythin' I heard 'cos I knew Crispin an' I knew it was probably some bullshit he invented for his own amusement. I guess he still had that at least. The only story I believed was the one where he was just bummin' his way round America, a sorta hobo-musician session guy. He'd had a go at bein' someone but that didn't work, so now he was havin' a go at bein' a nobody."

Full text is available in the book 'Half Past Nothing: The Singular Instance of Crispin Mallweather and Id Log' available from the Probability Distribution Group.