North Sea Radio Orchestra
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: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio man gathers his world in a prog-pastoral-folk craft of intricacy and thoughtfulness
ARCH GARRISON, whose lovely odyssey of modern Wessex psych-pastoralism The Bitter Lay we loved for all its exploration of thorny byways last year; a half-dozen or so long-playing outings in the North Sea Radio Orchestra; even back before the century’s turn, a solitary album with Shrubbies. In all these incarnations we’ve enjoyed and explored the …
See: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio Orchestra man sets course for a July solo album, two by two
DEEPLY rooted in a leftfield English folk music tradition, composer and singer for North Sea Radio Orchestra and Arch Garrison (whose excellent last album, The Bitter Lay, we reviewed here), Craig Fortnam is finally to step out solo with an album, Ark, due for release mid-July. In announcing that today, he’s revealed the video for …
ALBUM REVIEW: Arch Garrison – ‘The Bitter Lay’: a psychedelic folk song of the Wiltshire downs
ARCH GARRISON is, in some ways, the flipside of the coin to Craig Fortnam’s excellent, self-styled alternative chamber group North Sea Radio Orchestra. But it’d be wrong to think of them as the ‘other’ band; although perhaps it’s the latter outfit who claim the higher profile, they’re both remarkably potent musical creations. North Sea Radio …