Featured Albums of the Month

Gnoss’s ‘Stretching Skyward’ is an exciting and invigorating album. Alongside an intoxicating fusion of instruments, there is a well-earned quiet confidence on show, with a soft, subtle touch of Americana filtering through the band’s more traditional Scottish sound; it’s an innovative, accomplished meld.

It may have taken a while, but with ‘We Are Only Sound’, Lucy Farrell has given us a bold debut album of rare sophistication, and a moving document of an emotional few years.

For their latest album Sølvstrøk, Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola created a Chamber Orchestra, adding another dimension to their sound while maintaining the duo’s integrity. It is music that is as wonderfully performed as it is confident and generous; another masterpiece.

Cinder Well’s ‘Cadence’ is something of a journey. Meandering, non-linear, but full of care and wisdom, it is an astonishingly powerful piece of work that seems to have been conceived in uncertainty but realised with the supreme assurance of one of the most consummate songwriters around.

One thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on ‘Traveling Wildfire’, a deep and indispensable album.

Salt House’s “Riverwoods” feels far more important and pertinent than a regular release. It is an album of stirringly gorgeous music that fully delivers its message about the importance of nature and its inherent beauty in our world, along with how we need to maintain it.

When singing unaccompanied and in unison, The Young’uns make an elemental sound, and on ‘Tiny Notes’, it pins you to the wall; they have created an album that has the potential to become a benchmark classic in modern topical folk music.

Joined by a number of gifted vocalists, Ben Walker’s ‘Banish Air from Air’ is a beautifully realised project, a fascinating, surprising and multi-faceted album of music, quite unlike anything you are likely to have heard before.

The songs on Jonathan Day’s ‘Sakura’ are characterised by a profound philosophical insight and the importance of music and nature. But most of all, it is an album about love and the small but important connections between humans in a world that can feel overwhelmingly big.

With ‘All Of This Is Chance’, Lisa O’Neill lets her own creative wings spread, unleashing every ounce of elation, despair and love that her music emanates. An epic canyon of sense and sound… a timeless piece of work, wholly unbound by style or genre, a universal shot of medicinal magic.

John McCusker’s ‘The Best Of’ is an ideal introduction to the breadth and depth of one of the very best traditional musicians working today…a rare musician whose fiddle style and overall production sound is both distinctive and alluring.

With ‘Out Of This Frame’ Rachel Taylor-Beales expresses large on a widescreen canvas that allows room for all her artistic faculties to breathe. This is an album that invites you in for a long ride, and it will not disappoint those who invest the time to get on board.