The classic 1970 debut with Beverley Martyn. Rehearsed in Woodstock, with Levon Helm guesting on a couple, Joe Boyd producing. Lovely.

Dawn Le Faun with Billy Le Bon, co-singers of The Letting Go and Wai Notes, digging up a modern(ish) parable from deep in their Everlys sack, afore getting down and sliding around on the flip.

‘A 6 part cosmic hobo’s dream suite for 23 string banjo… Metzger plucks, picks, bows and spins his way through a 40 minute odyssey making for his most ambitious and adventurous musical trip to date.’

Terrific solo guitar music, steeped in ragtime and country blues, but this time going after something else too —  ‘in a harsh climate… this new one reaches a little further both into the past and the future’.

‘folk album of the year’ (The Observer); ‘*****  ... not a note is wasted’ (Time Out); **** Mojo; **** Uncut; ‘Compilation Of The Year’ (The Guardian).

Alasdair Roberts, Nancy Elizabeth, Michael Hurley, James Yorkston, Victoria Williams, Richard Youngs: six ravishing, luminous new interpretations. Short-run vinyl sampler, fine pressing, silk-screened sleeves.

A droning, slo-mo Leonard Cohen cover, and a collaboration with violinist Jessica Moss, from A Silver Mt. Zion; both around twelve minutes. Grouper’s a big fan.

‘The Voice of the People’.

‘The Voice of the People’.

Microtonal folk music mixed with electronics and noise.
The first record was rave-reviewed.  ‘I was transported to secluded valleys where age old traditions are the passionate expressions of a community, here re-energized by the chillingly sensitive electronic wizardry of Anders Hana and Morten Joh’ (Songlines). At home in Norway even the tabloids picked it up: ‘Gorrlaus has the same intense and monotonously suggestive sound hunt as early Kraftwerk, at the time they played Ruckzuck’ (VG).
And now II is a next step further in the same direction, more deeply attuned to diverse materials derived from field recordings and other research, with finer nuance and detail… and more fiddle.