KLOF Mag Regular Newsletter - 10 March 2024
Lost in Transmission Mixtape, Milkweed, Charlie Parr, Ana Lua Caiano, Cara Dillon, Rosali, Maddie Morris, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
I’ve another Mixtape offering from our ongoing Lost in Transmission series. The last to go out in this series was a more sedate affair (with premium subscribers receiving a nicely extended edition). I put this latest one together last night and had the speakers turned up. It opens to a great track from Liam Bailey’s new album Zero Grace which combines soul, reggae, blues and rock - I think it’s his best to date. There are also some long jams, courtesy of 75 Dollar Bill and The Michael Flower Band.
The waters calm after Wet Tuna / DUNZA with Nils Økland Band, and a track from their genre-defying new album, Gjenskinn, on Hubro.
If you’re unfamiliar with Hubro, it’s a Norwegian label whose coverage is summarized as Norwegian jazz and improvised music, but this really doesn’t do them justice. There is so much more going on—Go and explore the label here: https://hubromusic.bandcamp.com/ (especially Erlend Apneseth and Benedicte Maurseth).
There’s a kind of crazy freak folk moment, courtesy of Peter Stampfel, Eli Smith, and Walker Shepherd - taken from their new album Wildernauts. Stampfel, now 85, is still going strong, and just as ‘out there’ as he was with the Holy Modal Rounders.
Hit the listen link below for this varied offering. You’ll be taken to our website, where you’ll also find a full playlist with Bandcamp links to support artists and to further diversify your music collection.
The long and winding road
I’ve managed to keep KLOF Mag (what was Folk Radio) afloat for twenty years now. Maybe naively, I started doing this full-time several years ago (a mid-life crisis, maybe). While running this as a sideline with a regular normal 9-5 job would have stopped me worrying so much, I wouldn’t have been able to devote the time I have to running KLOF. It’s this investment of time that has made such a huge difference. I’ve never done things by halves and tend to throw my heart and soul into it - although I really could throw the kitchen sink at this and still find a need for ‘more time’. I’m also fiercely independent - something that I hope is reflected in our eclectic offering…I didn’t want to be another website being spoonfed by PR.
I still trawl through thousands of submissions each month and spend a lot of evenings looking for and listening to new music. During the day, I’m writing, editing, talking to our writers about reviews and coaxing new writers into the fold, and, of course, putting together mixtapes and regular playlists like the Monday Moring Brew - I get a genuine buzz out of discovering new music and putting together these playlists and sharing them with you. But I wouldn’t be investing this time if I didn’t have such a passion for music. The same goes for our writers—they are all driven by that same passion.
While our passion has never wavered, the one thing that has is ad revenue. Music journals seem to be dropping like flies at the moment, leaving many to worry about whether music journalism will continue to exist. That drop in revenue has largely been blamed on Google and Social media, which is why platforms like Substack are so important - if it wasn’t for those of you who subscribe to our premium newsletter, I wouldn’t be sitting here on a Sunday morning writing this. That income has become a lifeline to what we do but we are still struggling.
For the cost of a cup of coffee (£3.49 per month if you subscribe annually), please consider signing up for our Premium newsletter. In addition to the satisfaction of knowing you are keeping a rich music and cultural resource going (and supporting our independence), we also throw in some friendly perks—exclusive mixtapes, playlists, and recommendations.
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This is where I spend most of my life when not asleep. My wife thinks it looks like a mini-museum of curiosities…she may have a point. I’m pretty careful about what occupies my shelves as I limit myself to the office, and I don’t have many shelf gaps left. The books, albums, and objects that occupy these shelves (complete old hi-fi -out of view- and analogue tech: film cameras and typewriters from distant days - all of which I still use) reflect years of musical and cultural influence. Maybe it’s time I did my own Off the Shelf?
Before I get into some of the albums we’ve covered, Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival recently made their first 2024 lineup announcement in which folk experimentalism is well represented—Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ØXN, One Leg One Eye, John Francis Flynn, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Mary Lattimore, Smote... Read more here. Anyhow, in writing about it, I used it as an opportunity to share this Drag City video that went out a while back (It also helped to sow the seed for our own Off the Shelf Series). Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, could have easily just stayed home and shared some records from his shelves, but instead saw it as an opportunity to support his independent record store:
Milkweed premiere 11-minute video for their acclaimed new collection ‘Folklore 1979’
We recently reviewed Milkweed’s new album ‘Folkore 1979’. On the day of release, they premiered a very special video on KLOF Mag:
The 11-minute video was created by Greg Butler of Oh Kestrel Films, who is also responsible for the excellent documentary The Ambiguity of David Thomas Broughton. Butler captures the album’s strange narrative perfectly, giving life and form to the Folklore Society…
The duo’s third work in as many years, Folklore 1979 takes its lyrics exclusively from an academic journal published by the Folklore Society and renders it into a piece of music that blurs the lines between what is found and what is created. Across a beguiling 11 minutes, Milkweed unspool like a single disjointed dream narrative, taking in ritual, extinction, migration, esoteric cosmogony and Arthurian legend.
Charlie Parr - Little Sun (Album Review)
“A very welcome evolution… instantly classic-sounding songs”
If Neil Young had written the song ‘The Loner’ with anyone in mind besides himself, it could well have been Charlie Parr. If ever there was a living embodiment of the characteristics that make up a solitary individualist following their own path, it must be Charlie. He is about to release his eighteenth album, Little Sun, in a prolific career that has seen him pay no mind to anything even vaguely resembling a commercial career plan. By his own admission, he is a man who lives for the creative process in music making and performance and who always has an exit strategy close to hand. Charlie feels at home with the freedom of the open road; he never wants to overburden himself with social interactions, so if the urge to leave has a stronger pull, he does just that: he gets up and leaves. This unshackled lifestyle has always extended to the recording studio, an environment he historically has wanted to get in and out of with minimum fuss and maximum speed.
Consequently, all Charlie’s albums, to this point, have been recorded live, often as one or first-take efforts with any minor errors or imperfections left in. But things have changed; ‘Little Sun’ is to be the first Parr album where the hand of a producer, Tucker Martine, is clearly in evidence and the first record in which the artist has explored the process with overdub touches and a more rounded, expansive band sound. As great as the ramshackle approach undoubtedly was, the end product does rather suggest this is a very welcome evolution.
Here’s Charlie in session for a newish video channel called North Country Song Sessions.
Ana Lua Caiano – Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado (Album Review)
Only one song on Ana Lua Caiano’s debut album, Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado, lasts for more than three minutes, and yet each individual piece feels less like a pop song and more like a technically complex and emotionally charged exercise in musical bricolage. Caiano reaches back into Portuguese folk music and sideways into avant-garde composition but claws her influences back into a dense, bright centre: the star in her musical galaxy is her unerring sense of melody, which means that every track transcends the merely interesting and becomes genuinely invigorating and soulful.
An initial listen to Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado might have you thinking that Caiano has been doing this stuff for years, such is the assuredness of her melodic sensibility and the crisp but confrontational nature of the sound, so it might come as a surprise that her only previous releases are a pair of EPs and a smattering of individual tracks. It helps that her musical upbringing encompasses both jazz and classical; it helps even more that she is entirely unconstrained by this upbringing. She is headstrong and driven by the need to experiment, and her music immediately reflects this.
Marry Waterson & Adrian Crowley – Cuckoo Storm (Album Review)
Cuckoo Storm is a deep dive into the farthest reaches of the minds and souls of Marry Waterson and Adrian Crowley – there is little doubt that this musical marriage has been a rich and bountiful success.
They have always been a collaborative family, the Waterson’s, fitting for they are pretty much royalty in folk music circles, and ‘the people’s music’ does not shut the door to participation. Marry Waterson in particular seems to thrive on a creative cohort to inspire, indeed some of my favourite music of hers was produced alongside David A Jaycock. This one, however, has the immediacy to outshine all that has come before. ‘Cuckoo Storm’ is a record in which she has found a musical partner in Adrian Crowley, who is not only in tune with her spirit but vocally too, his matured baritone a sumptuous counterpoint to Marry’s angelic otherworldliness. At times, they almost stray into Nancy and Lee territory, minus the tongue-in-cheek goofiness admittedly, showcasing a compatibility that could expand from here. This is an album untethered by the weight of history and tradition. Cuckoo Storm is a deep dive into the farthest reaches of their minds and souls – songs are formed from scraps of old lyric ideas; melodies are attached to independently written words as if one were waiting to find the other, and the whole process does appear to have pushed each participant on to reaching hard for their best possible work.
Cara Dillon – Coming Home (Album Review)
Since the early 2000s, Dillon has enchanted listeners all the way from the UK to China and New Zealand, and has been previously described by KLOF Mag as “one of those rare talents you only come across a handful of times in your whole life”, with a voice that is “staggeringly beautiful”. It has won her countless awards and accolades over the decades, including three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, the Meteor Music Award for Best Irish Female, and Tatler’s Woman of the Year in Music Award, as well as capturing the attention of Disney. Surprisingly, though, despite all this, Dillon has always lacked confidence in her songwriting abilities, generally focusing more on producing exquisite new interpretations of traditional material. ‘Coming Home’, which is pathbreaking not only in that it predominantly consists of spoken poetry but also because it comprises entirely original material, proves these uncertainties to be altogether unfounded. It is clear from the very first listen that we can add “exceptional lyricist” to the long list of Cara Dillon’s gifts, which may have been passed down to her but which she has also nurtured and cultivated to the very highest degree. Effortlessly interweaving speech and song, ‘Coming Home’ is by far Dillon’s bravest and most personal record, and it is a rare privilege to travel with her through these deeply moving, existential explorations of family, culture, and history.
Rosali – Bite Down (Album Review)
Bite Down is the undeniable statement of someone finding a world that both frustrates and fascinates, yet Rosali takes both in her stride, savouring the good and bad, devouring the obstacles along the way. The American author and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox said, “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.” That sentiment underpins Bite Down, an album born of determination and perseverance. In Rosali’s own empowering words, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, everything has a price — energetically speaking — we are responsible for each other and for all living things.”
This is one to savour, an album that you’ll keep returning to.
Maddie Morris – Skin (Album Review)
Maddie Morris is a 2019 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award winner, a first-class honours graduate from Leeds Conservatoire whose music spans the political and personal. Widely praised for her approach to contemporary issues, Skin is her first full-length release in the wake of two EPs (no tracks repeated here) and should firmly consolidate her position as a rising star in the folk firmament.
Save for one number, Skin is a musically understated and restrained affair, opening with Marsha P Johnson, featuring Belinda O’Hooley on piano, Matt Downer’s double bass and Archie Churchill-Moss on diatonic accordion and audio samples from an interview (courtesy of Making Gay History – makinggayhistory.com). Both a celebration of Johnson, an African-American self-identified drag queen and one of the most well-known activists of the Stonewall uprising and how she’d like to be more like her as an activist…
Skin is described as a musical journey into identity, activism and hope; the songs will resonate with anyone who’s felt marginalised for being who they are or made to feel uncomfortable in their own skin…while quietly understated, Maddie’s songs are no less potent in their vital messages.
I always feel like I’ve missed loads when I come to the end of a newsletter, so make sure you visit us to see what else has been going on: https://klofmag.com/
Until next time…