Tag: folk
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Various Artists – Album Roundup
There’s more than a nod to dreampop and shoegaze in this music, but Lisa Masia and Marina Cristofalo are clearly too in love with the raw and ragged sound of a distorted electric guitar to tame it to the extent that might imply. Some of Wish You Were A Pony…
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Creature Breath – I Am Creature Breath (avant-folk)
There’s a simple poetry to this album, an economy of orchestration, of ornament and of lyrical statement. Given that the lyrical themes are of an overtly devotional nature, expressing a sense of rootedness and connection to the ‘Mother’, to the natural world conceived as a person, I find that economy…
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Neil Cousin – Bonfire (folksong/ roots rock)
Specifics are important. Little details are the warp and weft of life. Neil Cousin knows this: he knows that a hole in a jumper, a night-time swim in the sea, a man with painted toenails and hair worn in plaits are all important. Not important as in important to someone,…
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olds sleeper – plainspoken (folk/ Americana)
I get a lot of visual clichés when I listen to this album. I get sunset, Mr. sleeper’s weatherbeaten face, eyes hidden by the brim of his hat, battered boots on the rail of the porch as he plays, wonky rows of telegraph poles marching off across a flat, parched…
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Various Artists – Singles & EPs
Marley Butler makes music of remarkable clarity: his soundscapes are usually clean, open affairs, in which the boundaries between sonic elements are clearly defined; his rhythms are regular, precise and simple; ideas have room in which to breathe, and although he does not overuse spatialising effects such as reverb and…
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The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players – Lost And Found (anti-folk/ art-pop)
Hot zowee! This long player is really a gas, boys and girls! If the family that plays together stays together, then The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are one fantabulous bundle of cosmic togetherness: these three way-out cats are as groovy as a corduroy overcoat and as hip as a coxa…
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Ed Ache presents The Vogon Poetry Sessions – Work For Tesco Or Die (punk/ acoustic)
Brace yourself. Ed Ache plays punk songs of such finely honed, cutting sarcasm that he’ll make your brain bleed; often very funny, always witty, usually politically targeted, his songs have catchy melodies that drive home their meanings and convince you of their truth as they get you singing along. They…
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Hawk Horses – FALL (avant-folk)
Folk music, as a widely shared conceptual category, is largely defined by a sense of authenticity: it is culturally specific music, and it is valued by many (or most) of its fans for its truthfulness to a particular sort of shared experience. This is not usually the personal experience of…
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Juana Ghani – Budmo! (gypsy/ folk)
Juana Ghani play central European gypsy music (as far as I can tell, I’m no expert). They are a large band, incorporating a variety of instruments, some plucked, some struck, some blown and some squeezed. The songs collected here are driven along by a tightly and propulsively played brass bass…
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Heidi Harris – Underneath The Grass And Clover (folk)
Heidi Harris works with a palette of folk and Americana pigments, but she doesn’t paint quite the pictures you might expect. Folk music is a collective aurality, the sonic expression of an orally transmitted tradition, and as such, it daubs its canvases with the colours of communal experience: even when…
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Big Block 454 – Bells & Proclamations (folk-funk/ psychedelic rock)
Big Block 454, named for a 1970 Chevrolet engine, are one of the oddest bands I’ve encountered in a while. They are creatively out there, full of weird sounds and transgressive stylistic collisions, and yet they are, to me at least, accessible, pleasing, and decidedly danceable. Apparently they’ve been around…
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Cutleri – Let Me Show You My Sweater (folk/ Americana)
Production standards for self released music have become so generically polished and exact, that it has almost ceased to be meaningful or valuable to release a well recorded album. I’m being facetious, obviously, and of course I like to hear music I like sounding good, but sometimes the slickness of…
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Eleanor Williams – Orange Peel And Paper (acoustic/ singer-songwriter)
Naplew Productions, 2010, DD album, 29m 8s, £name your price (all proceeds donated to the charity Women’s Aid) http://m-s-b.bandcamp.com/album/orange-peel-and-paper I’ve been lucky enough a few times recently to find myself reviewing music that’s motivated by a creative generosity. This is not to say that it involves any expectation of gratitude,…
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The Little Unsaid – Into The Faceless Night (folk/ alternative rock)
Original songs in the style of folksong aren’t ‘folk’ in the sense of ‘traditional music’, and nor in fact do they actually sound like any traditional music ever did… this is a collection of finely crafted songs in a style that draws heavily on that tradition, with some rock elements,…
Oliver Arditi 