Back catalogue: Folk/Americana

Review: Steve Earle's Jerry Jeff is truly poignant album. The third in a series of tributes to what the main man describes as "first-hand teachers, the heroes I was lucky enough to sit across the room from so I could listen and learn up close," in this case he's talking about Jerry Jeff Walker.

So this is a record about paying homage to those that inspired and influenced, while also presenting another fine example of why Earle himself is considered one of the contemporary greats, no doubt inspiring and influencing the next generation of folk and Americana troubadours. And by that we mean one of the finest vocalists to ever grace those canons, and a master instrumentalist to boot, capable of delivering tracks at once powerful and thick with atmosphere, yet also delicate and vulnerable. Utterly captivating, you might say.

Review: Ammar El Sherei's intoxicating instrumental album Oriental Music was written in 1976 and has remained a cult classic for all the deep diggers, world music lovers and curio obsessives. For this record, the iconic Egyptian artist, composer and producer actually served up his own take on six classic compositions by another Egyptian legend, Mohamed Abdel Wahab. The results are utterly hypnotic and majestic melodic affairs with organic drums and percussion and North African melodies that worm their way deep into your brain and transport you to the hustle and bustle of a dusty open air market or street side coffee spot.

Review: Ensamble Acustico was conceived in the early 1980s by Billy Pereyra and Eduardo Roland in Blancarena, a resort on the coast of the Rio de la Plata, east of Colonia, Uruguay. In 1989, after only a few performances, the duo released their first and only album: a cassette of eight songs titled Un Exceso De Luz (An Excess Of Light), co-released by independent labels Perro Andaluz (Uruguay) and Circe (Argentina). The album was critically acclaimed and lauded as the first 'new age' project to come out of Uruguay. Yet lumping Un Exceso De Luz into that most vast and heterogenous confluence of musical genres, akin to 'world music', dismisses the alchemical breakdown of minimalism with gestures of contemporary jazz, exemplified by the shifting harmonic figures of 'En Los Campos de Colonia' ('In the Fields of Colonia'). Pereyra and Roland sound strings in tandem, forming harmonic compositions that generate unexpected resonances. Together they build a climatic character that gives the sound of Ensamble Acustico its most distinctive seal, sharing more with the aesthetics of contemporary jazz than the nebulous new age label.

Review: A third album of wonderfully intimate, idiosyncratic songwriting from multi-instrumentalist Stephen Gilchrist - formerly the Stuffy in the much loved Stuffy & The Fuses - in his Stephen EvEns guise. The name may be singular, but from the choir of voices singing the opening tune 'A Song For Europe' to the child's voice at the end of seafaring epic 'Hello Salty Salty', this is very much a community effort and feels like it, with Stephen's core collaborators Jimi Scandal (guitar) and Crompton Whesp (drums) joined by guests like former Curve/Echobelly bassist Debbie Smith, longtime Cardiacs keyboard player William D Drake and Hurtling/My Bloody Valentine guitarist and keyboard player Jen Macro. The mood palate is on just as grand a scale as the personnel list, from the Nick Drake-style acoustic guitar/strings interplay of 'Firefly' to the beefy hip-hop backbeat of 'BBQ Head & 7 Bells', a two part track, the first half dedicated to the joys of cooking in the garden, the second about paranoia and the threat of violence. Elements of psychedelia, some gorgeous analogue synth tones, a penchant for a quirky time signature and/or arrangement all add to what's already a very tasty concoction that anyone with an ear for a tenacious earworm or two will love.