KLOF Mag Regular
KLOF Mixtape, Magic Tuber Stringband, Bill Mackay, Hafdís Huld, Urban Folk Quartet, Newen Afrobeat, Moris Tepper, Awen Ensemble and more
Mixtape
Listen to our latest KLOF Mixtape ft. Skyjelly, Avalanche Kaito, ADG7, Trá Pháidín, Ariel Kalma, Huw Marc Bennett, Cosmo Sheldrake, Daisy Rickman, Hochzeitskapelle, Magic Tuber Stringband, Ruth Garbus, Marie Klock, Sally Anne Morgan and Jim White & Marisa Anderson. Starts off lively but soon slides off into the woods…
Editor’s Highlights
Magic Tuber Stringband - Needlefall
Needlefall, the new album from North Carolina’s Magic Tuber Stringband, thrives on the philosophy of care: ethical care for a musical heritage, intellectual care for an avant-garde spirit, and deeper-rooted familial care for place and people. It’s an intense musical experience and exceptionally rewarding.
It seems obvious to say that a lot of folk music is directly inspired by landscape; after all, much of it has its origins in season cycles and agriculture and labour – immutable subjects of traditional song. But often, this link is talked about conservatively in terms of history and preservation. With the Magic Tuber Stringband, the connection is more keenly felt because this is music that both stems from an active folk tradition but also engages with landscapes as they are today. Those landscapes are both topological and artistic, and of course, topology and art have always been bound up together, even if sometimes uneasily.
Bill Mackay (New Album)
Bill MacKay recently announced Locust Land, a new solo long player, recontextualising BCMC’s meditative template with trademark songwriting par excellence. Today, the Chicago-based journeyman musician and singer-songwriter is sharing his second single ‘Glow Drift’, a slow-burner on which MacKay locks into a relatable psychedelic groove alongside Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and Sam Wagster on bass. Intelligence and imagination are the order of the day for these sonic explorers.
MacKay shared: “Glow Drift appeared in this sunny melody and celebratory vibration. A song to lift you. I like the surfy guitars, a hint of joyful release. Like remembering a particular drive with special characters to the sea. The stops and starts of a journey, space for an organ note to linger, then things start galloping again. It jumps.”
Newen Afrobeat - Grietas
Afrobeat music from Chile might sound incongruous, but whether you are a fan of the genre or are new to it, ignoring Grietas, the latest release from Newen Afrobeat, would be a mistake, such is its driving power, authenticity, and message.
Turning the clocks back to 2009, the streets of Santiago pulsated with the sounds of reggae and cumbia, with Afrobeat barely featuring on the Chilean music scene. Newen Afrobeat, through founder Nicholás Urbina, set about changing that situation. After rehearsing for two years and honing their skills for a further couple of live performances, they released their eponymous debut album in 2013. Quintessentially Afrobeat, drawing on the legacy of Fela Kuti, the album also featured distinctive Latin colourings. The monumental first track, Santiago, which opens with a sampled three-minute speech from the then President of Uruguay, Jóse Mujica, originally delivered to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, extolling anti-poverty and pro-people social policies, firmly established the group’s musical credentials and stance in this regard.
Since then, hard work and positive exposure have catapulted the group into being one of the world’s leading exponents of Afrobeat to have originated outside of Nigeria. Touring across four continents, they have performed twice at Felabration, the annual Fela Kuti celebration, and undertaken a series of concerts at the New Afrika Shrine in Lagos. Collaborations and well-earned friendships with many of Nigeria and Afrobeat’s pioneers, including Tony Allen, Oghene Kologbo, and Seun Kuti, have enhanced their reputation.
Remorae
Remorae, a collective of folk and electronic musicians that began life as Folkatron Sessions. Listen to their new single, Johnny’s On The Water, which is due for release tomorrow and taken from their forthcoming EP Flourish in Green. Read more.
Premiere: Moris Tepper (Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Robyn Hitchcock)
Moris Tepper is a legendary guitarist, songwriter, and visual artist. Perhaps best known for his role as a valued sideman, he’s left an indelible mark on his work with Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Robyn Hitchcock, and many others.
Collaborations aside, Tepper is a rare artist on a singular high frequency that spans decades, genres, and mediums. Guided by his process, he paints with bold strokes from the left field and with resoundingly frayed heartstrings. His new LP Building A Nest (5 April 2024 via La Société Expéditionnaire / Candlebone Records) is an intimate and honest window into his depth as a songwriter.
Tepper offers: “The art itself is the decision-making process. Normally, just as in painting, I go and I go, and as I’m going, I may have an idea of what it’s about.”
“The Visitor,” with its sweep and swagger, is a tale that may tell more about ourselves than the title suggests. A declarative (albeit cynical) opening line: “I believe in only as much as I’ve seen and nothing more“, draws us into a web of yearning, enticement, and tide-turning.
Tepper shares, “The narrator here is a lonely, isolated cat. He’s so flattering towards his visitor. He’s an individual who’s been trapped away in desperate isolation.”
Awen Ensemble – Cadair Idris
Woven from modern jazz repertoires with a mythic folk essence, this is an audacious and promising debut.
In folklore, anyone spending a night on Cadair Idris mountain will wake up either a poet or a mad person. Actually, the same has been said of anyone following jazz as a vocation. Thus, the Leeds-based septet Awen Ensemble chose to combine both prospects for their debut outing.
Cadair Idris lies in the Eryri National Park, previously known as Snowdonia. Various tales associate it with giants, princes, battles, bards and bottomless lakes. Awen Ensemble, founded by students at the Leeds College of Music, has Welsh, Irish and Scottish roots in its lineup. Throw all this into the mix and we have a band first championed by Gilles Peterson back in 2019.
This album tracks a woman who roughs it overnight on Cadair Idris seeking personal growth. Awen Ensemble’s vibe throughout is one of quiet apprehension. Their music is more hair-stroking than hair-raising. In other words, there’s less of jazz’s surging urban energy, more of a flower-powered rusticity. Which ain’t to suggest this lot can’t swing it, just that they choose their moments to go bopping and make an impact. Think roughly Keith Jarrett’s more pastoral compositions for ECM meets Pentangle’s reunion classic Open The Door (Spindrift, 1985).
Interview: Urban Folk Quartet
It’s been a while since we last heard from Urban Folk Quartet. Since forming in 2009, the Midlands-based quartet – multi-instrumentalist/ producer Joe Broughton, Galician fiddle player Paloma Trigás, percussionist Tom Chapman, and revered banjo-man Dan Walsh – released albums almost annually, although it’s been distinctly quiet on the release front since 2016’s in-concert Live III. But now, after an eight-year gap, UFQ are back with True Story (out 22 March 2024).
Off the Shelf with Hafdís Huld
Icelandic singer Hafdís Huld is our latest ‘Off the Shelf’ guest, in which we ask artists to present objects from a shelf or shelves from their home and talk about them. She recently released ‘Darkest Night‘, described in these pages as bittersweet moments where reality is embraced with a sense of wonder and where personal and family stories are treated with a tender sense of grace.
Premiere & Tour: Sam Carter
Next month, singer, songwriter and guitarist Sam Carter heads out on his Spring Tour. His last album, Home Waters, was described by KLOF Mag’s Glenn Kimpton as “his finest and most confident piece of work so far…A concise, cohesive and self-assured album that perfectly balances and blends ace song-writing with considered and finely judged arrangements…Home Waters is a must-have.”
To mark his tour announcement, Sam is sharing a live video of ‘A Place To Call My Own’, recorded at Yellow Arch Studios by Northern Cowboys and features Sam Vicary of Cinematic Orchestra on double bass. On his third solo album, How the City Sings, Sam shared a characteristically strong set of songs centred around a seemingly turbulent relationship with London, where he struggled to feel settled, a theme that extends to this song.
John Smith - The Living Kind
John Smith’s ‘The Living Kind’ is an understatedly emotional and introspectively melancholic celebration of hope and light in the face of despair and darkness…It’s a masterpiece.
The Living Kind was recorded live at Joe Henry’s home in Maine with Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, John Martyn’s Solid Air and Joni Mitchell’s Hejira as inspirational touchstones, John Smith’s follow-up to 2021’s breakthrough album The Fray is a reflection on three life-changing years in which his wife suffered a miscarriage, his mother was battling cancer (both of which fed into the previous album), his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and the family moved to Spain. The songs came from the process of rebuilding their lives and are about changing for the better in the face of loss, facing the bad but celebrating the good and staying positive.
Until next time