 | 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion by Incredible String Band
Buy new: £4.48 / Used from: £4.25 Fusing folk, world, blues and Celtic influences with a mystic lyrical sensibility. Nobody on this list can match them for diversity, originality and accessibility.
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 | Song To Comus - The Complete Collection by Comus
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £8.68 Unlike anything youve heard before, this is the soundtrack to a witches sabbat, to a woodland orgy presided over by the Great God Pan, and far scarier than anything heavy metal has ever produced.
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 | The Wicker Man by Original Soundtrack
Buy new: £10.04 One of the greatest, indeed bravest film soundtracks ever and an exemplary acid-folk album in its own right, which can also act as the perfect primer to the genre.
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 | Moyshe Mcstiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart: Expanded Edition by COB
Buy used from: £6.80 Although Clive Palmer left the ISB before their greatest work, he could more than hold his own alone. There is a religious, threnodic quality and fragility to C.O.B. which is wholly unique.
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 | Join Us In Our Game by Mr. Fox
Buy new: £3.97 / Used from: £10.52 Traditional Yorkshire Dales folk music meets the Velvet Underground. Songs such as Mendle are every bit as eerie as their subject matter dictates.
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 | The Garden of Jane Delawney by Trees
Buy new: £6.98 / Used from: £4.50 Where English folk intersects with the San Francisco sound, traditional songs erupt into serpentine modal guitar solos and dancing bass, spiralling ever higher towards transcendence.
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 | Heavy Petting by Dr. Strangely Strange
Buy used from: £20.75 An Irish counterpart to the Incredible String Band, blending folk, spiritual and country music on songs which effortlessly temper pastoral melancholy with good humour.
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 | Forest/Full Circle by Forest
Buy new: £9.98 / Used from: £8.91 Incredible String Band imitators certainly, but no less interesting for that. Despite the vocal and melodic similarities, Forest have an eerie quality of their own.
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 | Stone Angel by Stone Angel
Buy new: £12.99 / Used from: £29.36 Distorted guitars vie with fiddles and flutes, whilst haunting vocals sing of the spectral dogs, smugglers and decrepit churchyards of the East Anglican coast.
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 | Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle
Buy new: £9.98 / Used from: £19.95 Manages to evoke a truly ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere without ever straying too close to the realms of the fey.
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 | Bells Boots and Shambles by Spirogyra
Buy used from: £29.84 The epic tracks offer a compelling fusion of folk and rich orchestral soundscapes. The contrast between the pure female, and the more earthy, but no less English male vocals is especially arresting.
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 | Dreaming With Alice by Mark Fry
Buy new: £14.49 / Used from: £9.00 Melodically reminiscent of Donovan (and correspondingly twee in places), but married to the chaotic, insistent thrum and electronic techniques of cosmic rock.
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 | Fly on Strangewings by Jade
Buy used from: £9.99 Close to standard folk-rock at times, especially the vocalists similarity to Sandy Denny. Despite this, and some over-lush string arrangements, there are fine examples of acid-folk songwriting here.
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 | Hatched by Fresh Maggots
Buy new: £12.99 / Used from: £8.63 Some fine original folk songwriting textured with unusual and daring arrangements, including a glut of heavily acidic guitar.
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 | Sunshine Possibilities by Famous Jug Band
Buy used from: £3.22 Another Clive Palmer vehicle. Not quite as satisfying as COB, but thats only because very few things are.
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 | The Waters of Sweet Sorrow by Midwinter
A precursor to Stone Angel and perhaps neither as developed or original. Still, there are several strong songs here and the vocals are every bit as otherworldly.
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 | Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan
Buy new: £9.98 / Used from: £8.00 Twee at times, and yet these songs possess an unaffected innocence and simplicity reminiscent of nothing less than nursery rhymes.
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