Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Time can be viewed as either a beast waiting to tear us apart with its sharpened claws and saliva drenched teeth, or it can be a willing accomplice, a guide, a teacher, showing us the moment when a passion and a skill needs to be shown to world and when our emotions are ready to handle the outpouring we deliver. Overriding both of those views those is the inescapable truth that Time is a thief, it never allows us the chance to see what it has stolen from us, holding out instead a symbol of the lost years spent in pursuing the art to which we love.

It is a symbol that we gladly exchange, Time gaining a foothold in our life, the sacrifice we are offered is a type of immortality, the reason for which we are here, not to offend Time but to make our peace with it, no matter how late or early into our brief lives we make the trade.

Not Before Time that we acknowledged this state of the Universe, the growth and the decay, the beauty and the final bow, and whilst we perform other tasks, whilst we make our name, we forget that we must also pay Time its due for what it has taught us to sing; that our song is sacred.

For world-class instrument maker Nigel Richard, Not Before Time is his homage to the pact we all unconsciously make with the ever-hungry entity. It is a set of songs that sees the Folk tradition of the 60s continue but one that is embroiled in the life he has lived since then, his own meditative thoughts on travel, of all he has seen in the world; this is a musician to whom Time has been eagerly looking forward to stepping to the front of the stage and sitting in the spotlight, rightly and with sincerity radiating from every pore.

The listener cannot help but feel moved as compositions such as Done Wrong, Mountain, Lost and Found and Trickle Down fill the space between Time and tide, each possible momentum that the swirling entities stride to take is hushed, silently admiring the passion that keeps the hour at bay and the sun from going down over the Scottish Glens for a time.

Not Before Time is an album which was worth the weight, glorious and fit for the occasion, Nigel Richard has shared Time with all.

Ian D. Hall