Behind The Castle Festival 2015

It is almost 13 April as I write and Behind the Castle Festival is therefore just two short months away.

Get your tickets here and especially if you wish for camping on Saturday for these are very limited and will all be gone soon. The line-up is of course stunning from start to finish. There is nothing not to cherish, which it just as it should be. With three stages there will be some agonising choices to make; I have been promised that. Bring it on, this as a festival compact enough to see part of one set and then part of another without missing much whilst between them.
I'm not saying, because I won't decide until the very moment, what I want to see most.  Here is a Spotify playlist including some, but not all, of the artists that will be there on the day. It is entirely my own choice of songs, of course, but hopefully provides some idea of what is on offer. 
There will almost certainly be additions and updates. I just needed to post something at the point that I had got to. It might just help fend off some of that the Monday feeling too - it is nearly 100 minutes long.
The Spiral Earth Awards 2015 have now been announced and two of the winners, both for albums, are playing BTCF 2015:
Moulettes - best album - Constellations
Larkin Poe - best Americana album - Kin
If that weren't enough another  of the winners -  Blair Dunlop , best solo artist, is playing Marnhull Acoustic sessions this coming Sunday (19 April) and that is not all; Emma Stevens is supporting.

2013 In Music - Albums - Part 2

Despite what I said I might do in the last part of this review series, this is not EPs and mini- albums of 2013. It is the second tranche of 'albums of 2013'. The former category is proving far more fascinating, and therefore complex, than I imagined even a couple of weeks ago. It will have to await my attention this coming weekend. The first part afforded you one album that was largely sung in a foreign language. This will include another but the comfort is that at least both of them are sung in the same foreign language. I make no excuses about this, the links, or indeed the variety of music included. You won't catch me adding a link to NME very often but here I chose to do so:

• Danni Nicholls - A Little Redemption
• Deap Vally - Sistrionix
• Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo - Dear River
• Ethan Johns - If Not Now Then When?
• Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister
• Joanne Shaw Taylor - Songs From The Road
• Lanterns on the Lake - Until The Colours Run
• Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Mynd
• Siddi - Un Tro
• Texas - The Conversation
• Troubadour Rose - Find An Arrow
• Wild Belle - Isles

I've seen seven of these acts live, four of them more than once, and the other five are well and truly on my list of 'ones to see'. Choose your own favourite, not from these, unless you really want to do that, because it is your turn. Write about it - somewhere, anywhere legal.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2013 - Part 2

So there. That (as in Part 1) was the lower half of the running order and how good was that, I thought to myself a week ago yesterday, sometime mid-afternoon. My only concern, though I dismissed it, was whether it was possible to maintain this momentum.
The next to play was again a duo - Jack McNeill and Charlie Heys. This is the point at which folk, or folk inspired music, actually becomes quite challenging both in subject and treatment. They played a number of new tracks from their forthcoming LP (due early 2014) too.

One to watch, for sure, and so NDFF 2013 powered forward with Boat To Row as the next act to take to the somewhat small stage. I had heard a short section of a Boat To Row set at an outdoor festival earlier this year and I wanted more. This was my chance to put it right.

All five of Midlands-based Boat To Row. North Dorset Folk Festival 2013.

Deriving from a university solo project this has developed quite some momentum.  Hannah (far left above) is the latest addition and, just a few weeks in, she is a fully integrated band member - which is as well as they have a distinct tendency to swap instruments, some of them rather unusual.

Faye Haddon on table-harmonium.

The first support needed no introduction in so far as I was concerned. Emily Baker is the the only artist to play both editions of North Dorset Folk Festival as a named artist and this was also the fifth time that I have seen her play live.
This time she did so live and unplugged - never fear - you could hear it all perfectly from the back of the hall. The highlights, some of which she previewed at NDFF last year, are songs from her 2013 album All At Sea.

Emily Baker, playing as first support, at North Dorset Folk Festival 2013.

Headlining was Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo and this was the first time that I had seen them live since End Of The Road Festival 2009. They amazed me then and proved more than equal to the task of doing so again last Saturday night. The same four as back then but recently with Matt on drums too. The 2013 album Dear River was just a part of this.

'Nostalgia' live. This set actually deserves a post all its own. It will happen sooner than later.

New Music 2013 - A malleable wishlist

The post title says it all really. I have just got to a point that, although rather enviable, I can't keep up. Here is a partial list of the albums that I really want to hear - The order in which they are listed is merely alphabetical by artist. Not all have been released yet, but some may be available in part to stream legally and I shall likely add some links to that, as well as some more thoughts that I see as key, in the coming days:

• Dear Reader - Rivonia
• Emily Baker - All at Sea
• Gabrielle Aplin - English Rain
• Little Boots - Nocturnes
• Pascal Pinon - Twosomeness
• Polly Scattergood - Arrows
• Widowspeak - Almanac
• Wild Belle - Isles

Of the eight I have already seen five of them live: the exceptions are Pascal Pinon (Iceland), Widowspeak and Wild Belle (both US acts). Widowspeak is already confirmed for End of The Road 2013.

Live Music 2012 - North Dorset Folk Festival (Part 2)

I told you that I wasn't finished with this, for there was too much goodness for one post. 
Here is the first glimpse into the rest of the acts that I had the good fortune to see last Saturday.

The Moulettes

I saw the last two songs of their set at End of The Road Festival, on the TiPi stage, after I had decamped from watching another on the Garden Stage. They were both remarkable acts - so I deemed it necessary to seek out The Moulettes sooner rather than later.  The 2012 album 'The Bear's Revenge' is excellent, but live they are quite something else.
Bassoon is not an instrument that is used throughout a set or always even just a song. It was, from time to time, supplanted by autoharp.

Why hug it, when not playing it, you might ask.

  

Now, returning to the Studio Stage, here is an artist that I have had the good fortune to witness live several times before and, whilst originally from North Dorset, is now resident further east on the south coast of England.

Emily Baker: singing and playing with vocals unamplified. This new song is 'Tennessee'.
Her second full-length album, All At Sea, is due for release early in 2013.
  

Owing to issues, mainly to do with half-term traffic, Tom James from Falmouth, Cornwall, became the first solo artist and only the second act to perform at NDFF when switching sets with Flatland Wolf.

No rest for the insatiable - Acoustic Moon

I've just got home from the March edition of Acoustic Moon and a gem of an evening it was too. As the title of the post suggests I could have been suffering from a surfeit of acoustic live music this week... Not a bit of it as it turned out; three very good solo guitarists but each very different in style.
One mistake on my part means that there are no pictures of Harry, who was opening the evening, as when I went to reach for my camera from its pouch on my belt I realised that it was still in the car! Rather than miss her first ever set as a solo artist, and also playing six-string rather than bass, I missed the photos for the music. It was a set very well worth hearing - excellent original songs and a truly inspired choice of a 'cover' too.
Next to play was Dirk Landish, who I have mentioned before, with his distinctly American tinged songs.

  

Headlining, and back by popular request, was the artist who also performed the same duty at the very first Acoustic Moon almost exactly six months ago. Emily Baker returned with some rather lovely new songs yet-to-be-recorded and, of course, favourites from the album 'House Of Cards' as well as the 'Foundations EP' that preceded it.

Here she is doing exactly that with the new song 'Northern Lights'.

Acoustic Moon - 25 August 2011

Yesterday evening was the inaugural edition of a new acoustic event - Acoustic Moon - and I was delighted to be there. The venue is The Full Moon pub in the village of Rudge, just a few miles from Frome and within the same orbit lie Warminster, Westbury and Trowbridge. The nearest planet providing all means of life-support is generally perceived to be Bath.

The next question is where to start. I don't want to make enemies and since the long dead can't Twitter, or I least I hope not, I shall follow the advice of the court: start at the beginning, continue to the end and then stop.
I've never envied the position of an opening act or artist; head-liners may disappoint, spectacularly and in front of a tens-of-thousands of fans at a festival, but the few can be worse than the masses. If you have ever seen a pub band suffer that fâte, and you probably have, then you know exactly what I mean.  My photography was rubbish. You must make an exception for that. My report said that, if I tried harder, I might do better next time.

Please don't let that make you think any less of the artists, or their music, for they were all amazing. The unenviable task of launching Acoustic Moon, just weeks after the final Space Shuttle flight and in the week that saw the abject failure of a multi-million-costing unmanned Russian space mission that launched nothing at all, fell to Saravian.

Mission accomplished. Acoustic Moon is now in earth orbit.
  

There are some things that I have an uncanny knack of doing and one of them is managing to miss Mark Abis when he is is playing live in, or around, Frome. He does so often and yesterday I finally failed to do this too.

Mark Abis - Acoustic Moon 25 August 2011.
  

I don't know if he'd agree with me about this but, in the week that the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary finally included Americana as a noun describing a specific genre of music, he is an extremely good UK purveyor of it.  He might not like this either - one of the songs he played reminded me so much of Jack Johnson that, had I heard it played unannounced on the radio, I would have simply assumed by default that it was.
  
The next to feature were special guests Linda and Mark and, while following the lead, this was in no way Americana; rather five songs from the combined songbook of the great US female vocalists of the mid-twentieth century and should you think that the set-up violates the 'acoustic' moniker then I can reassure you that the Nord keyboard was firmly in piano mode. 

It was certainly dangerous vocal territory carefully navigated.

     

Next to perform was Brighton-based, but Dorset bred, Emily Baker.
There is something that immediately defines but does not confine her and many others, and to an extent her self-written songs too, which has nothing to describe it adequately that appears in the dictionary (Concise Oxford English, of course): There has been much soul-searching for a 'label' for some time and, while I only first heard it a month or so ago, Anglicana will have to do for now and it is certainly a whole lot better than most of the others that have been attached to such things. This music is not entirely traditional, nor is it obviously Celtic inspired, and she is very good at it indeed.

Emily Baker - Acoustic Moon - 25 August 2011.

Just don't ask about the Sturminster mutants... it was all part of the patter, and audience banter, between songs and that genuine and unforced connection is something that very many artists lack.  If you haven't heard the 2011 album 'House Of Cards' then you need to. If you have then you need this, her 2009 début EP, too...

This and the album are available, in real physical format (CD), direct from her website.

  
The evening was completed by duo Jacquelyn Hynes and J Eoin. This was certainly celtic music at its most inventive and yet also often very traditional. The tunes from the ongoing 'Lost in...' project were particularly interesting.

This one was taken when they returned for an encore.

  

There was not a great deal of light to take pictures but, and this is my personal opinion, using a flash would have ruined the atmosphere.  On the other hand can you believe that this much amazing live music is available to you for just £5?
The next Acoustic Moon is at the same venue on Thursday, 29 September and at the same price and I believe that now includes tickets purchased on the door too.
You can now just decide to go on a whim and not pay a premium.  I have actually seen most of the acts appearing at the next event - I'm certain to be going and I don't think that you will be disappointed.

See you there.