Category: Folk
The Gloaming 2
Simply as an artist, simply as someone who is trying to move other people, what is it that you can do that no one else can do? Thomas Bartlett Since the emergence of The Gloaming as a collective in 2011, Martin Hayes (fiddle), Dennis Cahill…
Dawn Landes & Piers Faccini: Desert Songs
Even though UK-born and France-based folk singer Piers Faccini often describes himself as a solitary songwriter, the musician nevertheless seems to thrive on collaborations. Having partnered with Dom La Nena, Jenny Lysander, the BKO Quintet or with French cellist Vincent Segal on the wonderful Songs…
Piers Faccini & Vincent Ségal: Songs of Time Lost
Being the descendant of Italian, Irish, Ashkenazi and Gypsy immigrants, I don’t have a big claim to represent British or Irish Folk traditions any more than I do those of West Africa but what I do feel I can stake a claim to is the…
Hidden Orchestra: Archipelago
Traditional jazz drummers are usually only given a few bars to shine, and consequently these short solos are bursting with brilliant ideas and glimpses of pure rhythmic feel. I began to isolate and reprogram fragments of these rhythmic gems […] read the cover notes to…
The White Birch: The Weight of Spring
Fronted by singer, songwriter and composer Ola Fløttum, The White Birch are another shining example of the exceptional vitality of the Norwegian music scene, all genres included. Born as a quartet in 1996, The White Birch have crafted over the years an expansive soundscape of slow…
Kyrie Kristmanson & Quatuor Voce: Modern Ruin
Kyrie Kristmanson is a young Canadian singer songwriter born in Ottawa and now based in Paris. The musician has released two self-produced albums to date followed by Origins of Stars, her first international release on the NØ FORMAT! label in 2010. Also a trumpet and a…
The Unthanks: Mount the Air
Two years in the making, the newly-released album by British contemporary folk band The Unthanks is a majestic collection. If all the lyrics are still curated from old poetry and song collections, learnt from other singers or newly written in the mode of traditional ballads,…
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset: The Bairns
A song only becomes a folk song when people start singing it. Rachel Unthank The Unthanks are an English folk band from Newcastle formed in 2004. Originally an all-female quartet, Rachel and Becky Unthank with Niopha Keegan (violin & voice) and Belinda O’Hooley (piano & voice) recorded…