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Four masters making a perfect blend: (from left) Vincent Peirani, Ballaké Sissoko, Émile Parisien and Vincent Segal
New album: A gorgeous genre-spanning jazz-folk-Anatolian LP featuring Malian kora maestro Ballaké Sissoko, specialist improv cellist Vincent Segal, accordion virtuoso Vincent Peirani and French soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien
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Tales of spoken woe: Hack-Poets Guild’s Blackletter Garland
New album: Marry Waterson of the famous folk family, singer Lisa Knapp and sound sculptor and film-maker Nathaniel Mann form a unique new trio in this engaging, but more often dark concoction of words and music of traditional and original material
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Rachel Unthank and Paul Smith
New album: A beautiful, evocative north-east England folk collaboration between Rachel Unthank and Paul Smith, frontman of Maxïmo Park, and produced by Field Music’s David Brewis in a mix of the traditional and new
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Perú Selvático - Sonic Expedition into the Peruvian Amazon 1972-1986
New album: An excellently colourful 36th compilation release by the Samy Ben Redjeb’s label Analog Africa features a wonderful sprinking of Amazonian cumbia - timbale rhythms, driven by spidery, treble-damaged guitar lines, and drenched in bright splashes of organ
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The Unthanks return in full force with their first album in seven years
New album: After a variety of other projects, the Tyneside folk sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank and co make a welcome return in their usual collective with a hearty and harmonious mix of the traditional and the new with songs on heartbreaks and collieries, rivers and rebellions
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Jake Blount
New album: After his acclaimed 2020 solo debut Spider Tales, the American bluegrass fiddler, banjo player, Afrofuturist and historian returns with a starkly beautiful, atmospheric album drawing on old spiritual numbers and set in a climate-changed, apocalyptic world
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Miraculous Mule: Old Bones, New Fire
New album: Channelling the spirit and sound of the Delta and Appalachian Mountains, a superbly evocative, haunting, powerful new release by the Anglo-Irish Londoners with reworked traditional blues and gospel given a stirring new lease of life
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Vieux Farka Touré: Les Racines
New album: Exquisite seventh studio album by Boureima "Vieux" Farka Touré, Malian singer and sublime guitarist, the player known as ‘the Hendrix of the Sahara’, as well as being the son of Mali’s great Ali Farka Touré
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Ibeyi’s third album Spell 31
New album: The third album from Afro-Cuban French twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz is a sensual, eclectic mix of R&B, hip hop and more, drawing on their rich heritage, and inspired by a passage the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
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Oumou Sangaré’s ninth album Timbuktu
New album: Superlative ninth LP by the Malian megastar, whose songs fuse the bright, beautiful, bluesy and West African traditional with strong social and political commentary framed with her fabulous voice, and finger-picking guitars, koras and kamele ngoni
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Sault spring another surprise with sixth album Air
New album: A sixth album in just three years by the collective run by prolific producer Inflo, aka Dean Josiah Cover, has a striking new direction - instrumental, orchestral works with brass and largely non-verbal choir parts, yet this cinematic release still has echoes of the black experience
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New album: Entrancing third LP by the 29-year-old Catalonian star singer with a voice of huge range, mixing flamenco with reggaeton, hip hop, R&B and lush pop, feminism and food, heartbreak, the staccato with the smooth, and influences from MIA to Niña Pastori and José Mercé
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OKI: Tonkori In The Moonlight
New album: Evocative, eccentric, strange and inventive album by the veteran Japanese musician of Ainu ancestry, Oki Kano 加納 沖, brings together the traditional stringed five-stringed harp, the tonkori, into a fusion with other instruments and styles, from folk to electronica and reggae
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Harpist Rachel Newton and violinist Lauren MacColl come together as Heal & Harrow
New album: Hauntingly stark, evocative, and chillingly beautiful folk as harpist Rachel Newton and violinist Lauren MacColl, with added spoken word commentaries in English and Gaelic, release an album of songs telling the tale of women wrongfully persecuted during Scottish witch trials in the 16th-18th centuries
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Los Bitchos are ready to party ….
Debut album: Break out the pisco and tequila! Produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, a joyously fun debut album by the international all-female London band who play foot-tapping instrumentals fusing surf guitar, Turkish psych, Argentine cumbia and Peruvian chicha, sporting a chic 60s look
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Imarhan’s beatiful new album, Aboogi
New album: Mesmerically beautiful third LP by the Algerian tuareg desert quintet, all atwirl with superb vocals, clever layering, intricate guitar work, and a somehow wonderfully entwined guest vocal appearance by Gruff Rhys
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Anaïs Mitchell’s self-titled latest album
New album: Beautiful, classic singer-songwriter sixth LP from the Vermont folk artist, best known for Broadway success with the 2010 album and musical Hadestown, these finely crafted low-key piano and guitar-led numbers compare favourably with 1970s Joni Mitchell or Aimee Mann
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New album: Beautifully smooth guitar picking and a warm, mellow voice mark out this glowingly lovely latest LP by the folk artist from Columbus, Georgia, in a collection of traditionals and originals with a theme of loss and renewal
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Ben McElroy: How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack
New album: Sparse, haunting, lo-fi and truly beautiful and transcendent new LP by the Wirral-born Nottingham-based folk musician, featuring bright beautiful guitars, strange drones, field recordings and gorgeous fiddle playing
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Favourite selection part 2.
Favourite albums of 2021 – Part 2: Welcome the second instalment, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, but also saw many outstanding voices emerge as well as innovative sounds developed
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