Thomas Blake
Thomas Blake
Thomas Blake is an author, poet and music journalist who also works part-time in a museum. He has written two poetry chapbooks, both published by Red Ceilings Press: Ƨ (2023) and Peach Epoch (2025). His fiction has appeared in 404Ink and his poems have been published by Perverse, Anthropocene, And Other Poems and The Shore. He has been writing about music since 2012 and has a particular interest in the experimental, the modern and the weird. He lives in Swindon with his wife, two children and a cat.
Adam Ross has become a lynchpin of the ever-fertile Scottish scene. As a songwriter, he is deceptively gentle: his melodies scurry, bound or lope along, sometimes jaunty, sometimes suffused with a light melancholy, while his lyrics are always witty and frequently biting. “Bring On the Apathy”, his third album under his own name, is his most mature and rewarding yet.
Daisy Rickman and Magpahi take a side each on “Ceremonial County Series Vol.XXIII,” the penultimate volume in this extensive Folklore Tapes’ series. Rickman’s piece ties East Sussex bonfire myths to pagan ritual, building an immersive wave of sound. Magpahi summons a malevolent Lancashire water spirit. A startling slice of psych-folk that slips easily between worlds — the unearthly charms of weird England.
Tried To Do’s, Jay Hammond’s second album as Trippers & Askers, follows the jazz-inflected sprawl of ‘Acorn’ with something more introverted and song-based. Shaped by acute personal grief and the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville, the album turns inward without losing generosity. It’s a slow-burning, finespun record of bold sincerity and steady groundedness.
Swedish singer and musician Sara Parkman’s fourth solo album Aster, atlas tackles the biggest themes: life, death, faith, grief, and the passage of time. From its opening few seconds, it is uncanny and darkly magical. Parkman has given us something precious and gutsy, an album that, like the gardens that inspired it, has its own inscrutable rhythms of growth and decay.
Originally released in 2008 and now reissued with two bonus covers, Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee — the quartet of Darren Hayman, David Watkins, Dan Mayfield and David Tattersall — is an absolute joy to rediscover. East London bluegrass played with close-knit, co-operative DIY warmth: witty, lovelorn originals and artfully chosen covers. Think The Basement Tapes with more banjos.
Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. On her new album Adormidera, she and Víctor Herrero have created, through a kind of alchemy, an artefact that seems to grow more beautiful with every listen.
On Emily Portman’s fourth solo album, she weaves a tapestry of complex lyrical themes and intricate musical arrangements. Of all the singers and songwriters in British folk music, few have the ability to encapsulate what it means to be human in the way that Portman does. “Dominion of Spells” is a real and vital piece of work, something to be cherished.
Frog have always been brilliant at exposing the emptiness and hollowness at the heart of things, and filling it up, at least temporarily, with their own brand of heartfelt Americana. Eight albums in, and that continues to be the case. Frog For Sale, with its Beatle-baiting title and condensed, pining, piano-oriented sound, is a welcome hit of literate indie wistfulness from one of America’s most consistently impressive bands.
“…an album that flits so easily between past and present, whose songs encompass fluttering beauty and quietly looming presences.” The Little Winters is an album worthy of the clàrsach, with all its historical and cultural importance, and Anna McLuckie, with her clear voice, poetic songwriting and precise, fluid playing, has announced herself as one of British folk music’s most formidable talents.
With its cast of crows and references to wild rain and leaden skies, Natalie Wildgoose’s ‘Rural Hours’ is music for the high moorlands and windswept hills. The loose structures and unorthodox arrangements of her songs remain, but they are brought into focus by a small ensemble. Her songs are intentionally ephemeral — part of their appeal is the charged silence they leave in their wake.
Jim Moray — folk music’s errant prince — returns with Gallants, his eighth solo album. Traditional ballads are teased into stunning new shapes, the self-penned Three Gallants fits seamlessly among them, and the imposing Omie Wise drips with pathos and tenderness. A stunning closer backed by Maddie Morris and the Trans Choir seals an uncompromising, deeply immersive collection.
Félicia Atkinson and Christina Vantzou’s “Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems” is a breathtakingly beautiful world of hushed, swooning sonics and suggestive spoken word. The duo describe personal moments but present them as shared worlds, as if exploded by magnification. Its every moment rings with care, craft and impressive sonic exactitude. An utterly compelling musical journey, out April 10th via RVNG Intl.