 Sharron Kraus
English folksinger Sharron Kraus plays "dark folk music for the new
millennium", with a unique approach that draws equally from the stark
traditional ballad-singing of legends such as Shirley Collins and Anne
Briggs, and the more experimental modern "avant folk" style. Her 2008
release The Fox's Wedding (her fourth overall, in addition to a
number of collaborations with other artists, including Meg Baird of
Philadelphia's Espers) features her most advanced blend yet of roots and innovation.
sharronkraus.com
listen on MySpace
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 Thinguma*JigSaw
The music of Norwegian duo Thinguma*jigSaw matches the loopy surrealism of its name. Their subversive "splatterfolk" style combines elements of traditional Irish/British/American folk with contemporary art music, and spices it up with lyrical and musical components usually associated with horror films, experimental theatre and modernistic poetry. Their debut album, (awakeinwhitechapel), was released in 2007 on the Irish Deserted Village label (also home to United Bible Studies) and appeared on a number of year's-best lists.
listen on myspace
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 Arlt.
Arlt is a trio from Paris, France consisting of Eloïse Decazes (vocals)
and Sing Sing (guitar, vocals), with assistance from Mocke (guitar).
Their music evokes distant echoes of old rural blues, folk
music turned upside down, Black Africa and stripped Baroque. A broken
jazz or bossa-nova chord can be heard here and there, and the odd pop
harmonies riding a fucked-up spring achieve the beautiful confusion.
Eloïse's singing is like that of a siren
on a dried land, an exhausted prophetess, a bashful lover, a bust
swing. Her voice, ageless, may be centuries old of age, or maybe a few
minutes, endlessy resumed. Sing Sing plays the guitar like his pulse
orders him to; battered, delicate and coarse, ever on the merry edge of
total collapse. His deep and ill-mannered singing sounds funny when
bumping into the
ethereal sopranos of aforementionned Eloïse. An amazement. A joy.
Whatever. Their songs, mysterious, elliptic, and yet curiously
incarnate, reluctantly evoke love, and solemnly invent almost comic
catastrophes. All in a French verse as bony as it is colourful,
repetitive and restless.
listen on myspace
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