William D Drake is a composer, songwriter and performer in his own right as well as being a contributing member of the critically acclaimed North Sea Radio Orchestra. The work of a highly original and eccentric figure, Drake's music is flavoured with tastes developed from early childhood. The sense of dark antiquity in 78 rpm records of Debussy, Paderewski and Rachmaninov, silent film and the first Disney shorts infiltrated an imagination already seduced by Edward Lear and Spike Milligan's use of the surreal and the absurd. His is a many-layered and enticing vision where sweetness jostles with the macabre, absurdity with gravity. "Yew's Paw", a cycle of 13 solo piano pieces, is a powerful expression of these colliding themes. Stylistically, its roots can be traced equally to Drake's classical training and his influential membership of Cardiacs.