Brit Folk

The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks

Eliza Carthy interview – The Mouth Magazine

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THE FORTHCOMING ALBUM FROM ELIZA CARTHY AND THE WAYWARD BAND IS AN EXTREMELY DYNAMIC REMINDER THAT THOUGH SHE MAY HAVE KEPT ONE FOOT IN THE FOLK CAMP DURING THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, SHE’S ALWAYS USED THE OTHER TO EXPLORE THE ELSEWHERE.

BIG MACHINE will be released on 3rd February 2017. It’s perhaps Eliza Carthy’s strongest record to date – certainly her most focused and resonant, being an expansive and compassionate treatise on some serious current issues. […]

Listen to the interview: ELIZA CARTHY | The Mouth Magazine

Wild child who hid from the world

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[The Telegraph 1999] It was an encounter that ought to have defined the English folk revival. A woman who was once its undisputed heroine moved from one corner of the pub towards another to talk to a curly-haired upstart her own example had surely inspired. Fiftysomething Anne Briggs told twentysomething Kate Rusby how much she liked her version of The Recruited Collier, an 18th-century lament to lost love. Sadly, the conversation, on the fringe of a folk festival in Lincoln, was over in a flash. Briggs was thanked for her kind words and returned smartly to her drink. […]

Read Full Story: Wild child who hid from the world – Telegraph

June Tabor: ‘Will I ever write a song? I would say the answer is no’

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June Tabor’s dark, distinctive singing has featured on dozens of records over the past 40-odd years, ranging from raw folk songs in the style of Anne Briggs to high-fidelity jazz and folk-rock. Although her performances are often austere and outwardly serious – a veneer enhanced by the somewhat intense photos of her that often grace the covers of her albums – Tabor is quick to laugh and joke in person. Songs about cannibalism and war give way to stories about annoying the dogs with her singing and her favourite vegetarian restaurant […]

Read Full Story: June Tabor: ‘Will I ever write a song? I would say the answer is no’

‘It’s got balls and it can bite’: the woman blowing recorder prejudice away

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She is revolutionising the classroom scourge – blasting raw experimental music through it, sometimes playing two at once. Meet recorder powerhouse Laura Cannell

The recorder does not enjoy a good reputation. In the popular imagination, it’s somewhere above the kazoo but below the harmonica– an instrument that brings back schoolroom memories of painful, atonal versions of Frère Jacques, with spit dripping on to floors. And that’s why Laura Cannell lies to her hairdresser about what she does.

“I just say I play the violin,” says the professional recorder player and composer. “It’s horrible if your memory is of a plastic instrument that tastes of disinfectant and sounds awful. Kids’ fingers don’t cover the holes, so it’s bound to sound terrible.”

Yet Cannell is revolutionising the recorder, pushing raw, wind-whipped compositions through it, and sometimes playing two at once in stark medieval harmonies. […]

Read the Full Story: ‘It’s got balls and it can bite’: the woman blowing recorder prejudice away | Music | The Guardian