Over at Folk & Tumble Towers we all lead busy lives. We’ve been building websites, DJing, writing, travelling, changing jobs, watching endless hours of Scandinavian TV and sitting around wishing that Folk & Tumble Towers was a real place.
Of course while we’re living that sort of highlife, the music just keeps coming so here’s a quick look at some of what has almost passed us by in the last few weeks.
Way back in March we missed this delightful little video from Dublin five-piece The Jigsaw Jam. We know you’re all a cynical bunch but if this doesn’t raise even a little bit of a smile well then your insides are dead as David Moyes’ football managerial career.
Midlake announced a return to Northern Ireland’s fair shores for June with an appearance at Open House Festival. On the same festival bill you’ll get The Waterboys, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band and a whole lot more. Oh, and because those Open House guys and girls are much too kind to us they’ve announced a secondary festival lineup in Bangor featuring the likes of Foy Vance and Steve Earle.
This is probably one of the most quintessentially ‘English’ videos we’ve ever seen with all that knitwear and foppish hair in the middle of a Buckinghamshire model village. Cosmo Sheldrake is a fairly cool customer, dropping this fairytale-esque tune over some lo-fi beats and blips. If no one has as yet combined folk and hip hop into some sort of flip flop then you may well be witnessing it before your very eyes. This is all very silly by Sheldrake’s own admission drawing heavily on the words and characters of Lewis Carroll amongst others but no one ever said a good song had to be serious all the time.
And from the ridiculous to the sublime. The eclectic range of music we get sent at Folk & Tumble has probably never been more evident than in comparing the last two releases. ‘Centenary: Words and Music of the Great War’ is a reflective, thought provoking memoriam to mark 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War. Music by west-country folk outfit Show of Hands and poetry read by two of England’s finest actors Jim Carter and wife Imelda Staunton. Expert accompaniment beautifully played, two of my favourite poems and a reminder, if we needed one, of the horrors of war. Memorable stuff all round.