folk music
Album: William The Conqueror - Excuse Me While I VanishThursday, 03 August 2023Ruarri Joseph is not a household name but in a Sliding Doors scenario, he might have been. Scottish, raised in New Zealand, and based in Cornwall, he signed to Atlantic in 2007, and had the same management as Damien Rice and David Gray. His output... Read more... |
Judy Collins, Cambridge Folk Festival review - celebrating a seminal Sixties' albumMonday, 31 July 2023It’s 15 years since Judy Collins last stepped out at the Cambridge Folk Festival. She was a mere 68 then and, in the time since, little has changed except her hair, the famous rock-star mane lopped so that she now resembles the cover of those... Read more... |
Album: Peter Culshaw - Music from the Temple of LightSaturday, 29 July 2023Music from the Temple of Light has for its cover image a minimalist 17th century representation of Tantra. In this instance, a deep blue field bordering on black, scored by a golden yellow square, an arrow hanging down from the square’s centre, and... Read more... |
Album: Dot Allison - ConsciousologyThursday, 27 July 2023This album promises to be an expansion of the sound and ideas of its 2021 predecessor Heart Shaped Scars, and boy does it deliver. HSS was the Scottish singer-songwriter Dot Allison’s first album in some nine years, and only her... Read more... |
Album: Seth Lakeman - The Somerset SessionsSaturday, 01 July 2023Dartmoor-born folk star Seth Lakeman has an illustrious album catalogue behind him, and this is the general release of a limited-edition vinyl released earlier this year for Record Store Day.Lakeman’s songs embrace traditional folk, pop music and... Read more... |
Album: Brigid Mae Power - Dream From The Deep WellSaturday, 24 June 2023The cover versions on Dream From The Deep Well include “I Know Who is Sick,” most familiar from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken interpretation, and “Down by the Glenside,” which The Dubliners incorporated into their repertoire. The first opens... Read more... |
Album: Bob Dylan - Shadow KingdomSaturday, 27 May 2023Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom first crossed our paths in July 2021, his first streaming event, and coming little more than a year after the garden of unearthly delights that was Rough and Rowdy Ways. To enter this kingdom, you were given a key code... Read more... |
Album: Shirley Collins - Archangel HillFriday, 26 May 2023Mount Caburn is east of Lewes in Sussex. Shirley Collins’s stepfather used to call it Archangel Hill. The site of an Iron Age hill fort, it was defended with a ditch during the Roman and Saxon periods. In World War II, a gun emplacement was... Read more... |
Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - moments of magicFriday, 19 May 2023These encounters are ones that may lead to lifelong relationships, with the halls at Kings Place this coming weekend filled with music from Mali, Colombia, Turkey, Georgia, Estonia, Tibet and a woodland in Sussex.Friday’s double-headed line-up... Read more... |
Tallinn Music Week 2023 review - when music is unavoidably the language of freedomThursday, 18 May 2023Estonia’s Mart Avi styles himself as “the twilight samurai of alternative pop”. He creates “nowhere-somewhere music, mapping uncharted territories between avant-pop and timeless grandeur”. The characterisations are issued via AVICORP, his internet... Read more... |
Album: Paul Simon - Seven PsalmsWednesday, 17 May 2023Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic... Read more... |
Album: The Milk Carton Kids - I Only See the MoonMonday, 15 May 2023Life is better together, and the beauteous sounds created by The Milk Carton Kids proves it. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan got their acts together in 2011, having each pursued solo careers that never quite gelled. Ryan pitched up at a Pattengale... Read more... |