Here’s some recommendations for great music you can get from Bandcamp. so following on from my post earlier, I took everyone who replied & wrote a sentence about their stuff and linked to it below. Enjoy!
I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot by Mr. Alec Bowman. This is my album. It’s out Friday 1st May. Of course, it was going to be here.
Historical Record vol. 1&2 by Josienne Clarke. I made that cover. Also, it’s a great & important record.
Smoke From A Future Fire by The Howard Hughes Suite. Wonderfully subtle leftfield acoustic music, kind of like The Shadows if they were my backing band instead of Cliff Richards. Calls to mind some of Warren Ellis’ soundtrack work, in feel if not exactly in sound.
Burd Ellen take traditional folk and bend it through a haunting, broken, modern lens. Progressive musicians writing their own rules & drawing the map for how it should be done. Watch them carefully, for they will continue to do excellent things.
Water Is Wet by Theo Hakola, long lost brother in misery, on Microcultures Records. For fans of Mark Lanegan or Nick Cave.
Corrie Shelley has a few sweet acoustic English folk albums of original songs here, and they’re all worth checking out, but start with ‘The Leaf & The Cane’.
Lucy Kitchen’s Sun to My Moon is a favourite of mine; beautifully produced, eerie modern English folk. This gets played a lot, here.
Me Lost Me is making brave & futuristic explorations into what folksong can be. New to me, but interesting & I shall be checking out more.
Philippe Bronchtein’s Isolation Music – he used to be called Hip Hatchet. His name associated with a project means it’s gonna be beautiful. He’s one of those musicians, and this solo EP is a particular favourite of mine.
Frank Birtwistle’s Ashes – Frank is a prolific musician, really making the most of the bandcamp platform. I like his solo acoustic guitar more than pretty much any others. I dunno why. He’s just better at it. I like listening to it where I don’t usually.
Now, My Girl The River are really making waves with their country stuff, and it’s easy to see why. It’s classic American music, big, sweeping, with a lovely soulful edge. Excited to share a release date with these good people!
I’m a huge fan of Settling Houses unusual take on American indie folk & I’m delighted to share a release date with their new one. Intimate vocals that call to mind John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, a band that can do anything, coming off like a grown up Front Bottoms, but importantly, the lyrics! Man, this fella can write. I find myself noticing words, phrases, rhymes in the thing and pausing for thought, second guessing myself. A wonderful artist.
Here’s Thunderhead, 90’s techno survivor! Odder & more atmospheric than the description would have you believe.
Peter James you might know from his best in class photography which he shares on Twitter. He also makes incredibly classy austere atmospheric ambient music. Check it out.
Dont’ know where to start talking about my friends Lawrence County. They’ve been there through it all, great people doing grassroots work, taking what they find and documenting their lives, which are by all accounts, fascinating! Check out their latest album, The Frailty Of Humans.
Tribes Of Europe make “inner & outer space music for the good children of earth & other planets” and I can’t add anything to that other than to say if you like your psychedelia strident & swirling & swung then you’ll enjoy their tunes!
I’m so glad that Lukas Drinkwater replied to my thread! Lukas is the real thing, everything he says he is and probably more besides. He runs Polyphonic Recording with Emily Barker, makes music with & for other folks, does it by himself and is the personification of a straight up sharer, a supporter, a facilitator. I’d recommend starting with his Jacob & Drinkwater stuff if you don’t know his music but it’s all great stuff.
I met Robert Lane when he interviewed Josienne for his podcast – here’s a link to his bandcamp where you can grab his music – he’s a community minded sharer, a supporter of the arts & i don’t know his output as well as I should so I shall be taking this opportunity to change that.
Justin Capps & The Cavaliers – a great bunch of folks with a big indie rock sound and a voice that I’ll never not be jealous of. Go check out their music and show them your support if you like. They’re worth it.
There’s this cassette label that do crazy wonky weird electronic stuff called Sharted Jeggings, a name so mesmerisingly difficult to like I can hardly bare to type it, but they support, they engage, they got an ear for a melody and you can go listen to them now!
Here’s Afterwise, acoustic music for the discerning modern listener & all round supporter of good things!
Zygmunt makes wonky electronic dance music and owns a truly great pair of shades. He shouldn’t do what he does, but he does it, and I don’t think anyone could put it better.
And that will do for now – I have got some guitars to record for another project I’m working on. Go get involved in some Bandcamp action. Friday 1st May or anytime, really! Thanks, friends, for supporting each other.
ps. adding three more latecomers but I wanted this to be complete – everyone who replied to me on twitter to ask got a share in this post,
Including Ben Morgan-Brown, Malcolm McWatt & Matt Blick