Andy Cutting is an English folk musician and composer. He plays melodeon and is best known for writing and performing traditional English folk and his own original compositions which combine English and French traditions with wider influences. He is three times winner of the Folk Musician of the Year award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and has appeared on around 50 albums, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians. He was born in Harrow, London and is married with three children.
Liege & Lief is the fourth album by the British folk rock band Fairport Convention. It is the third album the group released in the UK during 1969, all of which prominently feature Sandy Denny as lead female vocalist, as well as the first to feature future long-serving personnel Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks on violin/mandolin and drums, respectively, as full band members. It is also the first Fairport album on which all songs are either adapted (freely) from traditional British and Celtic folk material, or else are original compositions written and performed in a similar style. Although Denny and founding bass player Ashley Hutchings quit the band before the album's release, Fairport Convention has continued to the present day to make music strongly based within the British folk rock idiom, and are still the band most prominently associated with it.
Market Square Records was a music promotion and record label company, which operated between 1999 and 2020 based in Buckingham, England. It released the back catalogues of British folk artists and expanded into other genres such as rock, blues and jazz, the latter on its Dusk Fire Records label, which it launched in 2004.
Steve Tilston is an English folk singer-songwriter and guitarist.
The Unthanks are an English folk group known for their eclectic approach in combining traditional English folk, particularly Northumbrian folk music, with other musical genres. Their debut album, Cruel Sister, was Mojo magazine's Folk Album of the Year in 2005. Of their subsequent albums, nine have received four or five-starred reviews in the British national press. Their album Mount the Air, released in 2015, won in the best album category in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2017 they released two albums featuring the songs and poems of Molly Drake, mother of singer-songwriter and musician Nick Drake.
Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is a Principal Lecturer in Folk Music at Newcastle University. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year".
Pete Morton is an English folk singer-songwriter who lives in London, England. According to fRoots, Morton "is amongst the best that the British roots music scene has produced in living memory."
Lucy Victoria Ward is an English singer-songwriter from Derby, England. She performs, with a voice described as expressive and powerful, traditional English folk songs as well as her own material. Three of her albums, Adelphi Has to Fly, Single Flame and I Dreamt I Was a Bird, have been critically acclaimed and have each received four-starred reviews in the British national press.
Wake the Union is the sixteenth studio album by British folk duo Show of Hands. Although their fifteenth studio album, it is their eighth in their "canon" of studio albums. The release follows the successful Arrogance Ignorance and Greed (2009) and the limited edition albums Covers 2 (2010) and Backlog 2 (2011). Recorded and produced by Mark Tucker, the album takes a strong influence from both English and American folk music and was created as a "journey through of [the two countries'] landscapes united by a common tongue and musical heritage". The album again features their unofficial third member Miranda Sykes. The album was also described by Knightley as a direct continuation of Arrogance Ignorance and Greed, although critics saw it as very distinct in its own right. The album was also a 20th anniversary celebration for the duo.
Steve Frank Ashley is an English singer-songwriter, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, writer and graphic designer. Ashley is best known as a songwriter and first gained public recognition for his work with his debut solo album, Stroll On. Taking his inspiration from English traditional songs, Ashley has developed a songwriting style which is contemporary in content while reflecting traditional influences in his melodies, poetry and vocal delivery.
Mount the Air, the eighth album by English folk group the Unthanks, was released on 9 February 2015. It received five-starred reviews in The Daily Telegraph and The Irish Times and four-starred reviews in the Financial Times and The Guardian. It was the winner in the best album category in the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Kara were a folk music group from Hertfordshire, England, whose music has been called "spirited acoustic folk with a Russian twist". Their debut album, Waters So Deep, was acclaimed by The Daily Telegraph.
The Rails is an English folk rock duo from London, England, composed of husband and wife James Walbourne and Kami Thompson. Thompson and Walbourne first met during the recording sessions for Versatile Heart by Thompson's mother Linda Thompson in 2007. The band signed to Island Records in January 2014 and released their debut album on 5 May 2014 on the label's Pink Label imprint, the first band to do so since the 1970s.
Dan Walsh is a British banjoist and guitarist. He is known for the wide variety of banjo techniques he includes in his performances, and for his particular skill at clawhammer style banjo.
The Long Way Home is the seventeenth studio album by the folk duo Show of Hands. It was released on 15 January 2016, although copies were available at dates on the autumn tour in 2015.
Stroll On is the debut album by British singer-songwriter Steve Ashley. It was released in April 1974 in LP format on Gull Records and was critically acclaimed in the UK, being awarded “Contemporary Folk album of the Year” in the leading monthly folk magazine, Folk Review. It has been described as "a masterful, beautifully textured and gentle epic" and "a masterpiece of its kind – a beautiful, rich and deeply atmospheric collection of very English songs, like a musical impression of Dickens, Victorian Christmas cards and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex with a running concept concerning seasonal change". According to the music collectors' magazine Goldmine, it is "one of the key albums in the entire history of English Folk Rock".
One More Thing is a solo album of original songs by British singer-songwriter Steve Ashley, which he has described as "his last record". It was released by Market Square Records on 28 September 2018. The album received five-star reviews in the Morning Star, FolkWales Online Magazine and R2 (Rock'n'Reel).
Miranda Sykes is an English folk singer, double-bassist and guitarist who performs with Steve Knightley and Phil Beer in the acoustic roots/folk group Show of Hands. As of 2019 she is undertaking solo performances while on maternity leave from the group. She has recorded with Show of Hands and has also performed and recorded as a duo with mandolin player Rex Preston.
Steve Ashley's Family Album is an album of original songs by British singer-songwriter Steve Ashley. It was released as an LP by Woodworm Records in 1983 and was reissued in LP and CD format on the Road Goes On Forever label in 1991. An expanded version of the CD, with additional tracks, was released by Talking Elephant Records in July 2021 as Steve Ashley's Family Album Revisited and received a four-starred review in the British national press.
N.K-Pop is the fifth studio album by Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott, both formerly members of the Beautiful South. The album was released on 7 October 2022 by EMI Records, and preceded by the release of the lead single "Still". The album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart.
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