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.
Great art can often come from the darkest places…many of these songs were born out of very real human experience. They are musically inventive and lyrically astute documents of this experience, but more than that they offer a clearer way of understanding it, and perhaps even a way of helping to overcome its darker periods.
On Sweet Thursday Ivar tackles contemporary America from a personal standpoint, through the lens of literature and with an omnivorous knowledge of the history of music. Put like that it sounds dry, even academic, but Ivar’s wit and melodic sense ensures that it is nothing of the sort. Watch his new video Down by the Jacaranda.
Abbey Wood is an unmitigated triumph. Clever and heartfelt, it inverts folk tropes by presenting historical narratives in extremely personal ways or by creating finely-observed urban backgrounds where the more personal songs can play out. Hayter’s haunted, haunting voice holds it all together and makes it fabulously unique.
Improvisation and invention meet the listener at every turn of ‘Well Met’. Knight and Spiers have created a musical document that should inspire future generations of musicians to engage with Britain’s folk dancing heritage, and the beautiful, mysterious tunes that can be found within that heritage.