Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

Today's Sunday mix is an inspired by or 'ish' mix, forty minutes of music that is folk adjacent or inspired- the melodies, the playing, a cover of a late 60s, English folk rock classic, an edit of a 60s folk song, some other songs that just feel like they're in the folk music vernacular. Most of the songs on the mix are from this year, the rest from fairly recently.  For want of a better phrase, they've all got a folk vibe. 

There's plenty more music sitting in my downloads and music folders that fall within the boundaries of this- Richard Norris and Dot Allison both come to mind so a part two may follow.

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

• Luke Schneider: midafternoon classic
• Matt Deighton: Tannis Root
• Coyote: The Outsider
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Andy Bell: Light Flight
• Sydney Minski Sargeant: Long Roads
• Totem Edits 12: Feel
• Sewell And The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Luke Schneider is from Nashville, a pedal steel guitarist and part of the ambient Americana scene. midafternoon classic came out last year, a couple of minutes of ambient/ folk with nylon strings, pedal steel and harmonica. His latest four track release came out two days ago and can be found here. 

Matt Deighton's Villager is a 1995 folk gem, much overlooked at the time. Tannis Root is a few minutes of acoustic guitar and some woodwind, lovely modern instrumental folk inspired music that came out on Moonboot's Moments In Time compilation. 

Coyote's The Outsider was the closing song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, an acoustic guitar sequence and the vice of mystic/ writer/ speaker/ philosopher Alan Watts. The Coyote duo were nodding their heads at Andrew Weatherall too, who wrote under the pseudonym The Outsider in the Boy's Own fanzine and who was exactly what Watts is talking about, 'you don't have to join, you don't have to play the game...'

Andy Bell's Pinball Wanderer came out at the start of this year. The title track is lit up by a late 60s folk rock guitar melody, some shuffly acoustic guitars and a sense that Fairport Convention and The Stone Roses in 1989 got in a room together. On his 2022 covers EP Untitled Film Stills, Andy covered songs by Yoko Ono, The Kinks, Arthur Russell and Pentangle. Light Flight was from Pentangle's 1969 folk- rock album Basket Of Light, an album that pushed them into the charts. Light Flight was also the theme tune to BBC 1's Take Three Girls, a late 60s/ early 70s drama about three young women sharing a flat in London. 

I wrote about Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga last week. The single Long Roads is folk indebted, echoes of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett in the playing and singing. Lunga promises to be one of autumn's highlights. 

Totem Edit is Leo Elstob and Justin Deighton. On Feel they take Gordon Lightfoot's 1967 song The Way I Feel and turn it into a 2025 folk/ Balearic groove. I've played this out and it always gets a response. 

Sewell And The Gong's recent album Patron Saint Of Elsewhere is one of late summer 2025's best, a lovely fusion of folk, drones, pastoral melodies, motorik drums and samples. Previously, in 2023, Sewell released a four track EP called Tonight We Fly and Passing Oort Clouds is a beautiful, folk inspired instrumental, looped melodies, acoustic guitars and a gently prodding rhythm. Oort clouds are (possibly) a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, the stars and the Kuiper Belt, a bubble made of icy comet like objects. 

Four Tet's Into Dust (Still Falling) came out earlier this summer and has been getting regular plays round here ever since, the Mazzy Star sample and vocal sinking into Four Tet's folky melodies and skippy drum track, Hope Sandoval's melancholy playing off against Keiran Hebden's propulsion.

Fifty Five Minute Edit Mix

There have been a lot of really good edits out in the wild over the last few years and the thought of slinging a bunch of them together into a Sunday mix became irresistible. In the fifty five minutes below you'll find various artists from the last sixty years of popular culture re- edited and rejigged into new shapes including Gil Scott Heron, Gordon Lightfoot, The Residents, Voice Of Africa, Monsoon, Siouxsie and The Banshees and Les Negresses Vertes. This mix is only part of the story- volume 2 (and maybe 3) will follow shortly. 

Fifty Five Minute Edit Mix

• Western Revolution
• Totem Edits 12- Feel
• Resident Rockers
• Totem Edits 03- Hoomba
• Lonely
• Trading Places (6PM)
• Arabian Knights
• Totem Edits 14- Zombi

Western Revolution was  released on 12" vinyl only, part of Coyote's Magic Wand Special Editions Volume 2, along with Lonely and two other edits (Love Home and Luca). Western Revolution is a live sounding, laid back groove with the unmistakeable voice of Gil Scott Heron advising us about the results of the revolution and theta there will be 'no re- run, brothers and sisters, the revolution will be live'. Lonely picks up where Monsoon's 1981 single Ever So Lonely left off and extends it out.

Totem Edits have become fairly essential recently, a page at Bandcamp for the edit work of Leo Zero and Justin Deighton (with plenty of input from Sean Johnston). One to watch. I posted Feel fairly recently, lovely drawn out funky folk built around a 1967 Gordon Lightfoot song, The Way  Feel. Totem Edit 03 has Voice Of Africa's 1990 Balearic beat smash Hoomba Hoomba close to its core. Totem Edits 14 is one of my favourite recent edits from the pair, a wonderfully absorbing version of Les Negresses Vertes' 1989 French punk/ folk/ Balearic song Zobi La Mouche. 

Resident Rockers is part of a two track EP on the recently reinvigorated Eclectics label, San Francisco avant garde/ art punk rockers/ giant eyeball headgear wearers The Residents bent into new shapes by someone very familiar to this blog. Find Eclectics and the EP here. 

Jezebell are masters of the edit, a sample forming the basis of a completely new track, something old being reworked into something new. Trading Places was a six track pair of EPs from 2023, split into two parts, daytime and nighttime versions. In the 6PM take Siouxsie Sioux's Peek- A- Boo gets reworked and taken for a spin round the floor. 

In 2015 Mojo Filter, an edit veteran, took The Banshees 1981 single Arabian Knights, Siouxsie's post punk psychedelia re- jigged into new shapes. Going from Peek- A- Boo to Arabian Knights seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. 

The Way I Feel Is Like A Robin

The Totem Edit Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of delights, edits of a wide range of songs by Leo Zero and Justin Deighton. This one has been hitting the spot recently, six minutes of Balearic dancefloor folk called Feel. Free/ name your own price here. You'll thank me. I've been hitting play endlessly. 

Feel is a 2024 edit of The Way I Feel by Gordon Lightfoot, from Gordon's album, Lightfoot! in 1966. The guitar playing is beautiful, and Gordon's lyrics tell a story of loss- 'The way I feel is like a robin/ Whose babes have flown to come no more/ Like a tall oak tree along and crying/ When the birds have flown and the nest is bare'.

The Way I Feel

I have developed a thing about robins. The one above was photographed while we were queueing for a ride at Alton Towers back in March, just sitting there along side us. Robins have been associated with the dead for centuries. Some people think that robins appear to bring messages from the dead, that they are messengers between the living and the dead. I don't know if I was aware of this before Isaac died but I've become aware of it since. The idea that Isaac would choose to reveal himself to us in the form of a sweet little robin redbreast seems a little unlikely and I'm a pretty rational person. But when I see one, I think of him and it makes me smile. We saw one in the hedge at the cemetery once which was a bit of a moment. There was one that lived in the tree behind out garden in the spring. It often fluttered into our garden, zipping here and there, occasionally landing on the kitchen window sill, before flying back to the holly tree. 

One morning in April I was preparing for a job interview (I didn't get it, they appointed someone younger and cheaper, something that happened twice earlier this year), the robin sat on the sill while I was looking out. Later on, when I got out of my car at the interview, a robin was on the pavement looking in my direction (I know it wasn't the same robin- I told, you I'm a rational person). It's become a thing, like some other things have become things since Isaac died- the number 23 for one. I don't mind these things that have become things, in fact I like them. Anyway, all this is related loosely to today's post and Gordon Lightfoot's song about feeling like a robin and this photo of a robin which I've been saving since March for just such an opportunity. I didn't even make the connection between the song, the photo and robins until I started writing. Funny how that happens sometimes. 

Early Morning Rain

I'm going to ease myself into Monday with this sprightly Richard Hawley cover of Early Morning Rain. The song was written by Gordon Lightfoot, a hit in 1966, and has been covered by many, from Bob Dylan to Elvis to Neil Young to Paul Weller. In the song, the narrator stands at a wire fence watching a Boeing 707 take off, taking someone far away. This mood seems about right for a Monday morning in September.

Early Morning Rain

Thinking about it now, with some time distance between us, I vastly prefer this Richard Hawley to the grungy riff monster of his last album.

Now I want to hear the fragile post-acid trip comedown Hawley of Can You Hear The Rain, Love? from the Late Night Final album which may well be the best, most beautiful thing he's ever done.



The richness of his voice, the lyric and the musical box melody set off against that hum and throb noise underneath is stunning.