alt.folk
Tracks: Ring in the shortest day with the fine English folk of Craig Fortnam’s ‘Witchy Grid’/’God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’
IT’S BEEN a productive and busy year all round for Craig Fortnam, the man known best perhaps for his role in the English contemporary music ensemble, North Sea Radio Orchestra; he’s been on sabbatical from that fine outfit all year but so very busy in other musical guisings. If you’ll permit me to track back …
Album review: E.R. Jurken – ‘I Stand Corrected’: a psych-folk debut full of catharsis and melody
E.R. Jurken’s first full missive into the world reveals quite the saddest tale at an angle, never telling, always hinting. It also shows an absolute grasp of songcraft, of melody, and an abiding love of British psych-pop and later American geniuses such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Elliott Smith
SEE: The fairytale stop-motion video for Renée Reed’s graceful, mysterious ‘I Saw A Ghost’
WITH her stunning, graceful, mysterious debut album out tomorrow on Keeled Scales, Louisianan folk riser musician Renée Reed has dropped a fourth and final single to usher you into the scented finery of her world; watch the video for “I Saw A Ghost” below. “I Saw A Ghost” rings true with the four-track ambience which pervades her home-recorded …
News: Chloe Foy announces her long-awaited debut album; let her hush you with ‘Shining Star’
CHLOE FOY, the Gloucestershire singer-songwriter with a knack for a soul-baring lyric all wrapped in a sweet melodic glide, has announced that her debut album, Where Shall We Begin, will be with us just before midsummer; and in celebration of which bottle smashing against the hull, she’s dropped a new single, the hushed depths of …
See: The lyric video for the tumbling odd-folk of Yves Jarvis’ ‘Body Of Work’
YVES JARVIS is the artist and autodidact Jean-Sébastien Audet who, in a pseudo-Bill Callahanesque move, came out from behind his Un Blonde facemask after 2016’s excellent Good Will Come To You (according to his personal colour palette, it was bathed in yellow, for optimism), reborn with a new name. Over here at Backseat Mafia we adored his …
Track: Renée Reed – ‘Neboj’: mysterious verdancy from rising Louisiana folk chanteuse
WE’RE just a fortnight, a little more, away from the release of Renée Reed’s self-titled debut album, one on which she reveals a mysterious, perfumed songwriting aesthetic, steeped in the Cajun culture she grew up within. And today’s she’s dropped a third single from that album, “Neboj”; it’s a languid thrill, as you can hear …
See: Jordan Klassen – ‘Golden Ladder’: hushed Canadian alt.folk songcraft
VANCOUVER’S self-styled fairy-folk singer-songwriter Jordan Klassen released an album, Tell Me What to Do, last May, which he hopes connects people organically, drawing upon their shared experiences lyrically and conceptually; and, he hope, making them feel less alone in a crazily paced, hyper-connected world. It explores what’s it’s like to be in a world where …
Track: Panteon – ‘Nobody’: electric folk lushness from Berlin
CURRENTLY based in Berlin, singer-songwriter Yvonne Ambrée writes, records and produces all of her music under the guise of Panteon. She’s gradually unveiling her forthcoming debut album with a string of singles throughout the year; and her latest release is “Nobody”, out today across all digital streaming platforms. It’s the kind of electric alt.folk loveliness …
Track: Sunflower Thieves -‘Don’t Mind The Weather’: a soothing, electronic folk paean to your safe space
AMY ILLINGWORTH and Lily Stury-Bolshaw, the Leeds-based musicians who fashion fine music together as Sunflower Thieves, have shared their new single “Don’t Mind The Weather”, ahead of its release as part of the Come Play With Me 7” singles club later this month; before you toddle off and invest in the physical, which you absolutely …
Track: Chloe Foy – ‘Left-Centred Weight’: luscious, hook-laden folk to welcome spring
AS 2021 stretches and tentatively decides to dangle an experimental leg out of bed you, like me, will be looking round for the first buds and flowers of spring; new musical talent to get excited about, to bring us fresh, bright melodies. Step forward clutching the butter yellow of early daffs please, Chloe Foy; this …