england

Al Stewart: Year of the Cat (1976)

2014/12/22

Al Stewart – 1976 You all know or have heard Year of the Cat right? It was nearly four decades ago that this single became neo-folk steam train that could. Little things about its creation distilled in a wonderfully universal way nearly all the transformation, and rungs that neo-folk had taken by then. You hear…
Nigel Mazlyn Jones: Ship To Shore (1976)

2014/12/20

Nigel Mazlyn Jones Nigel Mazlyn Jones, now this is another great artist waiting to be rediscovered. His album 1976’s Ship to Shore introduced a thoroughly unique take on the singer-songwriter genre. He was part of the second wave of progressive folk styles that Roy Harper, John Martyn, and Al Stewart sorta introduced earlier in the…
Penguin Cafe Orchestra: The Sound of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away and It Doesn’t Matter (1976)

2014/12/18

Simon Jeffes on bowed guitar (left) with David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto Wow, what a loaded track title and what a loaded track. This band was born out of a hallucinated dream experienced by one Simon Jeffes while recovering from food poisoning. In one fever dream he saw an all seeing eye viewing a couple…
Strawbs: Ghosts (1975)

2014/12/17

Straws – 1975 Ghosts album cover photo session. Let’s get out of 1975, and start floating through the decade. It has to be that way. This is the year too many other musical movements (Punk, New Wave, Arena Rock etc.) had started to change everything culturally that English people now tuned to. Making it so,…
Leonard Rosenman: Barry Lyndon Soundtrack (1975)

2014/12/16

Kubrick and friends – 1975 Now here’s something a bit out of step with the times. We all know Stanley Kubrick correct? Notorious perfectionist and quite intelligent artist whose muse seems to wander to and fro. In 1975, he treated film goers expecting some bit of shocking thrills to a bit of shocking melodrama. Barry…
Steeleye Span: Demon Lover (1975)

2014/12/15

Steeleye Span – 1975 Just after slagging them off yesterday. Here I am championing them again. A few months before releasing “All Around My Hat”, and before the lure of cashing in was too much, Steeleye Span was hungry to present their viability as artists, that could be at the vanguard of something, first and…
Brian Eno: Discreet Music (1975)

2014/12/14

Pour down like silver. What an apropos name for whatever the hell was going on in classic English folk and folk-rock music in 1975. Nothing you’ll find this year from overground artists like Richard and Linda Thompson, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny and more would truly be as valuable as the stuff that poured for from…
Mike Oldfield: Ommadawn (1975)

2014/12/12

Mike Oldfield – 1974 “The end of the first side of Ommadawn is the sound of me exploding from my mother’s vagina.” — Mike Oldfield. Although said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, no truer words have been spoken to describe a sound such as found at the end of Ommadawn, than the words spoken/written…
Mike Oldfield: Hergest Ridge (1974)

2014/12/11

Mike Oldfield The exploration and deconstruction of English folk music seemed to be the path needed to be taken by new neo-folk artists. One unlikely champion of this became one that you’d least expect to be one. Now known as one of New Age and World music’s pioneers with albums like Tubular Bells, Incantations, and…
Gryphon: Checkmate (1974)

2014/12/10

Gryphon – 1974 The further we head down this neo-folk decade the more strained the strands holding it to the base become. It had to be that way. Nearly a decade into its creation, advances in technology, and a growing influence of outside musics started to gild the lily of what most considered English folk…