Featured

It is rare to hear a songwriter so astutely match up words with music so that one complements the other to perfection. Alex Seel achieves this on Circles, a small, bright gem of a record. We can only hope that a full-length album is on its way in the near future.

We talk to our Artist of the Month ‘Eiks’ about her new album Braids…”As I go about my normal daily life, I seem to have a subconscious radar that looks for inspiration, however small and embryonic they are, and I note them down.”

Braids is an album of memory and homage, tooled and re-tooled like a worn keepsake, and Japanese-British singer-songwriter Eiks is an inventive creator who relishes nostalgia and excels in the preservation of life’s tiniest moments.

Adrian McNally, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer with The Unthanks, discusses their new album, The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake, the fourth instalment in their inspired, unconventional Diversions series.

Christine Primrose helped introduce Gaelic song to a far wider audience than it had ever enjoyed before. She returns with her new album this month. “The pleasure of losing oneself in the whole collection, from beginning to end, can hardly be expressed in words.”

After a successful album debut in 2015, Threaded return with ‘Fair Winds and Following Seas’… Enjoying the album is “like an evening spent at the best of dances among the best of company – you leave feeling fresh, elated, and eager for more.”

Regardless of any societal constraints Molly Drake may have felt in her life, regardless of her unwillingness to publish her own material, she was a consummately gifted songwriter. And in The Unthanks, those songs have found their perfect outlet.

Breda Mayock has the same ability to wrap her vocal around her own poetry that makes listening to Joni Mitchell such a compelling experience. A collection of intimate, absorbing vocal performances perfectly framed in compelling arrangements.

We talk to Lisa Knapp about her latest album Till April Is Dead – A Garland Of May and talk in-depth about the rituals celebrated in May and why it has always held such power over the imaginations of singers and writers.

Solomon, the fifth album from Welsh group Calan, is an amazing album, it sounds wonderful, fresh and exciting from the very first listen and continues to enthral on every subsequent visit. Don’t hesitate in buying a copy.

Ross Couper and Tom Oakes offer an honest, accomplished, and, above all, thoroughly enjoyable 46 minutes of music on Fiddle & Guitar. The duo’s close empathy is in evidence throughout as they deliver the very best of live, contemporary trad music, perfectly adapted for the studio.

There is no-one quite like Avital Raz in the world of music right now, and she should be applauded for the intelligence and singularity of her artistic vision. The Fallen Angel’s Unravelling Descent is a genuinely original musical statement, full of wise, exotic and gleefully mordant songs that manage to be simultaneously challenging and melodic.