Le Vent Du Nord – New Album ‘Tromper Le Temps’ + UK Tour Dates May & June

Quebec’s progressive folk band Le Vent du Nord return with their seventh album entitled ‘Tromper Le Temps’ which translates as cheating or deceiving time!

Renowned as ambassadors of Francophonie, Le Vent du Nord are also largely acknowledged as one of the key groups in Quebec’s traditional folk music revival. Since their formation in August 2002 the band has enjoyed great success which has allowed them to take their music to other countries.

Le Vent Du Nord (Wind from the North) perform traditional Québécois music in French which is heavily influenced by Celtic music from both Ireland and Brittany. The group use a very diverse range of musical instruments augmented by Québécois Foot Percussion presented via a most entertaining, energetic and engaging stage show.

PEGGY SEEGER – Live (Appleseed Recordings APR CD 1129)

Many years ago I remember seeing Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl ‘live’ at the Croydon Folk Club in the austere surroundings of the Arnhem Gallery at the Fairfield Halls. The reason I mention this is that the performance had me spellbound and many of today’s younger folk artists could do worse than study this CD for an appreciation in the art of ‘communicating and engaging’ with your audience. There are no pregnant pauses or ‘umming and erring’ just a homely approach that makes you feel as if you’ve known Peggy all your life. Of course it also helps if you are comfortable with your voice (which she is) with excellent diction and a reasonable musician to boot. With a varied selection of tracks of which there are fifteen (an additional 8 tracks if you count

OLD DANCE SCHOOL – Chasing The Light (Transition Records – TRANSCD05)

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of reviewing the Old Dance School’s debut release and mentioned to anyone who’d care to listen that of the current crop of ‘new’ folk bands that they deserved to be up their with your Bellowhead’s and Show Of Hands etc. I personally hope they’ve achieved this goal at least on the festival circuit…for that’s where they deserve to be. Ever since Moving Hearts crashed onto the scene thirty-years ago with their genre-breaking ‘folk-jazz’ it has taken until now for a truly British band to make their mark in similar style. Comparisons may be odious but inevitable and if the members of the band; Helen Lancaster, Samantha Norman, Robin Beatty, Tom Chapman, Laura Carter, Aaron Diaz and Adam Jarvis don’t mind being counted alongside such

Billy Mitchell Tour Dates…

FINBAR MAGEE – Strawberry Winters (fmfmfm010101)

I can’t remember where I first heard Finbar Magee. More than likely idling my time away listening to the radio but, whenever it was it was because of his song “My Belfast Love” with its simplistic, lazy country feel that captured my imagination. In its own way this (for me at least) is every bit as good as “When You Were Sweet Sixteen” and, if enough people get to hear it maybe one day it’ll be the hit it deserves to be…I hope The Fureys are listening? The basic conceit of a man admiring a woman from a distance without actually telling her may sound a little too pedestrian for over exposed and over obsessive Jeremy Kyle followers but sometimes it’s nice to slow the passage of time and wallow in nostalgia whether its true or just wishful thinking. Now, before I mesmerize everyone

CHRIS RICKETTS – Outward Bound (AF Records AF02)

Chris Ricketts has found a niche that appears to have been overlooked by many other youngsters from the Newcastle Folk & Traditional course namely that pivotal role of the much maligned ‘Shantyman’. Until the recent commercially accepted exposure of Port Isaac’s Fishermen’s Friends these predominantly chorus integrated songs may have sounded at best ‘obscure’ and, at times down right ‘old fashioned’. Personally I can’t see that happening so long as we have the youthful exuberance of artists the calibre of Ricketts and his partners in crime (multi-instrumentalist Steve Hampton and fiddler Garry Blakeley) to…as it were, push the boat out. Between them the trio make (as You Slosh used to say) a glorious racket combining their requisite skills in various genres from full-on folk-rock to

Moulettes rear up in preparation for The Bear’s Revenge…

Moulettes release the first single from forthcoming album The Bear’s Revenge on May 28th. on Balling The Jack Records. The band have chosen live favourite, ’Sing Unto Me’ as the A-side and have included a bumper package of B-sides and remixes, totalling over half an hour of entrancing Moulettes music. Illustrious former Moulette, Ted Dwane, now of Mumford & Sons, returned to play and sing on these recordings, and is “as pleased as Punch” with them!

The band handed esteemed Guardian critic Robin Denselow an unmastered copy at the Royal Festival Hall’s New Year’s Eve party, where they were playing, and he wrote effusively about the track a few days later.