KLOF Mag Regular
New Guest playlist, Album Reviews and News: ft. The Folklore Tapes, Nathan Bowles Trio, Grant / McGuire / Flaherty, Fidra, Wes Tirey, Chris Cohen, Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman, Aisha Badru & more.
Reflections #3 by Buck Curran
For the third in our Reflections playlist series, we asked Buck Curran to put together a playlist featuring some of his favourites. He recently released One Evening and Other Folk Songs, which was one of our Featured Albums of the Month. Thomas Blake described it as 'an album of hidden depths. His talent is an alchemical one: seemingly quotidian musical ingredients are turned into rare metals in his hands, and with this eclectic but hugely talented band, the results are doubly impressive.' Read the album review here.
Buck's choices include Tim Buckley, Sandy Denny, Sam Amidon, Martin Simpson, Fleetwood Mac, Robbie Basho, David Crosby, Arborea, and Adele H.
Read his thoughts in the Reflections #3 article here (this includes an additional track that isn’t available in the playlist)
And listen on Spotify | Apple Music | Tidal
If you are a Premium Subscriber, you will receive another Extended Monday Morning Brew Playlist tomorrow morning (it is double the length of our regular playlist).
The Folklore Tapes - The Ceremonial Counties Series
The Folklore Tapes project is an attempt to document the occult, mythological and downright mysterious elements of the UK’s heritage via music and the written word. Their latest and most ambitious endeavour is The Ceremonial Counties Series, the slow release of a series of tapes reacting to each of the 48 ceremonial counties of England. Each tape covers two counties – one for each side – and each county is represented by a different musician or group, whose remit is open to interpretation but is limited to the fifteen minutes offered by a single side of a tape.
Thomas Blake of KLOF Mag will be reviewing each release from Vol V onwards and he’s reviewed two so far. Click on the titles below to read more.
Thomas Blake: We dive in with Vol. V, which covers Norfolk and West Yorkshire. It’s the perfect place to start (for me at least – I was born in Norfolk and spent the first few years of my life exploring its coasts and fields and damp hinterlands). The job of interpreting this most ambiguous of counties falls to Pefkin, the musical alter-ego of Gayle Brogan (who is also one half of drone-folk duo Burd Ellen). She has chosen to focus on the myth of The Lantern Man, an apparition said to haunt the Norfolk Broads, enticing nighttime travellers with hypnotic lights.
West Yorkshire gets its turn on Side B, where Dean McPhee contributes a track called The Bradford Boar. It refers to a legend with its roots in the late 1300s, when John of Gaunt was said to have offered a sizeable reward to anyone who could kill a giant wild boar which had been terrorising the area.
We premiered the video for Dean’s offering. In the words of Dave George who made the video:
“The concept of the video was inspired by the Ben Wheatley film “A Field in England”. The black and white aesthetic coupled with long shots of the countryside created a tone of old English psychological horror that I felt fit the piece perfectly. There is also a nod to Twin Peaks in the long slow shots of tree movement, slowing down the viewer’s perception to absorb the track and hopefully infer a history of “what these trees have seen”. It was important to us that I shot the footage in the actual woodland location of the Bradford Boar tale. The only artificial aspect was the blood drips from the leaves which were made with a combination of Ribena and barbecue sauce; the magic of cinema”.
The sixth instalment from The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series covers Cornwall and South Yorkshire. It passes the creative reins over to experimental-leaning guitarist David A Jaycock and Sheffield-based avant-psych drone merchants Slug Milk.
The two sides here present two very different faces of experimental folk music. Jaycock gives us Arthur Gernow, a beautiful mini-suite full of melodic nuance and tonal control. Thematically, it explores the links between Cornwall and the life of King Arthur.
In contrast to Jaycock’s method of examining a theme kaleidoscopically, Slug Milk’s fifteen minutes is given over to a single drone-based piece. Ever-growing, ever-changing, consistently weird, it is inspired by the story of a nineteenth-century resurrection scandal at Wardsend Cemetery near Hillsborough. The collective conjure up an eldritch brew of howling strings, droning hurdy-gurdy and primordial percussion.
For those unfamiliar with Sheffield-based avant-psych drone merchants Slug Milk, here’s a recent live performance:
Each tape in the series can be collected individually each month or as one entire subscription and they are available via Folklore Tapes directly at www.folkloretapes.co.uk or via their Bandcamp at
https://folkloretapes.bandcamp.com/
and via selected independent record shops.
Also Reviewed
Due to the length of the reviews, below you will find short descriptive snippets for each album, just click on a title to read the full review over on KLOFMag.com
Nathan Bowles Trio – Are Possible
Are Possible, the first full album from the trio Nathan Bowles, Rex McMurray and Casey Toll, is an outstanding slow burner of an album that benefits from repeated listens to unearth its intricate melodic details, phrases, time signatures and rhythmic shifts.
In case you missed it, we also interviewed them here.
Liam Grant, Grayson McGuire, Devon Flaherty – Grant / McGuire / Flaherty
If you’re after a sharp and tight set of traditional Old-time songs played with plenty of vim and a hefty dose of talent, then look no further than Grant / McGuire / Flaherty, a fun slice of Appalachian magic.
Fidra – The Running Wave
Leith-based folk music project Fidra deliver a stunning debut album. ‘The Running Wave,’ is as rugged, passionate, and enigmatic as the beautifully unforgiving land it celebrates…one of the finest Scottish folk albums of the year.
Wes Tirey – Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works Of Billy The Kid
Americana often conjures up words like psychedelic or cosmic, but the form rarely offers such a way-out hue as experienced here; Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works Of Billy The Kid is a true one-off.
We also premiered the video for ‘Work 5’
Hannah Mohan – Time is a Walnut
Hannah Mohan’s ‘Time is a Walnut’ conjures its own unique spell, one full of idiosyncratic turns and quirky melodies. What stays long after listening is her innovative, off-the-cuff orchestration and her myriad ways of exploring the here and now.
Chris Cohen – Paint a Room
Chris Cohen’s Paint a Room is an absolute joy, but it’s the uncanny kind of joy, the kind which can challenge you, and perhaps make you see the world in a different way.
Lee Underwood – California Sigh
Listening now to Lee Underwood’s California Sigh and its overriding mood of tranquillity, it’s hard to see how this album went unnoticed back in the eighties, being chock full of dynamic playing and interesting musical decision-making.
Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance – Jinxed by Being
Jinxed by Being, the new collaboration from Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, is as uneasy as it is beautiful…Collaborations of this quality are vanishingly rare.
Other News and Premieres
Aisha Badru announces new album and shares her new single, Boundaries
Watch the accompanying lyric video for ‘Boundaries’, the new single from Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Aisha Badru, taken from her newly announced second album, ‘The Sun Still Rises’.
Listen to ‘Masquerade’ from Dorothy Carter’s debut album Troubadour (first-ever reissue)
Dorothy Carter’s 1976 debut album, Troubadour, is to be reissued for the first time by Drag City. Taken from that album, listen to the mesmerising Masquerade, released as a single today.
Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman: posthumous collaboration LP
“Another Tide, Another Fish” contains imaginative re-workings and improvisations by Andrew Tuttle of the late great Michael Chapman’s unfinished instrumental album. Taken from the album, watch the accompanying video for ‘Wholly Unrelated To Four Seasons’.
Video Premiere: D.C Cross – Rhinestones, in Black and White
Taken from his latest album, Glookies Guit, watch the accompanying short film to Australian guitarist D.C Cross’s new single, ‘Rhinestones, in Black and White’, also our Tune of the Day.
Video Premiere: Lorraine Nash – Getting Started (Acoustic)
Watch the highly touted Irish folk singer-songwriter Lorraine Nash performing a gorgeous acoustic solo version of ‘Getting Started’, her first single (released this week), taken from her new EP, due in 2025.
Until next time