Thomas Blake

Throughout Sleeping Spirals, the debut album from Hannah James and Toby Kuhn, distinct threads of travel, place and self-discovery come together to form a complex but unified whole. It is a journey you will want to take again and again.

Henry Parker’s Lammas Fair is an album full of old wisdom and new beginnings, deeply rooted in the wild landscape of northern England, but ultimately outward-looking and welcoming.

Fohr’s work as Circuit Des Yeux is consistently challenging, boldly experimental and always liberating. -io is probably her strongest work to date, a powerful statement born out of genuine feeling.

On Tonebeds For Poetry, Stick in the Wheel cast their net wider delivering sounds you might not expect to find on a folk album. They remain one of the most ground-breaking and unpredictable acts in any of the countless genres they move between.

On Genius Loci 1: White Peak, The Ciderhouse Rebellion have taken a step further into the unknown, with an album that marries their flawless musicianship with an ever more experimental outlook. The whole album hangs together like a story and is totally captivating.

dreamcreatures draws its power from enigmatic sources: there is a tension between Webb’s self-confessed lack of confidence and his evident and supreme gifts as a songwriter and singer. It all makes for a raw, quietly uncompromising and thoroughly engrossing listen.

The songs on Shirley Collins’ ‘Crowlink’ are simultaneously ancient and new. It is an EP that can be elementally charged or unnervingly intimate but is never less than exquisite. 

Alex Rex’s aphoristic approach to songwriting means that every line he writes sounds like a defining statement, but on Paradise, those statements come together (albeit in a ragged and even contradictory way) to form perhaps his most rewarding piece of work to date.

Aidan O’Rourke’s Iorram is a truly magical listening experience, one that, for all its outward quietness, is bursting with ideas…Even without the context of the film it accompanies, this masterful document has a vividness that is almost visual in its own right.

Alasdair Roberts and Völvur’s “The Old Fabled River” is full of subtle mirrors, the dualism and continuity of life, pairs and opposites…a satisfyingly literary accomplishment, but also humane and wild and as vividly detailed as we’ve come to expect from anything Roberts is involved in.

On David Kitt’s “20”, he has lovingly rerecorded a score of his favourite songs. As demonstrated throughout, Kitt is a master of his craft and while this is essentially a career retrospective, it is a stunning musical document in its own right.

It’s rare to hear a band creating genuinely new music with a basis in traditional forms, but Erlend Apneseth Trio have managed it on more than one occasion. Lokk is their most vivid and satisfying reinvention yet.