KLOF Mag Regular
Latest Mixtape plus reviews of new releases including Georgia Ruth, The Decemberists, M G Boulter, Buck Curran, Eric Chenaux, Marina Allen, Ann Annie, Landless, Ora Cogan and more.
Welcome to another KLOF Mag newsletter, bringing you some of the latest highlights from KLOFMag.com
KLOF Mixtape #33
We kick things off with our latest Mixtape featuring music from a number of recent new album releases, many of which we’ve also reviewed. They include Georgia Ruth, Lemoncello, Samana, Bonny Light Horseman, The Decemberists, M G Boulter, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, Buck Curran, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Niamh Regan, Jacken Elswyth, Landless, Anna Tivel and Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom.
Reviews of Note
Click on the album title to read the full album review:
Georgia Ruth – Cool Head
Georgia Ruth’s Cool Head is defined by subtle experimentation, highly accessible melodies and clever, heartfelt lyrics that have always been her forte, while her attention to the smallest musical detail allows her to draw out the latent emotion of a moment…It’s her strongest offering yet.
The Decemberists – As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again
The Decemberists set the bar very high with ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’, a record packed with highlights, a fully-loaded taste of their essence, pulling in every colour and thread they have touched upon in a long and varied two-decade career.
Landless – Lúireach
Their talent as vocalists and harmonists is at the heart of Landless’s immense appeal. Lúireach is a reliquary of rich, dramatic tales and a celebration of resolutely feminist togetherness, yet another triumph for the fantastically productive Irish folk scene.
Marina Allen – Eight Pointed Star
Marina Allen strikes the perfect balance between clarity and abstraction on Eight Pointed Star, fabricating a beautifully coherent but mysterious collection of songs that combine a gift for songcraft with something approaching lyrical genius.
M G Boulter – Days of Shaking
With ‘Days of Shaking,’ M G Boulter takes a deep dive into the darkest corners and the toughest dreams and nightmares that visit during those nocturnal hours. Aiming high, he has taken time to create a full-length work that demands and rewards deep immersion.
Buck Curran – One Evening and Other Folk Songs
Buck Curran’s ‘One Evening and Other Folk Songs’ is 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.
Ora Cogan – Formless (EU Release)
Like the album’s title, Ora Cogan’s gift is her formlessness: her absolute refusal to bow to convention, as she tirelessly shifts and strives for something bigger – something we never expected.
Eric Chenaux Trio – Delights of My Life
Eric Chenaux’s recent solo offerings offered a strange and beautiful alchemy quite unlike anything else in popular music. Delights of My Life is a continuation of that magic formula but with a more collaborative focus. Chenaux’s spellbinding run of form shows no signs of stopping.
Joshua Massad & Dylan Aycock – Two Improvisations
Joshua Massad & Dylan Aycock’s Two Improvisations is absolutely fascinating music that is as mercurial as it is rhythmic and steady. Imagine Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt’s A Meeting by the River with the experimental knob turned right up and you’ll get close. Spellbinding.
Ann Annie – The Wind
With ‘The Wind’, Ann Annie explores the notions of what ambient music can portray, creating wafts of colour that tug and occasionally tear at the fabric of life…finding ways to take you places you might never have found otherwise.
L’Etrangleuse – Ambiance Argile
L’Etrangleuse’s Ambiance Argile is a richly hypnotic album filled with raw energy. It touches on folk, DIY punk, postpunk, krautrock, and electric desert blues, and the rapport and connection between musicians belie their relatively short existence as a quartet.
Off the Shelf with M G Boulter
This month saw the release of M G Boulter’s new album, Days of Shaking. He is our latest Off the Shelf guest in which we ask artists to present objects from a shelf or shelves in their homes and talk about them.
He started with a piece of the Berlin Wall…
“This piece of the Berlin Wall sits on my bookshelf in the living room above one of my desks. I’m fascinated with historic objects, and I like to imagine that if they were a camera or eye, what they would have seen. This small scrap of concrete from the Wall was given to my grandfather by his German friends in 1989. It too sat on one of his bookshelves when I was growing up, and it was something that, as a child, I was constantly drawn to. When my grandfather died in 2015, I inherited all his books, shelves and the trinkets of his life. This piece of concrete shrapnel feels like a splinter from the big world history that shaped the lives of generations, including my own. Whenever I pick it up, it reminds me of the story my granddad told me once, which was that the mother of his German friend lived in Dresden (East Germany), and when she died, the government simply wrote to his friend (living in West Germany) to say his mother had died and the state had taken all her belongings; he never retrieved family photos, wedding rings, clothes and all those other precious things we hold dear as mementoes of our family. The collection of these wall fragments must have had held so much significance and symbolism for the people of Germany.”
Find out what else he keeps on his shelves at home here.
Ones to watch for…
Eva May
Hailing from Bristol, Eva May shares her debut single and video ‘Where Does The Time Go’, a fabulous slice of 70’s AM radio folk rock and was also one of our Songs of the Day. Read more.
Jake Xerxes Fussell
Taken from his forthcoming album, Jake Xerxes Fussell has shared his new single “Gone To Hilo”, a reinterpretation of a maritime song that he learned from a number of recordings made by American and British folk revivalists of the 1950s. Read more.
The Wilderness Yet
Taken from their forthcoming album of traditional songs and tunes arranged in three parts with no instruments in sight…watch The Wilderness Yet performing ‘The Goose & The Common’, an 18th-century protest rhyme about land rights and privatisation. Read more.
Kate Young
Kate Young’s ‘Mountain’, the first single from her new album Umbelliferæ. Watch the stunning video accompanying the single, which she made and co-directed with Ruth Barrie at Waltzer Films. Read more.
Lee Underwood
Drag City are to reissue California Sigh, the 1988 solo album from guitarist Lee Underwood who featured on many Tim Buckley albums. Watch the visualiser for the first single “Quietude Oasis”. Read more.
Until next time…