The award-winning trio, Besarabia, a group from Valencia, Spain have announced UK dates in November. They amalgamate the music they love; music from the Balkans, the Mediterranean and Klezmer, into a very personal, idiosyncratic style.
As a producer, Hubbard has been attached to some of the finest Americana albums of the past decade, most recently Mary Gauthier’s Rifles and Rosary Beads. He can now add his own to that list.
Robb Johnson’s extensive 3-CD album Ordinary Giants is a monumental release. Supported by the likes of Roy Bailey, Boff Whalley, Tom Robinson, Miranda Sykes, Matthew Crampton, Phil Odgers and more, it tells of how we got to where we are today, told through the life and times of Robb’s father, Ron.
Watch Stick in the Wheel performing the ‘Weaving Song’ with Sandra Kerr who sang the original as Madeleine the Rag Doll from the children’s classic TV series Bagpuss, the music for which is to be re-released next month in all its newly-mastered splendour.
Our Tune of the Day is The Killavil Fancy a fabulous reel, performed here live in the street by Canadian foursome The Fretless while they were in Glasgow for Celtic Connections last winter. The tune also features on their brilliant album Live From the Art Farm.
Watch OUT Spell which features a tongue-twisting spell courtesy of Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening. Plus we’ve news of a new David Almond book inspired by real events which involved Kathryn Tickell and her father Mike.
Paradise and Thorns is a rewarding and precious double album from Ashley Hutchings – ‘the single most important figure in English folk-rock’. Handsomely packaged, it’s a companion piece to his 1987 Gloucester Docks, an album that told a very personal love story.
This album from fourth-generation fiddle player Gerry O’Connor is so much more than just another collection of tunes outstandingly well played. The sense of total immersion in the music-making and the joy that brings is communicated par excellence.
On A Problem Of Our Kind Katriona Gilmore and Jamie Roberts have produced an album capable of making you dance, cry and think. And what is more, they do it straight from the off. This album is a masterclass in songwriting.
Cara Dillon will be touring her Christmas show “Upon a Winter’s Night” for the third year running this December. The overwhelming success of previous tours has cemented this magical and memorable festive experience as a firm tradition.
We catch Kelly Oliver at Cranleigh Art Centre, midway through a sixteen date tour supporting her accomplished new Album “Botany Bay”. Her vocal clarity and strength were evident, and the stripped back production of the show only served to enhance this.
Recorded in a break from touring with Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters earlier this year, Seth Lakeman’s ‘The Well Worn Path’ is yet another stunning piece of work and, as ever, rooted in his native Dartmoor.
