Displaying a real willingness to push boundaries, The Rheingans Sisters’ ‘Start Close In’ is an endlessly fascinating, multi-faceted album steeped in the traditions of European folk dance but equally inspired by the avant-garde leanings of John Cale and twentieth-century minimalism.
As Folk rock pioneers Steeleye Span prepare to head out on the road for their 55th Anniversary Green Man Tour, watch rare footage from a 1970 TV appearance and a 1974 performance at Penshurst Place for the BBC.
Enjoy our Monday Morning Brew playlist featuring Joni Mitchell, First Aid Kit, Nat Myers, Nora Brown & Blind Boy Paxton, Red Allen, Dave Rawlings Machine, Hem, Alela Diane, Leo Kottke, Tucker Zimmerman, Tia Blake, Valerie June, Dawn Landes, Marlon Williams, Sandy Denny and more.
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.
