Albums

Topic Records took the folk world by surprise with their signing of Fay Hield to their label with the release of her debut album Looking Glass. Their first new artist in ten years. I can see why they did!

Kathryn Tickell’s music is sewn into the very fabric of the Northumbrian landscape just as her tutors, the sherpherd musicans of outlying farms near her home, were. Her lastest album pays a great homage to the vastness of perception and interpretation in her work.

With their second recording Wild Go receiving airplay on UK shores Dark Dark Dark’s pitch and note perfect re-creation of their Balkan inspired tracks tapped out a heartfelt oscillation between liveliness and loneliness, with the precision of it all framing their Eastern-folk and pitch dark jazz hybrid.

It’s always a pleasant surprise when an artist from way back contacts you out of the blue. I Draw Slow were a regular on the station a few years.

The candle-lit environs of Dalston’s Cafe Oto felt a particularly apt setting for chamber-folk five-piece The Magic Lantern to host their single launch party. Amongst the flickering tea-lights atop wooden tables, decorated with remnants of Organic beer and homemade cakes, a crowd of friends, family and listeners new and old gathered.

Sparrow and the Workshop released their debut back in April; the reception of which has shocked even the band itself. They may be based in Scotland but this band actually comprise of a Scotsman, Welshman and a Chicagoan girl…

Under various guises James Toth has a vast back catalogue, we’re talking number of hot dinners vast here. We review the latest album Death Seat…

Hi54LoFi artist A Singer of Songs, Lieven Scheerlinch has collaborated with New Zealander, Hollie Fullbrook aka Tiny Ruins, which perfectly unites the whispered dreamy folk of the pair.

Despite the departure of Claudia Deheza from the band a month ago, the remaining School of Seven Bells members (now duo) played an impressive show at London’s Heaven last week.

Squinch Owl is the musical moniker of singer-songwriter Sofia Albam, and while the image of a squinching owl may seem to embody a creature that is fearful and shy, the voice of this artist is anything but a passing flutter.

The Woody Nightshade is Sharron Kraus’s fourth studion album. Her fad free approach to folk continues, all be it along a different path from her last album, The Fox’s Wedding.

It’s strange to start at the end, but at the close of Micah P. Hinson’s string swathed set at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, he stated that “music speaks for you when you can’t”.