Rustic Hinge & The Provincial Swimmers were a short-lived experimental music venture in the summer of 1970, based in Ilsington Farmhouse, near Puddletown, Dorset (later to be known as Jabberwocky Studios) that evolved out of the ashes of Arthur Brown’s Puddletown Express. The basic instrumental tracks were recorded by former Brown band members Drachen Theaker (drums and percussion) and Android Funnel (guitar, bass, organ and electronics) with a little help from their friends. Deciding they needed a lyricist and vocalist they enlisted the help of Funnel’s former band-mate Rod Goodway and also roped in Arthur Brown’s electronics guru Ian Bowden to add off-the-wall spoken word sections. Goodway gave the aggregation the name of Rustic Hinge & The Provincial Swimmers but as Theaker and Funnel’s musical vision (influenced by Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and avant-garde composer Bela Bartok) became more abstruse and intense and, feeling somewhat redundant, he decided to split and later formed an ‘underground people’s band’ known as Magic Muscle with another Ilsington Farmhouse resident, Adrian Shaw. This friction resulted in Theaker and Funnel deciding to delete Goodway’s contributions and their magnum opus ‘Tea on the Lawn for four’ then became an instrumental ‘T on the Lawn 4 3’ which John Peel’s Dandelion Records showed interest in releasing. It was Theaker and Goodway’s plan to have the projected album play from the inside outwards!