David Kidman

Claude Martin was a young and talented fiddle player who had been performing traditional old-time fiddle music in the Washington DC area for over 20 years. This album both serves as a showcase for a gifted musician and a memorial for a young life taken far too soon.

There’s a quiet, easy charm about Alden Patterson & Dashwood’s distinctive little musical niche, yet its very simplicity of execution is deceptive, for it can conceal an inventiveness and sense of challenge that I find every bit as beguiling.

A magnificent celebration of the achievements of Fellside Recordings, a marvellous collection of life-affirming music that (together with its predecessor-companion issues) richly deserves a place on your “dip into often” shelves.

Like the Fens landscape that helped inspire it, one needs to spend time with this album, soaking up the music’s myriad of subtleties and the understated patterns of rhythm, sound and language – mesmeric and haunting.

On her beautifully presented latest album, Caelum Scalptorium (The Engraver’s Chisel), Gemma’s simply guitar-accompanied tracks have a timelessly plain and unadorned quality…delivered with care and attention to detail yet without ever coming across as precious.

Shortwinger is a distinctive, purposeful and powerful record, and represents a typically well-considered new chapter in the artistic development of its three participants, all on top form and working brilliantly together in sparky and harmonious consort.

While Iona Fyfe’s tone is youthful and abundantly charming, the sense of assurance in her delivery is astonishing for someone of her tender years. “I’ll be very surprised indeed if Away From My Window doesn’t feature in the year’s best-of lists.”

On her latest album, Lions Den, Jess Vincent opens up a whole new chapter. A sense of dislocation and slightly dreamy aura pervades several of the songs, giving the album as a whole a special ambience.

The fire and fury and commitment of Planxty as a hell of a performing unit is there in full force. Live sets are by their nature usually best aimed at the converted, but for someone outside of the established Planxty fan-base One Night In Bremen certainly steers closer into the “worth acquiring” category than the majority of live releases.

I can’t fault the playing here one jot, nor indeed the production quality of Volunteer, nor for that matter the songs themselves which clearly display both affection and craft. But I’m left with a nagging feeling that there’s more than a hint of contrivance, “adopting a role” and being all things to all listeners with this album.

You can’t fail to sit there open-mouthed at the astounding dexterity of the playing on Midnight Skyracer’s debut album Fire…It’s hard to believe the band’s been together barely a year!  Yeah, I gotta say it, this CD is tremendous.

Even after several plays, All That Remains remains an enigmatic record, whose resolutely beautiful meanderings are destined to haunt the listener; you simply have to get immersed in Mark and Alison’s visionary music – don’t leave yourself outside!