Carbeth

VINYL FORMAT. This is the hotly-tipped debut of new new-folk outfit, Trembling Bells, masterminded by protean drummer Alex Neilson, one of the UK's leading young improvisers. From the ashes of Scatter, a Glasgow-based collective which long anticipated the free-folk phenomenon, emerges a new song-based venture. Having served apprenticeships with some uniquely talented songwriters (Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Current 93, Alasdair Roberts, Baby Dee, Red Krayola, Six Organs Of Admittance, Josephine Foster, amongst them), Neilson sets out with the group to reanimate the hidden, mythic landscapes of Yorkshire and Glasgow (in particular) via a love of canonical rock, early music, and traditional folk. Featuring the diverse musical talents of medieval music scholar and psychedelic siren, Lavinia Blackwall, Venusian bluesman, Ben Reynolds, Lucky Luke progenitor Simon Shaw, plus trombonist George Murray, and viola player Aby Vuillamy from Scatter and the Bill Wells Group. Carbeth is absolutely sweeping, grandiose baroque-folk like a newly-minted Pentangle or Fairport Convention, but with strange keyboard/horn arrangements, and sometimes thunderous percussion. This isn't music for tatted lace-wearers, but for folk-rockers wearing sturdy woolen traveling capes for backwards horse-rides through a long-lost Britain.