(Mostly) Music Reviews

1. Music reviews for Wheal Alice

Not my main activity here: most of my reviews are for folking.com (see section 2), but I can’t resist reviewing CDs that I particularly like personally here and on Sabrinaflu, in the hope that other people will like them too. Which means that they won’t necessarily be the newest and shiniest releases, just the music I’m listening to myself, when I’m not working on my own music. Which is why one of these reviews is of a CD some fifty years old. 🙂

Folking.com gets far more attention than this blog (or Sabrinaflu) but if you’d like me to review something, feel free to get in touch.

  • DARIA KULESH – Long Lost Home (own label) – this CD was reviewed for folking.com by Dai Jeffries some time ago, but it is fairly recent, and Daria was kind enough to send me a copy after we talked on social media. And I love it!
  • Bert Jansch – a belated review: yes, it took me around 50 years to acquire my own copy of Bert’s first album, though I already knew it quite well years ago, of course.
  • CD Review: Emma and the Professor’s ‘Old Black Crow’: actually a review by Keith Whiddon (of BouzAtina and The Flying Toads), as I never did get a review copy. Unfortunately, it seems that Emma and Mark have decided not to continue as a working band, so this is something of a (sad) milestone.
  • ATLANTIC UNION – Homeward (Blue Island Records BI201601): and this was a review for Folking.com, but I’m cheating and including it twice because Sally Goddard and I worked together in bands decades ago (and hope to do so again in 2018, though since she lives in Canada and I live in Cornwall it’s going to be a fairly limited collaboration!)
  • UB40 Review for Folking.com: essentially a pointer to the folking.com review, but included here because I used some content that was excised from the review because of length.
  • Sarah McQuaid – The St. Buryan Sessions – a guide to the singles and videos released so far as part of Sarah’s lockdown project recorded live at her local church – and lovely stuff it is, too.
  • New Paul Cowley CD – some great blues-soaked guitar and songs from the excellent Paul Cowley.

2. Music reviews for folking.com

(A great site with excellent reviews and much more. I don’t post reviews there as often as I did, but it’s a great resource – possibly even better without me!)

Here’s a bit of a one-off: not a review by me, but a very kind review by Bill Golembeski of my Tears of Morning CD: DAVID A HARLEY – Tears Of Morning (Wheal Alice Music).

The first: a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray set from Denmark: ANDREW JOHN & LISSA – At Home (Last Resort Records LRCD010).

And the second: two fascinating albums byThe Lowest Pair. I even managed to resist including any banjo jokes. Though my wife will tell you that my banjo-playing is a joke. THE LOWEST PAIR – Uncertain As It Is Uneven (Team Love Records TL-93 ) – Fern Girl & Ice Man (Team Love Records TL-94)

[Later reviews, without verbose introduction.]

3. Reviews at Sabrinaflu

[And some I made earlier…]

I’ve been reviewing books, concerts and records since I was 20 or thereabouts, but most of them are long gone, of course. I haven’t been carrying around copies of everything I’ve written in the last 60 years or so. Here, though, are some music review links from Sabrinaflu. If I write more that don’t fit Folking.com’s brief, though, they’ll probably be published here first rather than at Sabrinaflu, which is receiving only the most minimal maintenance now (since I no longer live in the area).

  • Mal Brown’s excellent CD Sharp Stones and Tender Hearts.
  • A lovely CD by Martin Thomas: CD Review: ‘Pieces’ by Martin Thomas.
  • Flying Toads CD review (an excellent collection of tunes and songs: an earlier CD than the one reviewed for folking.com).
  • A Shropshire Lad: a 1994 CD by the late Michael Raven with vocals by Joan Mills, featuring settings of poems by A.E. Housman alternating with Welsh traditional (mostly) tunes played on solo guitar.  Originally posted on my Shropshire Blues blog (which is more about Shropshire than blues!). As I no longer live anywhere near Shropshire, that blog has declined dramatically in the amount of time I devote to it.
  • Vagrant Stanzas: a review of the 2013 recording by Martin Simpson. Originally posted on my personal web page.
  • When I review books (which I often do) they’re usually about computer security, which is, after all, my main source of income, so I won’t link them here. (In the unlikely event that you’re interested in my security writing, much of it is linked to from my Geek Peninsula blog.) This review of a book by the late Pauline Fisk is on my Shropshire Blues blog and rather than Sabrinaflu because most people are likely to consider it of purely local interest, but I’m linking to it anyway because it’s a pretty good book. 🙂 Book Review: Pauline Fisk book on Shrewsbury
  • David Harley

 

%d bloggers like this: