KLOF Mag Regular & New Mixtape
New Mixtape plus features on Alabaster DePlume, Ultan O'Brien, Sacred Paws, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes, Avery Friedman, Zoé Basha and more.
Our latest KLOF Mixtape features new music from Clara Mann, Natalie Wildgoose, VARO (& Ian Lynch of Lankum), Brìghde Chaimbeul, Lady Queen Paradise, Bells Larsen, Eli Winter, Lonnie Holley, Annie A, Macie Stewart, William Tyler, Satomimagae and more eaze & claire rousay.
Due to the length of our album reviews and articles, the highlights below serve as a shorter taster. To read in full, just click on a title, which will take you to the full article on KLOF Mag.
Review Highlights
Alabaster DePlume – A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
As a completely unknown folk singer once wisely noted, we all have to stay in a state of becoming. Equally, if we are not working on destroying ourselves, we surely should be working on healing. ‘A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole’ sees this and fulfils its intentions with real musical style, intensity and originality. This one might be the State of the Nation address that truly resonates.
Ultan O’Brien – Dancing the Line
It’s a real decision to do an album of tunes on the alto-violin, an instrument similar to the viola in size but played vertically, like a cello. Fiddle player and composer Ultan O’Brien, who hails from the ‘wilds of County Clare in the West of Ireland’ has done just that with Dancing the Line and the lower notes of the alto breathe rustic life into these fourteen songs, six traditional and eight composed by Ultan.
An engaging artist with a keen interest in the improvisational side of Irish music, Ultan’s playing is muscular, with the growl of the alto-violin a point of difference. You can hear it straight off on Iron Mountain Foothills, an original piece (perhaps improvised?) that has echoes of a war lament and plays out with thick, metallic bowed strings. With the structure of an air, this song is ghostly and somehow elegiac; it’s a mesmerising introduction.
𓇼𓏲*ੈ✩‧₊˚ Please Remember ༘⋆༄.°⋆
Sacred Paws – Jump Into Life
In terms of mood and tone, Save Something, the first track from Sacred Paws’ third album Jump Into Life, sits somewhere between the rainy, horn-drenched sad pop of Belle and Sebastian and the droll DIY indie of the Moldy Peaches. But that doesn’t tell half the story because at the heart of the unique Sacred Paws sound is the angular dynamism of post-punk combined with the dance-ready rhythmic aspect of afrobeat (and also some chamber pop strings). It’s a wild and celebratory combination that has its roots in the Glasgow-based duo’s other work: singer and multi-instrumentalist Ray Aggs fronts post-punk trios Trash Kit and Shopping as well as holding down a more experimental solo career, while Eilidh Rodgers, who sings and plays drums, was in the Sarah Records/Flying Nun-inspired Golden Girrrls.
The key ingredient in Sacred Paws’ music has always been fun. Their set on Green Man’s Walled Garden stage a few years back was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a festival and marked them out as one of the best live bands in the UK. Happily, their live energy translates well to their albums.
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes – Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes
The self-titled new album by Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, and Sam Wilkes is proof that you don’t have to forsake traditional aesthetic notions of melody to make something experimental, and that masterful improvisations don’t have to be sprawling epics. The longest track by some distance on Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes clocks in at seven and a half minutes: it’s a cover of the Beatles’ melancholy masterpiece The Fool on the Hill, and it closes out the record in quietly sensational style. Josh Johnson’s sax takes up the melody, Gregory Uhlmann’s guitar falls in bright droplets – listening to it is like standing behind a waterfall – and Sam Wilkes’ bass seems to tunnel underneath, both underpinning and destabilising the melody. The middle section is given over to improvisation, though the mood remains constant: muted, somewhat languid, always engaging.
Kin’Gongolo Kiniata – Kiniata
For a country that has, for so long, been embroiled in civil war and corruption, the two Congo wars from 1996-2003 reportedly having claimed the lives of some 6 million people, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has, nevertheless, been responsible for providing some of Central Africa’s most enduring music. Two bands in particular, Konono Nº1 and Staff Benda Bilili, have played pivotal roles in bringing the country’s music to global audiences, whilst in 2021, UNESCO added Congolese rumba to its “intangible cultural heritage of humanity list”.
Since 2023 and the release of their first EP, Moto, new kids on the block Kin’Gongolo Kiniata have been making their mark with live performances in Europe and the US. With the release of Kiniata, their debut album, the stage seems set for even greater exposure and appreciation of their vibrant music…
Avery Friedman – New Thing
New Thing, the scarily accomplished debut album from Avery Friedman, is all about change and growth. In a similar way to artists like Adrianne Lenker, she explores queerness, longing and personal upheaval, and like Lenker, Friedman seems to have a natural feel for the way a song’s music and its lyrics can be intricately and viscerally entwined, so that the whole thing taps into a very specific if sometimes hard to describe emotional state. A song like Biking Standing creates a vivid visual world from minimal ingredients, then fills it up with complex reflections on art and relationships. Friedman’s road to recording this album was a rocky one. Aside from the usual difficulties faced by young people, queer people and creative people, she also experienced a mugging, and that violent interpolation of one life into another makes its way into these songs by unexpected routes.
Zoé Basha – Gamble
Zoé Basha might be best known to some readers as one-third of the criminally underrated Dublin folk harmony group Rufous Nightjar, who, last year, released the spooky, sparkling Songs for Three Voices. It marked Basha and her colleagues out as singers and arrangers of immense talent, but with all the songs provided by Branwen Kavanagh it didn’t provide any clues about Basha’s skills as a songwriter. Gamble, her debut solo album, immediately sets that right. A collection inspired by the years she spent travelling (on foot, in vans, on freight trains), it takes in the wild highs and grief-stricken lows of a life lived to its fullest.
The Bonham Brothers / Jennifer Reid – Ceremonial County Series Vol.XIV – Surrey | Greater Manchester
To the casual observer, Surrey and Greater Manchester might not seem like hotbeds of folkloric activity, but this current edition of the Ceremonial Counties is one of the strongest – and strangest – yet, proving that England’s weird underbelly can be exposed wherever you take the time to peel back the surface. Surrey is tackled by the Bohman Brothers, Adam and Jonathan, a pair of sound artists who are known for their idiosyncratic take on the avant-garde, inspired by the Fluxus group and various other merrie pranksters of the twentieth century.
For the second part, we have something a bit different. For one thing, all the Ceremonial Counties releases up until this point have consisted of two halves of exactly fifteen minutes each, but Jennifer Reid’s Greater Manchester: Homely is allowed to stretch to twenty. She certainly earns her extra five minutes. Reid, who is a researcher and performer of songs in the Lancashire dialect, is perhaps most famous for her role as Barb in Shane Meadows’ excellent adaptation of Ben Myers’ Gallows Pole. Here, she contributes a combination of spoken poetry and singing, covering subjects like working motherhood, the weaving industry, homebrewing. The infectious chorus of Collyhurst Road, I Am Forsaken, is particularly winning.
Jonathan Nangle, Crash Ensemble – Blue Haze of Deep Time
The concept behind Blue Haze of Deep Time, Jonathan Nangle’s latest release, is both simple and admirably grandiose. He asks the question, ‘What does the sea sound like?’ and sets out to answer it by way of six deeply immersive pieces, each one utilising the language of modern composition and field recording. Befitting the size and scope of the project, he has enlisted the help of the Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s premier contemporary classical group. It’s not the first time Nangle has worked with the ensemble – there have been shared residencies, and Crash Ensemble have performed Nangle’s debut album PAUSE – but this is his first commission for the full ensemble, and it’s a perfect match.
Other Highlights & News
Michael Hurley, the “Godfather of Freak Folk” (1941-2025)
Legendary outsider folk singer Michael Hurley has passed away. In a statement, his family said: “The “Godfather of freak folk” was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit. He alone was Snock. There is no other…”
Premiere: Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging Stars – ‘Baby’s Got The Blues’
Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson teams up with psychedelic cowboys The Hanging Stars for new album, Dreams, and premieres lead single and video ‘Baby’s Got The Blues’…” She performs like it’s the Carnegie Hall every time.”
Poor Creature announce debut album ‘All Smiles Tonight’
Featuring Ruth Clinton of Landless, Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum and John Dermody of The Jimmy Cake, Poor Creature announce debut album ‘All Smiles Tonight’ and share video for ‘The Whole Town Knows’.
Mess Esque Share Music Video for “Crow’s Ash Tree”
Ahead of their European tour this May with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mess Esque, featuring the Australian duo of Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and Helen Franzmann (McKisko), have shared the video for their latest single ‘Crow’s Ash Tree‘. Taken from their third album, Jay Marie, Comfort Me, out now on Drag City.
Denny Ryan directed the music video, and Helen’s niece, Sofia Carroll, made the masks the band wore.
Matthew Young releases ‘The Summer Girls’ from new album ‘Undercurrents’
Taken from his forthcoming album ‘Undercurrents’, watch the video for Matthew Young’s “The Summer Girls”, a setting of a poem by his aunt, Marion Lineaweaver, which also showcases his love for the hammered dulcimer.
Also recently featured: Varo & Ian Lynch (Lankum), Brìghde Chaimbeul, Yoshika Colwell, Brooke Sharkey, Sam Carter and William Tyler. Click the button below to see more.