Eden Ahbez’s only solo album, from 1960, sounds freakishly anachronistic. The beatnik, barefoot wanderer and precursor to the hippies had already made a successful career as a songwriter and collaborator, starting by giving “Nature Boy” to Nat “King” Cole in 1947. But for this collection of poetry and crooning with exotica settings, he really branched out on his own, with nature sounds, creaking rope and planks, wooden percussion and other more unidentifiable sounds taking it way beyond kitsch. The adoption of slowed down mambo and calypso patterns and the slightly messianic Zen wisdom are the sort of thing that should be icky — but such was Ahbez’s genuine weirdness and charm, that it remains a genuinely spirit-lifting, transporting experience six decades and more later.

Essentially a hippie twenty years before hippies were a thing, Eden Ahbez dressed like Jesus, studied mysticism and used to sleep underneath the first L of the Hollywood sign. Despite claiming to live on only three dollars a week, he was also responsible for writing Nat King’s Cole’s 1947 hit Nature Boy and songs for artists including Eartha Kitt, Frankie Laine and Sam Cooke. 1960’s Eden Island is Ahbez’s first and only album and is one of the most singularly peculiar records of the decade – a fantasia-like mix of easy listening exotica and beatniky spoken word passages about finding paradise in nature. A complete flop at the time, its then novel use of instrumentation – vibraphone, bongos, flutes, harp, frogs croaking – and mood of tropical serenity would nevertheless be a major influence on Brian Wilson when he came to make Pet Sounds six years later (Ahbez also appeared at The Beach Boys’ ill-fated Smile sessions). Sixty years on, Eden’s Island remains a uniquely captivating place to visit.