Natural Invention is a piece of music that feels thrillingly, frighteningly, beautifully of our time. With the Gigspanner Big Band, Peter Knight has assembled a group of musicians intent on making some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music.
LaVere has a musical grain worthy of a household name and ‘Painting Blue’ is a piece of audio medicine for the difficult times we are living in and an album that will enrich any music collection, get on it now folks.
Unearth Repeat is a significant leap forward for Sam Sweeney in terms of his solo work. It is a highly creative work that brings something new to the mix, while also celebrating the simple joys of instrumental folk music. Mesmerising and irresistible stuff.
Huam has something of the magic of an untrodden path about it. It rewards deep listening…light and quick, profound and full of care, it is an album of serenely balanced opposites. Also watch their new video for Mountain Of Gold.
‘Time in the Trees’ reveals so much more than you may initially be ready for, making it ripe for repeated listening – it should get us all thinking about our relationship with the natural world amid the clutter of the electronic jungle that can monopolise our attention.
Totally improvised and recorded live in a single take, Adam Summerhayes and Murray Grainger’s “Untold” is work of startling, immediate beauty. It is a rich, durable and mercurial sound that will reward repeated listens.
Like the sound of the wind in the reeds from which Yeats took inspiration, Abbé’s music is full of shifting natural beauty, whispers and sighs that could be sounds of sorrow or of love. Numberless Dreams is masterful in its delivery and intriguing in its opacity.
You must give Cinelli great kudos for his boundless approach to these recordings, he’s allowed the music to guide him down many satisfying and unpredictable avenues. ‘Night Songs’ is an album with a clear thematic purpose that emphatically realises its ambition.
For all its range and variation, for all the subtle and beautiful musical flourishes and lingering sonic effects, The Victorians is essentially a call to arms. Harp & a Monkey have made a stunning album that pleads the case for folk song as a working-class mode of expression.
Creating music is indisputably in Edd Donovan’s blood, these songs have solid foundations and were simply waiting for someone with a visionary radar to bring them into the world. An album for people with a taste for beauty, adventure, nature and wonder.
Smith & McClennan have triumphed on this debut release, in creating personal music that tells us more about who they are than we’ve ever heard before and suggests they’re only at the beginning of a fruitful musical adventure.
The Portage, the latest album from Scotland’s Rant is something truly special. At points haunting, at others carefree and light, this is powerful and evocative music that is invigorating, bewitching and beautiful.
