England - The South Coast

Heading east along the south coast of England we stop in Dorset.  Accordion player Paul Hutchinson is a native of Dorset and he recently recorded an album with a new quartet he named The Maniacs together with Seona Pritchard on violin and viola, Gil Redmond on cello and Karin Wimhurst on clarinet.  Whilst the name The Maniacs suggests a heavy metal band the title of the album released in February is more explanatory: The Maniacs - De-composed 18th Century Dance Music.  The album was recorded in Shroton Church in Dorset.  Here's a song from that album called Roodulum:

Moving on to Southampton in Hampshire we meet folk punk band The Men They Couldn't Hang.  They've been going on since 1984.  Here's a song from their 2005 album Smugglers and Bounty Hunters called The Ghosts of Cable Street about an antifascist protest in London in 1936 in opposition to a march by the British Union of Fascists.  The antifascists clashed with the police and the events became known as the Battle of Cable Street.

Next stop is the popular seaside city of Brighton in East Sussex, where folk duo Hickory Signals hails from.  They consist of Laura Ward and Adam Ronchetti, their sound is based around Ward's powerful leading vocal and Ronchetti's vibrant acoustic guitar and pulsing cajon to which they add flute, percussion and shruti drones.  They released their debut album Turn to Fray in 2018 and this is an atmospheric number from it called Noise of the Waters:

The pair are also part of the Brighton-based folk music collective Bird in the Belly.  They go around collecting little known and forgotten lyrics, poems and stories and set them to their own hypnotically original compositions.  Here's a song from their 2018 debut album The Crowing called Horace in Brighton:

Virtuoso guitarist Richard Durrant was born in Hollingbury just outside  Brighton.  His music kind of defies categorisation incorporating elements of classical guitar, jazz, folk, prog rock and electronica.  In 2014 he released a minimalist album called Cycling Music, combining his guitar playing with mechanical bicycle noises and electronica.  He launched his album by cycling almost 1500 miles across England from venue to venue.  Here's the story of that ride.  It's 44 minutes long, but well worth a watch and of course full of music:

Folk singer Shirley Collins was born in Hastings in 1935 and was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960's and 70's.  She lived with American Folk Collector Alan Lomax for a while and went on a folk collecting trip across the southern United States with him in 1959, where she was credited with the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell.  She originally retired from music in 1979 after a painful divorce and the loss of her voice, but miraculously picked up singing again in 2014.  Here's a song from the latter part of her career from the 2016 album Lodestar.  Sorry it's a bit morbid, the song is called Death and the Lady:

Shirley Collins actually is going to have a new album out on the 24th July called Heart's Ease.  Not bad for an 85 year old!  This is a song from that album called Wondrous Love:

That's it today from the south coast of England, next we are heading into the big smoke that is London.  As usual you can follow my virtual ramblings on my tripline map