For all its calming qualities, ambient music can also capture strange and uncanny life forces. Myles O’Reilly seems to understand this innately, and he puts it to mesmerising use on Music From the Threshold, an album suffused with grace and dignity, strangeness and quiet passion.
Read ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’, a short story by Emma Tricca. For the first time in my life I had grasped Venice and its metaphor: something beautiful but perilous, the hidden danger, a castle in the sand.
J.R. Bohannon & Dave Shuford’s ‘Reclined in the Haze’ is a cracker, a daring set that manages to balance Eastern musical influences with country licks and experimental improvisation. I already love this and it’s one I’ll revisit for the foreseeable.
Worlds Within Worlds announces ‘Safa’, a new solo album from the acclaimed Palestinian oud player Nizar Rohana. Watch the video for the title track featuring Nizar’s exquisite playing.
David Grubb finds musical challenges in unusual places, and on Circadia, he wordlessly depicts our dreamworlds, shining a light on a time when who we are and what we know mysteriously stirs the mind while the body rests.
John Spillane’s “Fíoruisce – The Legend of the Lough” is epic storytelling, requiring a scale of ambition that few would contemplate. It sits alongside such fine works as Peter Bellamy’s The Transports and Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown.
The Shovel Dance Collective reveal their new single and video “The Rolling Wave”, a stunning and beautifully moving rendition of a traditional Irish song and a final preview of their forthcoming album ‘The Shovel Dance’.
‘Moon in Gemini’ is one of those albums that wears its apparent simplicity as a cloak, disguising a host of concepts, implications, and influences. Isik Kural has quietly, and with a distinct emphasis on care, made one of the year’s most varied and rewarding albums.
London-based folk band Club Débris deliver a Quebecois-style drop of the pure, featuring Maisie Greenwood, Will Allen, Duncan Menzies, Will Chamberlain, and Jess Collins. Watch them perform Marche des Élèves & Peas Breakdown, tunes that also feature on their forthcoming debut album.
The End Of The Rainbow is one of Sean Taylor’s most impassioned albums; for all the tribulations, he ultimately offers the hope and faith that “the world keeps turning by and by”.
With a voice that echoes the spirit of Neil Young and a profound connection to the desert southwest of New Mexico, AJ Woods brings a personal touch to his music with Hawk Is Listenin’, a diverse collection of soulful songs that reflect his deep understanding of the region.
Listen to the Monday Morning Brew featuring Shelley Short & David Allred, John Patrick Elliott, Remorae, Josienne Clarke & Mary Ann Kennedy, Dorothy Carter, Nuala Kennedy & Eamon O’Leary, The Wilderness Yet and more.
