14/06/2024
Coming up this week on FAAB for your listening pleasure and enjoyment:
The Wilderness Yet – Black Eyed Susan - Westlin Winds - Scribe Records www.thewildernessyet.com
George Boomsma – Fallen - Promise Of Spring - Independent Release www.georgeboomsma.com/
Landless – The Wounded Hussar - Lúireach - Glitterbeat www.wearelandless.wordpress.com
Anna Tivel – Kindness Of A Liar - Living Thing - Fluff & Gravy Records www.annativel.com
Jeffrey Martin – Red Station Wagon - Thank God We Left The Garden - Fluff & Gravy Records www.jeffreymartinportland.bandcamp.com
Bring In The Spirit (Rod Paterson, Kirsten Easdale, Gregor Lowrey, Marc Duff, Pete Clark & Lionel McClelland) – India - Bring In The Spirit - Independent Release www.bringinthespirit.com video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbZI7_rBJGY
The Wilderness Yet – Chanticleer - Westlin Winds - video: www.youtube.com/
George Boomsma – Passing The Silence - Promise Of Spring - video: www.youtube.com/
Landless – Death and the Lady - Lúireach - video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cbbq1GZ_gA
Anna Tivel - Disposable Camera - Living Thing - video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YApIpsCVi_I
Jeffrey Martin – There Is A Treasure - Thank God We Left The Garden - video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYZEvVg7Bpw
Rod Paterson - My Nannie, O - Robert Burns Vol 1: The Complete Songs - Linn Records video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRKqjbyjmJ8
The Wilderness Yet: "The Wilderness Yet combines the acclaimed talents of folksinger Rosie Hodgson, traditional fiddler Rowan Piggott, and guitarist-flautist Philippe Barnes. They have earned audiences’ esteem as consummate musicians & singers, weaving an eclectic tapestry of traditional and original songs; a ca****la three-part harmonies to luscious instrumental arrangements. From their eponymous debut The Wilderness Yet (2020), to their seasonal celebration Turn The Year Round (2021), to their last studio album, What Holds The World Together (2022), The Wilderness Yet have have consistently created genre-breaking music earning them hundreds of first class reviews from the global music press, airplay on the BBC & RTÉ, and performances at festivals from Cambridge to Folk by the Oak.
Rowan Piggott: A traditional musician who grew up in the foothills of the Burren on the west coast of Ireland, Rowan is a fine singer with a “deep understanding and feel for tradition” (FolkWords) and is known for his Songhive Project. A workshop leader, serial tunebook author, and the winner of the ‘Future of Young Folk Award’ at Bromyard Folk Festival, he was cover-boy for The Living Tradition after releasing his solo album Mountscribe.
Rosie Hodgson: With a voice that brings “a ruby-richness to lyrics new and old" (Folk Radio UK), it’s no surprise that Rosie has been a finalist for the BBC Young Folk Award. After a successful EP and the eponymous album from Crossharbour, she recorded her debut album Rise Aurora to critical acclaim, producing what fRoots called “audible magic”. Rosie’s own songs are heavily influenced by the English tradition and her love of literature and the environment.
Philippe Barnes: is well-known on the folk scene as a virtuosic flautist, but is an equally magnificent guitarist! Since completing an MA in Irish Music Performance at University of Limerick, Philippe has toured with the David Munnelly Band, All Jigged Out, Dizraeli and the Small Gods and Crossharbour (alongside Rosie!) As a session musician he appears regularly on film/tv soundtracks and has recently recorded an album with pianist Tom Phelan.
George Boomsma: "is singer songwriter from Northallerton, North Yorkshire. Having been honing his song-writing craft and live performances over the past decade, George has been gaining some well-earnt attention and acclaim. His pure voice and tumbling guitar make for a bewitching combination, with a maturity and poetic lyricism that have left audiences around the country entranced. His songs reflect on themes from navigating relationships, family, self-acceptance, grief and finding a path forward despite uncertainties.
He has been invited to support and perform alongside many established artists such as Richard Thompson, Scott Matthews, Katherine Priddy, Gaby Moreno, Kathryn Williams and The Travelling Band. On top of these live performances, his music been featured on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 6 Music, RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio Ulster." - www.georgeboomsma.com
Landless are: Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch.
The Irish quartet sings centuries old ballads as well as more recently penned folk songs. Sometimes unaccompanied and at times with subtle instrumentation, their vocally rich music is dark and patient; spellbinding and gorgeous.
Lúireach is their second album and as with their acclaimed debut Bleaching Bones (2018), it is produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy, known for his work with artists such as Lankum and ØXN.
Folk music emerging from Dublin seems to be everywhere at the moment – demonstrated most clearly by Lankum gaining a host of ‘Album of the Year’ nods at the end of 2023 – but it would be a mistake to call this a movement, much less any kind of revival. While Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds, Lisa O’Neill et al might be new to a lot of audiences, these artists have been exploring and expanding what folk music can be for years, decades even. And this is just as true of Landless, the quartet who’ve been singing together since 2013, finding each other through the traditional singing scene in the city and, crucially, the Sacred Harp singing community.
Working once again with John ‘Spud’ Murphy (the Lankum producer and ØXN member), Lúireach sees the quartet adding sparingly-used instrumentation – Ruth’s aching pump organ on Death & The Lady, Méabh’s shruti box on Ej Husari, Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada on fiddle, viola and banjo throughout, even some mournful trombone from Alex Borwick on The Newry Highwayman. As Lily explains, “A lot of the instrumentation happened organically as we were recording, while some elements we have used live for years, like the organ. We tend not to make these kinds of decisions in advance, but make suggestions as we go and see how everyone feels about it. Hopefully the album still has the impact of the unaccompanied singing, with a bit of variation this time around.”
The songs on Lúireach are from remarkably diverse sources and eras: the likes of Blackwaterside, Death & The Lady and My Lagan Love (learned from Traveller Paddy Doran, Norma Waterson and Méabh’s late father respectively) are probably known to even the casual fan of traditional music, while Lúireach Bhríde was commissioned for the RTÉ Folk Awards in 2018 and the closing song Ej Husari was learned from teacher and singer Eva Brunovská at the annual Rozhybkosti festival in Slovakia. Some of these songs are centuries old, some remarkably recent, yet when sung by Landless, they all sound timeless and eternal.
Lúireach is an album of quiet power, soaked in tradition but finding new and exciting ways to present these remarkable songs, songs that are full of melancholy, love, death and mystery. Lúireach rewards your close attention." - excerpt www.landless.bandcamp.com/album/l-ireach
Anna Tivel: " is a Portland, OR-based songwriter who grounds her work in quiet stories of everyday struggle. She’s a keen and detailed observer, and the characters in her songs come alive in small moments of beauty and despair.
With three full-length albums out on Portland’s well-loved Fluff & Gravy Records and a fourth due out this spring, Tivel spends her time writing and touring the US and overseas. Her most recent album, ‘Small Believer,’ was produced by guitar mastermind Austin Nevins (Josh Ritter, Anais Mitchell) and released in September of 2017. NPR praised the album, saying it “repeatedly achieves this exquisite balance of the quotidian and the sublime with imagery that's deeply poetic.” Her previous album, Heroes Waking Up was hailed by Folk Radio UK as "a superb and sublime album from a
voice that deserves to be shouted from the highest rooftops.”"- www.concertedefforts.com
Jeffrey Martin: "On a small corner lot in southeast Portland, Oregon, Jeffrey Martin holed up through the winter recording his quietly potent new album Thank God We Left The Garden. Long nights bled into mornings in the tiny shack he built in the backyard, eight feet by ten feet. What began as demos meant for a later visit to a proper studio became the album itself, spare and intimate and true. Recorded live and alone around two microphones, Jeffrey often held his breath to wait for the low diesel hum of a truck to pass one block over on the busy thoroughfare. During the coldest nights, he timed recording between the clicks of the oil coil heater cycling on and off.
Martin’s fourth full length album, Thank God We Left The Garden comes out on Portland’s beloved Fluff and Gravy Records Nov 3. He produced and engineered it himself, recalling, “There was a magic quality to the sounds I was getting in the shack with these two cheap microphones, some lucky recipe of time and place that allowed my voice and the way I play guitar and the shape of these new songs to come together with the kind of honesty I was craving.”
So much has happened in the world since the release of his previous album One Go Around, and Jeffrey has filled the time doggedly, but happily, touring the US and Europe, watching it all unfold in a stream of small town conversations and city sprawl. In a moment where depth is so often traded for the instantaneous, where tech billionaires are building rockets to escape the planet, where the dead-eyed stare of artificial intelligence is promising to existentially upend our world, and where divisiveness in our culture is breeding delusional levels of certainty, Jeffrey Martin’s new record feels like a hopeful and fully human antidote.
The sounds feel warm, close, and refreshingly real, all held up by the richness and rare candor of Jeffrey’s voice. Production is restrained mostly to his guitar and vocals, with flashes of classical guitar for a tumbling wash of melody and low end color. Martin’s voice sits high above everything, reaching into new melodic territory that goes beyond his earlier work. “I feel like I’ve only just learned how to sing,” Martin said. “Like I’ve been chasing this record since my very first recordings. I wanted to really see what I could do, just my guitar and my voice and little else. I don’t think it was conscious. I think maybe it was a reaction to the pace of life these days. The churning news and entertainment and politics and violence of it all. I needed to know that even in this day and age, just a few simple ingredients still hold up.”
This is an album that craves your full attention, best experienced as a whole. Each song further illuminates the scene until you find yourself resting in the strangely comforting tangle of aliveness and meaning (and full spectrum of being alive./what it means to be alive.). At its core Thank God We Left The Garden is an album made of questions, humble and nuanced, a reverent celebration of the asking.
Whether singing about his own internal landscape, telling a story of someone else’s, or reflecting on the elusive relationship between scarcity and contentment, Martin’s writing never pushes the listener away, never points a finger. He sings of things we can all pin a memory on, holding the rough shorn gem of human experience up to the light.
Thank God We Left the Garden will be released on Fluff and Gravy Records on NOV 3, 2023. Subsequent touring will carry Jeffrey Martin through all of the US, Canada, and Europe. " - www.jeffreymartinportland.bandcamp.com/
Rod Paterson: RIP May 30 2024. Sublime Dundee via Calcutta singer/songwriter, masterful guitarist and tutor of Scots song at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He played in a number of groups, including Chorda Ceolbeg, the immensely influential Jock Tamson’s Bairns and The Easy Club , who merged folk with more of a jazz/swing style, and latterly with Bring In the Spirit with whom he made his final recording earlier this year. He is widely regarded as the finest Scots singer of his generation, with an unforgettable voice, particularly renowned for his Burns interpretations .
Bring In The Spirit: "combines the incomparable, sophisticated vocals of Rod Paterson and Kirsten Easdale with the sublime, sensitive accordion playing of Gregor Lowrey.
Rod Paterson (Vocals/ Guitar) is widely regarded as the foremost male traditional singer in Scotland, he was a founder member of ‘Jock Tamson’s Bairns’ and ‘The Easy Club’.
Kirsten Easdale (Vocals/ Bodhran) a founder member of top Celtic band ‘Calasaig‘ is renowned for her beautiful and powerful voice, she has performed at major international events worldwide.
Gregor Lowrey (Accordion) is recognised as one of Scotland’s finest accordion players, he has performed and recorded with many bands, including ‘Black Eyed Biddy’, and most recently with Gavin Marwick’s ‘Journeyman Spectacular’.
Bring In The Spirit also perform as a 4 piece band, with the inclusion of either the unique multi- instumental talents of Marc Duff or the superb fiddle playing of Pete Clark.
Marc Duff (Whistles/ Bouzouki/ Bodhran) was a founder member of Scotland’s premier Gaelic band ‘Capercaillie’ with whom he recorded 7 albums.
Pete Clark (fiddle) has performed and recorded with many notable musicians over the years, he is the Director of the annual ‘Neil Gow Fiddle Festival’ in Dunkeld, Perthshire. " - www.bringinthespirit.com/Bringinthespirit
www.mixcloud.com/FromAlbionAndBeyond/from-albion-and-beyond-240615
The always superb Anglo-Irish trio The Wilderness Yet open each half of this week's program from their "Westlin Winds" of 8 choice trad tracks & a blistering original gem; North Yorks S/S George Boosma follows on from his 6th! release "The Promise of Spring"- loss of a family member captured in in t...
