I got this just last month as a birthday present from my Mum and Dad. It's possible that they were scanning catalogues of psych-folk re-issues and just intuited that I might like one. But it's rather more likely that they took it off my Amazon wishlist. I think I heard just one track on the Freakzone, and was intrigued to hear more.
I didn't know the history of the album — explained in the excellent sleeve notes — which involves Paul Burwell (later of Bow Gamelan) and David Toop, who played on the record, and David Tibet (of Current 93, who put out the re-issue on his label).
Basically, Simon Finn, who was 18 or 19 years old at the time, was playing his unusual singer-songwriter songs in the café of the Roundhouse, jamming with Toop and Burwell, and got the opportunity to record them for a small label in the studio across the road. A few hundred copies of the record were pressed, but it was soon withdrawn due to some (unexplained) legal problem with the cover (the full story is on Finn's web site). Over 30 years later, someone recommended the album to Tibet, who liked it so much that he made contact first with Toop, then Finn, and ultimately with producer and label owner Vic Keary, to track down the original tapes.
The notes include accounts from Finn, Toop, Keary and Tibet. I don't always like David Toop's writing, but here is he charming, describing the album as a "weird collision of singer/songwriting, folk protest, psychedelia, Orientalism, and free improvisation." He's generous in noting that,
Simon has a theory that Pass the Distance would now be forgotten were it not for the musical interventions [by Toop and Burwell] and production techniques [by Keary] that dive bomb his songs to distraction. I'm not so sure about that. Given a more conventional, commercially attuned producer, and proper backing musicians, this could have been a minor classic in the English singer/songwriter genre.
Toop refers to his bass playing as "somewhat prolix", but I like that quality about it (reminiscent of, if not on quite the same level as, Richard Davis's playing on Astral Weeks). That late sixties feel and Finn's fairly extreme vocal performances (John Peel would have called them 'unhinged') are what make the album stand out.
It also makes me think I may not have given David Tibet a fair hearing before, and maybe I need to revisit his album.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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