New Mixtape + Martin Carthy Box Set
A new 28-track Mixtape ft Sluice, Twisted Teens, Magic Tuber Stringband, Dan Haywood & Harvey Lord, Frog, REXEN, Wendy Eisenberg, Jeffrey Alexander & lost more. Plus, a 20 CD Martin Carthy Boxset.
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New Folk Mixtape: KLOF No. 85
This week’s Mixtape features a generous 28 tracks, including releases from Lady Maisery and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, Marisa Anderson, Rowena Wise, Family Stereo, Magic Tuber Stringband, Mama’s Broke, Frog, Camille Camille, REXEN, Jeffrey Alexander & The Heavy Lidders, Kevin Farge, Myer U Clark, Alex Amen, Dan Haywood & Harvey Lord and La Cozna and Mary Hampton.
Plus some, not so old, favourites from Damien Jurado, Dean Johnson, Tōth, Sluice, Twisted Teens, Wendy Eisenberg, Sonya Badigian and CPN hollywell, Mike Gangloff, and finally, Steve Gunn & The Black Twig Pickers (from 2015’s Seasonal Hire).
As of 2026, the total time spent listening to KLOF Mag Mixtapes on Mixcloud equated to over 63 years. Check out all our Mixtapes here.
Major New Archival 20CD Box Set: Martin Carthy – Along The Road Forever
Martin Carthy has been the one constant in English folk for sixty years, and a new box set tells that story through a single institution: the BBC. Along The Road Forever: Live At The BBC arrives via Madfish on 17th July 2026, a 20CD collection of 328 live and session recordings made for the corporation from 1965 to 2022 (plus earlier ABC TV recordings). That is 22½ hours of music and 237 unique repertoire performances, two-thirds of them taken from master tapes.
It lands a year after Carthy’s Transform Me Then Into A Fish, the solo album that made him, at 84 (recently turned 85), the oldest artist ever shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Martin Carthy is one of the most influential figures of English folk and has shaped generations through his open-tuned guitar style and his readings of traditional song. The box set provides an alternative history of that career, assembled from appearances on Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4, BBC Television, and a handful of surviving performances for the 1960s regional broadcaster ABC TV. It runs through his solo work, duets with Dave Swarbrick, sessions with his daughter, Eliza Carthy, and his time in Steeleye Span, the Albion Country Band, Brass Monkey, The Watersons, and Waterson:Carthy.
For listeners who grew up taping the radio at night, the Peel material may be the heart of it. Carthy recorded nine solo sessions for John Peel between 1972 and 1983, a tally the set’s notes place joint-tenth in the all-time Peel session list, behind The Fall. The May 1972 session gave Peel’s audience King Henry and The False Lover Won Back; the next year, Carthy taped a long version of The Famous Flower of Serving Men for the late-night show. The relationship had started earlier, when Steeleye Span turned up on Peel and John Walters’s Top Gear in 1970 and slipped a Buddy Holly cover, Rave On, in among the ballads. The other Radio 1 champion well represented here is Andy Kershaw, whose sessions with Carthy run from 1987 through to BBC Radio 3 dates in 2004, taking in solo spots, The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy along the way.
A good deal of the collection comes from the festival circuit, and Sidmouth recurs more than anywhere. There are sets from 1978 and 1979, a 1990 appearance with The Watersons, a 1992 solo spot, and a complete 1999 performance recorded for Mike Harding’s Radio 2 programme, spanning two discs and including Famous Flower of Serving Men and a near-eight-minute Sir Patrick Spens. Elsewhere, there are recordings from Cambridge Folk Festival (a 1982 BBC2 broadcast and a full 2013 set), a whole CD of Martin & Eliza Carthy at Glastonbury in 1995, and festivals at Whitby, Fylde, Pontardawe and Belfast. The earliest material reaches back to a 1965 BBC television performance of Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance and those scarce ABC TV clips dating back to 1963.
The music comes with an 80-page book. It carries a new essay on Carthy’s life in music by biographer Clinton Heylin, detailed session notes by Kevin Boyd — whose Carthy archive KLOF has long pointed readers towards — and previously unseen photographs, many from Martin’s own personal collection. Each copy includes a photograph signed by Carthy.
According to the notes, Carthy and Bob Dylan met back in the dreadful winter of 1962, when both were 21 – those that have had the pleasure of hearing Martin Carthy’s recollections will recall the now famous incident in which Martin recovered an abandoned piano which he took back to his place for firewood. He began chopping it up with a sword he’d been given as a Christmas present – after Dylan’s initial shock and protestations, he asked to have a go. While neither were famous at this stage, Dylan did, of course, go home with an arrangement of Scarborough Fair that he would make his own with Girl from the North Country. More than sixty years on, Dylan addressed his old friend in 2025: “If you didn’t know, your songs and your melodies have been with me since we first met. We’ll meet each other down the line somewhere…keep playing.”
Along The Road Forever: Live At The BBC is released by Madfish on 17th July 2026.
Pre-Order: https://burningshed.com/store/madfish/martin-carthy_along-the-road-forever_boxset