This week’s mix features all new music, some of which is yet to be released. The one thing they all share is that they push boundaries in the creation of original music, and it is this which sets this particular playlist apart. I hope you enjoy it and please support the artists we play by buying their music and going to see them live.
Tracklisting
Lizabett Russo – The Burning Mountain (from The Burning Mountain)
Lizabett Russo released her first EP back in 2013, establishing a style that is truly original and very much her own which created rapid waves of interest. The Burning Mountain continues that trend, and you can’t help but agree wholeheartedly with her press that she stands out in the most cluttered of genres. Marked out by her Romanian heritage and her wealth of travelling experience, she brings a diverse and eclectic range of influences to her presentation.
Kate O’Callaghan – Rising Men Down (from The Girl with the Beret)
Inspired by her great-grandaunt Katie, The Girl with the Beret is a new concept mini-album from Donegal-based Singer / Songwriter Kate O’Callaghan. A fusion of alternative folk, popular ballad and classical strings. It gives a unique insight into the perspective of an ordinary girl living at the time of the 1916 Rising in Dublin and what it meant, as a female, to be involved in the Rebellion.
Tissø Lake – Paths to the Foss (from Paths to the Foss)
The fourth album by Tissø Lake, the Edinburgh-based band and tape music project led by Ian Humberstone who is best known for his solo composition work with Folklore Tapes – the fêted collective and label he found in 2011 with David Chatton-Barker. Out on 17 December via ITLAN.
James McArthur & the Head Gardeners – What The Day Holds (from Burnt Moth)
The latest offering from Welsh-born folk singer/songwriter James MacArthur who was Paul Weller’s stickman. Burnt Moth is an album that will certainly grow on you.
Nadine Khouri – I Ran Thru The Dark (To The Beat Of My Heart) – (from The Salted Air)
Nadine Khouri is a British-Lebanese musician and songwriter currently based in London and influenced by dream-pop, moody soundtracks and spoken-word. Her music has been described as a “music born of perennial outsider-status.” The Salted Air is due for release in February 2017.
Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith – Night Hours (from Night Hours)
These two have come on in leaps and bounds as their new album Night Hours testifies. We premiered their video for this track recently (watch it here) and I’m looking forward to sharing more from this exceptional duo. The album links the hardship of working people throughout history with the struggles of marginalised communities today, but it achieves it with a lightness and musicality that makes the album a joy to listen to. More coming soon. Night Hours is out on 7 December via Fellside Records.
Louise Bichan – Swanbister (from Out of My Own Light)
In 2013, Orkney fiddler and photographer Louise Bichan embarked on a unique musical and sentimental journey, between her native northern isles and coast-to-coast Canada, in the footsteps of her late paternal grandmother Margaret, nee Tait (1925-2008). The result – originally premiered at Orkney Folk Festival in 2015, and now captured as an album – is Out of My Own Light, a suite of beautifully wrought, brilliantly captivating chamber-folk compositions, inspired by Bichan’s travels and wider family recollections, together with Margaret’s own diaries and correspondence. She plans to tour the album in 2017.
The Memory Band – Children of the Stones (from A Fair Field)
On their fifth album The Memory Band return once more to the ghost-lit back-roads of British traditional music where digital machinery and acoustic musicians congregate to make old music from the future.
The album documents much of their recent live work, some of which was featured in Children of the Stones, a live performance commissioned in 2015 by Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival in conjunction with the British Library Sound Archive. ‘A Fair Field’ released on Static Caravan.
The Baird Sisters – On And On ( from Until You Find Your Green)
If you’ve been keeping up with our posts this week, you will have spotted my review of Until You Find Your Green, the latest release from Meg and Laura Baird. Read the review here.
Sarah-Jane Summers and Juhani Silvola – Vaajakosken Maija (from Widdershins)
Widdershins was recently one of our Featured Albums if the Month (review here) in which Highland airs, jigs, and reels are treated to a Nordic twist and the rebellious tendencies of both players are given free rein to delightful effect. It is an astounding album that deserves wide exposure, and a work for which Sarah-Jane Summers and Juhani Silvola should be resoundingly praised. Rarely is music such an overwhelming joy.
Various Guises – Willow (from Tide Take Him)
Taken from their debut EP released last month we featured Various Guises in session back in July (watch it here). They play original music, influenced by a love of old New Orleans songs and Appalachian tunes as well as English and European traditional music.