Nigel Spencer
Loving this album - great guitar soli that doesn’t slavishly follow the well worn path. The classic Takoma tradition is referenced, but stripped of overt Americana. Goitside, in particular, is phenomenally good - a track to entirely lose yourself in. This is pure North Country Primitive.
Favorite track: Goitside.
Bloxham Tapes is proud to present 'Live on Daisy Hill' by ANDREW DR ABBOTT, a collection of instrumental compositions for baritone guitar inspired by the lived experience of former mill towns and cities of the North of England. They were written between 2011-2018 and, here, are united by field recordings of canals, reservoirs, bell towers and woods of the postindustrial North.
Abbott's music is of a place. Simultaneously uplifting and sad, hopeful and despairing, it reflects the fragile and bleak beauty of the landscape in which it was formed: the left-behind towns of Bradford, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire. 'Live on Daisy Hill' offers a warts-and-all portrait of life in the rural and urban valleys in the vein of 'The Gallows Pole', 'Happy Valley' and 'Dead Man's Shoes'.
In the baritone, Andrew has found an instrument for covering the dynamic range of compositions – from rough, heavy, driving riffs, through to fragile and delicate melodies. Technically, the usual fingerpicking influences are there, Fahey and post-Takoma guitarists, but so are the traces of his peers from the post- and noise-rock underground – Stef Ketteringham, Dean McPhee, Steven Malley (The Horse Loom) and Richard Dawson. Abbott's time in this scene also comes through in the odd time signature, unconventional structures and atonal moments, and a weighty attack of the instrument.
File under: Postindustrial Northern Primitive.
"A minor 21st century folk masterpiece ... Abbott ignores the comfort of pure folk structures and bluesy scales, twisting his lush folk guitar into something brimming with potent pangs of a serrated kind of poetic discontent." (The Quietus)
credits
released November 22, 2018
Andrew DR Abbott - Baritone acoustic guitar and field recordings
All songs fabricated in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Recorded mixed and mastered by Joe Osborne (joe-osborne.com), September 2018
Recommended limited vinyl reissue of the classic Bloxham Tapes cassette from Alison Cotton, courtesy of Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube, available directly from the artist. Bloxham Tapes
Thought LEADER & Thought PARTNER: Bloxham Tapes' recording artist Greening Lambourne's limited, home-dubbed cassette editions cater for all your "Melody In The Murk (TM)" needs. Bloxham Tapes