KLOF Mag Newsletter (Previously Folk Radio)
Folk Show, Green Man Festival (2005 Film), Martin Carthy, Oisin Leech, Cassie Kinoshi, Milkweed, Michael McGoldrick, Manu Delago, Afro/Arabic Funk, Katherine Priddy & more.
As some of you will have already noticed, our website, previously known as Folk Radio UK, has changed its name to KLOF Mag. All old links still work; they just go to our new site instead, which can be found here: https://klofmag.com.
One of the main reasons for the change is that we stopped being a radio station many years ago (the name change has been a long time coming). We’re an online magazine with features interview reviews that we complement with Playlists and Mixtapes to showcase new music and artists, like the one below. The old name also suggested we were only UK-focused - we’re not…and that we only cover folk…while we do cover folk music, we’re also pretty eclectic in our tastes and coverage, as my Top 100 albums of 2023 showed.
At some point soon, I will change the Substack domain name for this newsletter to avoid confusion, as Substack allows you to do this once without breaking any old links from past newsletters. Other than that, it’s business as usual.
OK, with that out of the way, enjoy the latest in our ongoing Folk Show series, along with a few highlights of reviews, interviews and news from the past couple of weeks.
Folk Show - Episode 146
Featuring Charlie Parr, Rosali, Emma Gatrill, Swimming Bell, Iron & Wine, Cerys Hafana, Milkweed, Iona Lane, Outliers, Itasca, PG Six, Martin Simpson, Toby Jay & Aidan Thorne and Oisin Leech.
If you are a premium newsletter subscriber, don’t miss our latest Insider Mixtape that was sent last week.
Artists of the Month: Jenny Sturgeon and Boo Hewerdine (Outliers)
Jenny Sturgeon and Boo Hewerdine’s new Outliers album is a beautiful celebration of spontaneity and space, blending strong songwriting with acoustic arrangements and subtle electronics. We met to find out more.
We also published the first in a new playlist series where we ask artist/s to share music that has inspired them or personal favourites that they just can’t live without. Jenny and Boo were our first: read about their choices and listen to their ten-track playlist here.
Martin Carthy (Revisiting a folk classic)
As part of their 85th anniversary, Topic Records have reissued Martin Carthy’s self-titled debut solo album on vinyl – an iconic, almost peerless release, read why this album is as essential a listen now as it was in 1965.
Cassie Kinoshi’s seed. - gratitude (Album Review)
Listening to ‘gratitude’, the latest album from Cassie Kinoshi’s seed., requires some investment of both mind and spirit. Made from the raw materials of Kinoshi’s life, gratitude overflows with harmony and clarity. Read our review here.
Milkweed - Folklore 1979 (Album Review)
Milkweed’s ‘Folklore 1979’ is one of the most invigorating and interesting releases of recent years. While the duo would no doubt balk at the term masterpiece, as long as Folklore 1979 exists in the world, it will have to contend with such labels. Read the review here.
Unearthed: Film of the 2005 Green Man Festival
In 2005, a film was made of the Green Man Festival in Wales. It has been unreleased and unseen for nearly 20 years and features performances by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Alasdair Roberts, Josephine Foster, The Fence Collective and Joanna Newsom, among others. Read more.
The McGoldrick Family (Review and Interview)
We chat to The McGoldrick Family about ‘One For The Road’…we’re in total agreement with Brendan McGoldrick, his son, Michael McGoldrick and their three granddaughters have made “a mighty record”. Read it here.
Katherine Priddy - The Pendulum Swing (Album Review)
Katherine Priddy’s ‘The Pendulum Swing’, is an incredibly cohesive album. With the central theme being the notion of home, it hits the heart and mind with pinpoint accuracy. Read the review here.
Oisín Leech - Cold Sea (Album Review)
Look at Sinéad Smyth’s cover artwork for Cold Sea, the solo album from Oisín Leech, one-half of acclaimed Irish duo The Lost Brothers. Smyth’s piece is titled Skylines III and was composed around the Donegal shores where Cold Sea was recorded in an old schoolhouse. Oil painted by brush, knife and hand, Smyth’s work captures golden pathways and wrathful clouds under the magic influence of natural light. It’s a wuthering vision and one that Leech was aiming to capture in song with his equally bracing album.
Along with guitarist-producer Steve Gunn, Leech also invited Dylan’s bassist Tony Garnier and the likes of Dónal Lunny (bouzouki) and Róisin McGrory (strings) on board. Not that the outcome sounds like a full-on band, for the musicians add subtly to Leech’s acoustic material. What’s left is an album of rapt meditations on life and love, set against the wild Irish landscape. These are songs that flow placidly, broodingly, leaving the listener awed into silence. Read the full review.
Manu Delago - Snow from Yesterday
Snow from Yesterday is a shimmering album release from the acclaimed Austrian composer Manu Delago, on which he has incorporated the sound of vocal ensemble Mad About Lemon into his sonic pallet. It is an absolute dream of a pairing, marrying the rich and ethereal innovations of Delago to a trio of female voices that bring a thread of pure, celestial and folksy feeling to this exquisitely crafted creation. As ever with Manu, the backbone of the music is his percussive playing of the handpans. They alone coat the sound with an icy momentum whilst floating off into the deepest, darkest reaches of the universe. It is easy to hear why this man’s CV includes collaborations with Bjork and Anoushka Shankar; his explorations avoid the predictable, and his melodic excursions have the happy knack of uncovering aged and timeless ornate patterns. This is music that can express the subject matter in sound alone. The unstoppable flow of environment and climate change is hard to ignore, the fragility of human life all too present in our thoughts, but comfort is offered in these whirling, swirling melodies too. In fact, the presence of trombones and bass trumpet on a piece like ‘Oxygen’ conjures echoes of the industrial age, evoking the beginnings of all those advancements that today seem at loggerheads with the care our planet is crying out for. Read the full review.
Swimming Bell - Charlie
Sounds can deceive. What may at first sound easy and comfortable may be a little less so when you listen more closely. Swimming Bell’s second album, Charlie, may not be as simple as it initially appears. Katie Schottland’s release covers time and space as she relocated from New York to California, with tracks written and recorded from both coasts before, during and after the pandemic. Rather than an epic journey, they are a collection of moments reflected in the changing vistas. Read the full review.
Playlist: Afro and Arabic Funk #1
Many of the tracks in this globetrotting playlist were initially kept back to include as highlights in our eclectic rolling Monday Morning Brew Playlist. Instead, sat together in a folder, a high-energy playlist began to look like a more promising way forward and maybe even a series. Read more about the music played here.
Until next time…