Nothing so captivated me recently as Have a Bleedin Guess, a track-by-track, slice-by-slice memoir cum analysis of Hex. It’s wonderfully anorakish: the production, the engineering, the instruments, the allusions to Wyndham Lewis, HP Lovecraft, Kris Kristofferson, Norman Mailer and Crossroads et al, the influences on the cover art, sleeve notes and vinyl pressing. But it’s also a fine insight into the impulses and dynamics of artistic collaboration, the magic that arises from a disparate group of people mysteriously attuned to one another.
