News
Henry Parker returns on May 1st with “The Dark Peak,” a solo guitar EP shaped by a multi-day backpacking trip across Bleaklow and the Upper Derwent ridges. Watch the live video for “Upper Derwent,” filmed at a remote shooting cabin in the freezing December moorland. Delicate fingerpicking and field recordings of curlews, lapwings and bitter winds — landscape music at its most immersive.
Steve Gunn announces ‘Shape of a Wave,’ a four-song companion EP to his acclaimed ‘Daylight Daylight,’ out this Friday via No Quarter. The set features two new recordings with James Elkington and two tracks remixed by Spacemen 3’s Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember. Listen to the Nearly There remix, a luminous reworking of the album’s opening track.
Room40 announces Headwater, the new album from Finnish/Australian double bassist, vocalist and composer Helen Svoboda, arriving June 26th. Built around two double basses, two voices and electronics, the album weaves sixteen threads into an abstracted portrait of self. Watch the video for album opener “If”, a piece exploring a dream shaped by constant interruptions.
Goblin Band return with new single ‘Clyde Water’, out today via Broadside Hacks on digital and 7″ vinyl. A studio recording with producer Rory Salter, it channels the exuberance of the traditional ballad via Nic Jones’ distinctive versions. The single arrives ahead of the quartet’s biggest headline show yet — EartH Theatre, Hackney, May 1st.
Jesca Hoop has shared “Big Storm”, a propulsive new single and video from her forthcoming album “Long Wave Home.” Born from a moment of near-total flight — a plan to disappear, upended by the biggest storm in recent history — the track is a reckoning with the impossibility of escape. Watch the video now and pre-order the album ahead of its 1st May release.
Big Potato Records have announced Dream Me A Dream, the final studio album from Tucker Zimmerman, out June 19th. Listen to the first single Sun In Scorpio now. Pairing banjo, violin and swirling organ with orchestral Moog and analogue synths, Zimmerman leapt into textures recalling the electronica adventures of his earlier work. He was in his eighties, and it sounds like nothing else he recorded.
Watch the video for The Roustabout Song by Old Spot, taken from their new album “Old Spot (II),” out April 24th on Scribe Records. First encountered at a Morris festival singing session, the track traces a transatlantic thread from English folklorist Sandy Paton to songwriter Dillon Bustin, rendered here as a joyful fiddle-and-banjo reimagining with deep political undertones.
Manchester/Liverpool/London folk collective Brown Wimpenny announce their debut album Long Live Brown Wimpenny, due 5th June via Broadside Hacks Recordings, alongside new single Old Molly Metcalfe — a cinematic reinvention of Jake Thackray’s bleak tale of a North Yorkshire shepherdess. Enriching Thackray’s a cappella melody with an eerie, enchanting arrangement, the track opens with a live archive performance from the songwriter himself.
We’re premiering the video for “King Orfeo,” the debut single from Birdvox — the new project from Sarah Hayes, Inge Thomson, Jenny Sturgeon and Charlotte Printer. An adaptation of a traditional Orpheus myth with a refrain in the now extinct Scandinavian language of Norn, it’s the first taste of their forthcoming album “Shamming The Drama,” due on Hudson Records later this year.
Juni Habel releases ‘Pearl Cloud Song,’ a lush instrumental from her forthcoming album “Evergreen In Your Mind,” out 10th April on Basin Rock. Born from an open tuning discovery, the track layers steel-string guitar with Herman Wildhagen’s pedal steel and distant vocal traces — a beautiful, unhurried piece from one of folk’s most compelling new voices.
Magic Tuber Stringband share “Where the Place Becomes Forgetting,” a gorgeous single from their upcoming album “Heavy Water”. Featuring field recordings from a pond on the edge of a nuclear site in Northern Georgia, the track layers steady banjo and guitar riffing with fraught fiddle swoops — watch the intimate live performance video now.
The Huntress and Holder of Hands have announced ‘Babylon’, their second album, due June 5th. A decade on from their debut ‘Avalon’, MorganEve Swain’s project — born from the loss of her husband and musical partner, Dave Lamb (Brown Bird) — returns heavier and fuller, grappling with corruption, redemption and hope. Dark-hued new single Promethean is out now.
