LAU

The line-up for Cambridge Folk Festival is looking very promising: Lau, Fay Hield & The Hurricane Party, Roy Harper, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, The Staves and more.

Watch this Celtic Connections 2012 video special featuring special performances including ex-Cream bassist Jack Bruce performing with Lau!

Lau are set to new studio album ‘Race the Loser’ in Autumn 2012, produced by Tucker Martine. Plus Limited Edition Deluxe double CD album and free downloads.

KAN look set to go down a storm with the release of their debut album ‘Sleeper’ on 27th January. Listen to preview tracks from their album now.

Watch Kris Drever performing some impromptu sessions with pals Alasdair White of the Battlefield Band and Irish tenor banjo player Eamonn Coyne!

Following up their split EP with Karine Polwart, acclaimed Scottish folk trio Lau have embarked on another collaborative effort, this time with London based musician Adem. Read Melanie’s review below.

Back in November last year we told you about LAU collaborating with Adem. The new collaborative EP is titled Ghosts and is due out on 30th April 2011. You can hear a taster below.

In follow up to their popular Evergreen EP collaboration with Karine Polwart, Lau are to release a new EP with the multi-talented Adem. Plus get tour dates and catch them performing with Karine Polwart.

Scottish/English folk band Lau started out back in 2004 in Edinburgh, and have since become one of Britain’s most highly acclaimed young folk bands: a status assuredly justified with their ‘Best Group’ winnings at the BBC Radio Two Folk Awards for three years running. Their 90-minute set at Cargo was met with whoops and howls of friends and family, old fans and new listeners instantly captivated by intricate jigs and …

Music has been used to spread messages; political, romantic, historical, for hundreds, probably thousands of years. It’s an effective medium and the musical traditions we’re so proud of owe their very existence to this fact. The trouble is, of course, that almost any message is open to interpretation. This CD, and the Folk Against Fascism movement it supports, have come about because of the misappropriation of British folk music and …

Don’t let the title worry you. Karine and the lads of Lau aren’t engaging in a bit of WWF Smackdown aggro. The latest in the impressive history of collaboration between the various members of Lau and Karine Polwart is an enthralling five-track EP, the first in a series of three such releases planned by Lau. Four of the five tracks on this releases are cover versions, more details on those …

Celebrated and feted as the fiddle playing third of Lau, Aidan O’Rourke’s An Tobar (The Well) is a celebration of the geography and life of the island of Mull and at the same time the 10th anniversary of its innovative arts centre, overlooking Tobermory Bay, that commissioned the work.

It’s always good to hear from artists that are well loved by listeners and Karine Polwart is certainly one of them. She’s been a little bit quiet for a while on news and this newsletter brings us all up to scratch: