Music Steve Hiett – Down On The Road By The Beach LP Clearance

For the first time since its inception 36 years ago, Steve Hiett’s elusive Down On The Road By The Beach is finally made available outside of Japan.

Now widely celebrated as a desert island disc, this definitive reissue is restored from original masters with vivid reproductions of the Down On The Road By The Beach exhibition catalogue, intended to accompany its original release, and extensive liner notes penned by fellow Steve Hiett obsessive Mikey IQ Jones.

While he enjoyed a brief career as a musician in the 1960s, by the time he recorded debut album “Down On The Road By The Beach” in 1983 Steve Hiett was better known as one of the world’s leading fashion photographers. In fact, it was at the suggestion of a Japanese gallery owner that he got back in the studio to record what has long been regarded as an impossible-to-find Balearic gem.

Hiett’s reverb and delay-laden Peter Green style guitar passages take centre stage throughout, winding in and out of languid grooves and ambient electronics to create what some have called “the ultimate desert island disc” – a record of such lazy, sun-kissed beauty that it sounds tailor made for drowsy days waking up on the beach.