Large-format hardcover, full-color illustrations, with Skull Orchard CD

Jon Langford’s first collection of paintings, writing, and music, Nashville Radio, summed up two decades’ work as an artist and musician. For its successor, Langford has created a highly personal portrait of the South Wales he grew up in – and left. The starting point was his long unobtain­able album Skull Orchard. For the CD available exclusively with this book, Langford returned to those lost recordings and radically revised them. His accomplices in the project were the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus, who contribute a unique warmth to the material.

Langford has illustrated his lyrics for Skull Orchard, at once autobio­graphical and fanciful, in a set of “song paintings” created especially for the book, which also includes many more paintings, an A to Z of South Walian culture and history (both personal and general) by brother (and acclaimed SF writer) David, photographs by their father, Denis Langford, and Jon’s first published story, a witty, dystopian tale about a whale and a dolphin.

“Jon Langford has grit in his voice and melody in his soul. [He’s] a punk-rock pioneer, a troubadour for our times, a visual artist of uncommon skill, a singer-songwriter who writes with the authority of ­having lived a life rather than just having imagined it.” —New City (Chicago)