neo-folk

Virginia Astley: A Summer Long Since Passed (1983)

2015/02/06

Here’s to another unheralded and quite forgotten one. In the summer of 1983, a humble, charming bit of pastoral neo-folk music was released. Mixing field recordings, piano, guitar, flute, and, very sparingly, voice, a young woman presented a breathtaking idea of how a certain English feeling can reveal itself to you. Back then, Virginia opened…
Richard and Linda Thompson: Wall of Death (1982)

2015/02/04

Richard and Linda Thompson – 1980 In the same year as Kate Bush was heralding a new apex for neo-folk music, one of its original visionaries was turning off all the lights from its prior impetus. You see, in 1982, Richard and Linda Thompson released probably one of your parents or cool elder’s favorite English…
(Album of the Month) January 2015: Kate Bush – The Dreaming (1982)

2015/01/30

Kate Bush – 1982 You know January, a month so long, a month that appears so taxing at first, whether temporal or corporally, is a month that allows for something few others do: reflection. Reflection, seems to be one of those double-edge words. As much as it it is defined as something that gives back…
Public Image Limited: Flowers of Romance (1981)

2015/01/28

John Lydon – 1981 Pretend you never heard of a band called The Sex Pistols. Pretend you’ve never heard of a man called Johnny Rotten. Let’s pretend his career started as this unique artist called John Lydon who founded this brilliant band called The Public Image Limited. Forget that you’ve even heard of Metal Box…
Penguin Cafe Orchestra: Air á Danser (1981)

2015/01/26

Now, this is the right time to bring Simon Jeffes’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra back again. Back in 1976, no one was quite ready for their Neoclassical style of chamber folk music. His vision of combining various worldly folk traditions under one shapeshifting sound created a template that touches on a lot of modern post-rock and…
The Durutti Column: Never Known (1981)

2015/01/23

The Durutti Column – 1980 Now we’re rounding out to the present. We’re heading into the realm where English folk music goes beyond its traditional boundaries and attains a spectral essence inflecting what it would have sung before. Now comes the realization, that as far removed new folk artists are from their greener rural past,…
Kate Bush: Breathing (1980)

2015/01/21

Kate Bush with her Fairlight CMI Sampler. The 80’s presented a perfect turning point for neo-folk music. More so, it signalled a turning point for truly one of the eras pioneers. Fresh off her wildly successful first tour, she was experiencing for once great tumult with how to go onwards with her career. Now known…
Steve Hillage: Garden of Paradise (1979)

2015/01/19

Miquette Giraudy and Steve Hillage Soundtracking a true visual experience of sorts, “Garden of Paradise” from Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Musick stirred many a visitor’s brains when it debuted looping at London’s massive proto-New Age Mind- Spirit-Body Festival. Listeners who just wandered through booths filled with info from vegetarian, vegan, yoga, shamanic, and lords knows what…
Bert Jansch: Avocet (1979)

2015/01/16

There’s a struggle whenever you try to invoke something. How exactly do you communicate to someone something they have to imagine? There was a time when naturalist John Audubon had to struggle with art critics who looked down upon his realistic depiction of birds. Painting with watercolors, chalks, and pastels he’d distill to the bare…
Sally Oldfield: The Sun in My Eyes (1979)

2015/01/14

Sally Oldfield – 1979 Something that struck me the first time I encountered Sally Oldfield’s Water Bearer was its brilliant album cover. By combining something real, a staged photoshoot of Sally idling next to a waterfall in some forgotten Irish glen, with an altered color scheme that blends objects and edges to mimic some kind…