Another collaboration of Tabor and producer Andrew Cronshaw, Aqaba contains the Jewish lament Mayn Rue Plats, more pieces by Bill Caddick and Dave Goulder and the noble cadences of the traditional songs Searching for Lambs and Bogie's Bonnie Belle. June Tabor vocals [...]
The inspired collaboration of Maddy Prior and June Tabor, two of the most individual singers in folk music, is enhanced by musicians such as the Breton guitarist Dan Ar Braz, ex-Steeleye Span bass guitarist Rick Kemp and producer Andrew Cronshaw. June Tabor [...]
On Right Of Passage from 1988, Carthy draws tunes from Quebec, Brittany and Mozart, songs from Leon Rosselson and Mike Waterson and poems from e.e.cummings and an anonymous 17th-century pamphleteer into a surprising but successful union of old and new, traditional and [...]
This powerful compilation from MacColl's many recordings made for the Topic label during the 1950s and '60s gathers ballads and songs of nationhood, crime and punishment, mining and weaving. Many are traditional, but some are MacColl's own compositions and include such widely [...]
Sea songs and shanties A treasure-chest of seafaring songs delivered by such fine inter-preters as Louis Killen, The Watersons, Bob Davenport, Ian Campbell and Cyril Tawney. The two dozen performances include some of the best-known of all British sea songs and shanties, [...]
Connoisseurs recognise what amateurs feel instinctively, that John Burgess is the finest living exponent of the Scots bagpipes, equally impressive whether playing marches, airs, jigs, strathspeys or the majestic repertory of the pibroch, the classical music of the Highlands. 1 6/8 marches: [...]
The group's two '80s albums, combined here, are full of fresh arrangements of traditional songs and tunes. 'Brass Monkey was a great idea,' said Martin Carthy. 'A phenomenal experience.' Q called it 'the finest folk group of the 1980s.' It should have [...]
Tom Anderson MBE, fiddler, composer, folklorist and teacher, was a profoundly influential figure in Shetland music. He and Aly Bain, with Trevor Hunter and Davie Tulloch, spanning three generations of music-making in the islands, play fiddle duets and quartets in the distinctive [...]
Rowsome was one of the great style-makers of Irish pipe music. 'Everywhere he went,' writes his friend Sean Reid in the notes, 'he added glamour to a unique, expressive and truly native instrument, a living link with the historic Irish nation.' This [...]
Introducing these recordings on their first appearance in the mid-'60s A.L. Lloyd wrote of this new singing group's 'hand-crafted harmonies, an immediately recognisable and uniquely distinctive group sound which is uninhibited, spontaneous seeming and rich in texture.' What became of The Watersons [...]
With her flamboyant delivery and idiosyncratic banjo-playing Margaret Barry brought the art of the street-singer into the pubs and clubs of Irish London in the 1950s and '60s, frequently accompanied by the fiddler Michael Gorman. 'To be confronted with a past so [...]
With an eclecticism characteristic of its members, Waterson:Carthy's first album draws upon not only the archives of British folksong but a Morris tune and a Texas waltz. What is transmitted to the listener, however, is not so much the skill of their [...]