Richard Hollingum

There is a particular something about Cornish Celtic music that has drawn me in for many years. I am not sure if I can find the right words, but I know that Davey & Dyer have it and the music speaks volumes.

Robin Bacior’s third album Light It Moved Me is at once timeless but also transitory. There is a hint of Laurel Canyon, a scent of jazz, a taste of West-coast folk, all a mixture that becomes just right at a certain time of the day.

A compilation featuring two essential live albums and unearthed, previously unreleased 1971/72 material from Träd, Gräs och Stenar, Sweden’s greatest underground music export.

Cornish folk-rock band Hanterhir re-enforce the notion that Cornwall has a ‘culture distinct from anywhere else in Britain’ by delivering a concept album based around the tale of Cadan, who tries to drown himself in a lake on Carn Marth, an ancient hill in West Cornwall.

The Words in Between was Evan’s first album, released on Ian A Anderson’s Village Thing label, an album that is as good today as it was over forty years ago – still exquisite and unique, so make a space on the shelf alongside Jansch, Renbourn and Graham for Evans.

Fen, Farm & Deadly Water is an album filled with fun, thought and good tunes. The Trio bring a distinct flavour of versatility – in tunes, songs and arrangements. A lovely album with a great variety; a very accomplished set of parts and a very cohesive whole.

Join Freschard and Stanley Brinks for an evening of bar hopping. A look into the late night drinking culture in Paris or Berlin, but not as you might expect: eclectic, at times eccentric and positively entertaining.

Borrowed Seed is the debut EP from Scottish folk and blues trio Avocet who take inspiration from both the British psychedelic folk scene of the 1960’s and 70’s and free-form blues.

There are layers of nostalgia in Hospital Hill, the new album from Jack Carty and Gus Gardiner. The nostalgia may belong to them in many ways but there is an evocation of times gone by that will strike a chord at some point or other with any listener.

An Abandoned Orchid House is a much deeper and richer album than considered at first listening. It is full of personal loss, searching and eventual recognition, survival and even revelation.

It has been ten years since his last excursion into the acoustic world of the singer-songwriter; on the strength of his latest album let’s hope that the gap is very much reduced.

…let me tell you that this is an excellent first album. It is melancholia but in the tradition of British folk music that leaves you feeling good. The music does not impose itself, it laps around you, encourages you to become immersed and wants you to explore the words.