Folk

An impressive 5 CD box set featuring one of the most complete anthologies on English folk and folk-rock around. The first two CDs mostly cover solo artists with a praiseworthy attention to the 80s and 90s, while the last three are dedicated to the most important bands of the Seventies.

Lodestar Trio blaze a trail with their unprecedented ‘baroque meets folk’ repertoire. With renewed interpretations of baroque classics (Bach, Lully, Couperin…), folk tunes and new compositions, they push the boundaries of their mystical and magical Scandinavian string instruments. With Max Baillie on violin, Olav Luksengård Mjelva on Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and Erik Rydvall on Swedish nyckelharpa, they skilfully showcase the dexterity of each instrument, bringing out new qualities, whilst paying tribute to the roots of a much-honoured musical period.

VA - Dust On The Nettles: A Journey Through The British Underground Folk Scene (1967-72) {3CD Grapefruit CRSEGBOX030 rel 2015}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.22 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 554 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1967-72, 2015 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red Record | CRSEGBOX030
Folk Rock / Pregressive Folk / Psychedelia / Pop Fok / Electric Folk / British Folk

With 63 tracks and a total running time of just under four hours, Dust On The Nettles examines the metamorphosis that British folk underwent during the late 1960s, when the influence of psychedelia and the counterculture saw the idiom being twisted into all kinds of new and exotic shapes, as the finger-in-the-ear folk clubs of yore were inexorably drawn into a brave new world of Arts Labs, free festivals and the nascent college/university circuit.

The Real Folk Blues series on Chess wasn't really folk, but titled that way, perhaps to gain the attention of young white listeners who had started to get turned on to the blues during the 1960s folk revival. And the Howlin' Wolf volumes in the series were not particularly more folk-oriented than his other Chess recordings, but more or less arbitrary selections of tracks that he'd done from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s. It's thus also arbitrary to do a two-fer reissue of his The Real Folk Blues and More Real Folk Blues, combined here onto a single disc. That doesn't mean, though, that this isn't very good and sometimes great electric blues music. The Real Folk Blues, with tracks from 1956 to 1965, is by far the more modern of the pair in arrangements, and has a good share of classics: "Killing Floor," "Sittin' on Top of the World," "Built for Comfort," "Tail Dragger," and "Three Hundred Pounds of Joy".