SPOICKE

There is folk, but there is dark ambient as well. Let's see how this "Spoicke" looks like.

The album consists in 4 tracks, two lengthy ones (around 15 minutes) and two less long which score about 5 minutes each, but the second is a reprise of the first long track.

"Black Matthew 1" is a long dark ambient track which reminds me a little to the progressive electronic of Richard Rich on which the lectronic is the modulation of acoustic instruments and natural sounds. On this track we can hear harp and sitar together with background noises and sometimes distorted voices. As in a lot of medieval music inspired tunes, there is no rhythm and the mood is calm and sad. I think to some early Clannad or Pentangle. You know those long harp based instrumentals? Well add to those electric guitar in saturation,and various background noises, some electronics (possibly) and ethnic instruments. If you like the genre it's an excellent track. About 16 minutes of dreamy sadness to swim into. If you think to prog-folk don't expect anything like Mostly Autumn.

A bit more "traditional" is the second track. "The Shore That Fears The Sea" is a stupendous folk song with a medieval flavor. I can imagine it sang by Angelo Branduardi as it's more or less the kind of music (and vocals) that you can find on his first albums: some slow finger picking, little piano and harp background and some electric guitar in the instrumental part in the middle of the song with also some wooden flute. Great!

The second long track "Hazelhurst" is of the kind of Black Matthew, but something more happens. If psychedelic folk exists this can be an example. While on the first track there's a basic melody played by the harp, initially here is the harp in background while the other sounds appear disconnected, but after a couple of minutes we are back in line with the first track. More dreamy than sad it is made of little changes so that the listener is not consciously aware of how it's developing. If it wasn't for the harp I would have added this band to progressive electronic. Noting celtic, anyway, especially when, around minute 11, there's some which sounds electronic, but may be the glass harmonica sampled by Michael Tanner.

There's still time for a coda consisting in the second part of "Black Matthew". This time there are vocals, high pitched with some falsetto. Less than for minutes with David Colohan who on this song sounds like the Thinguma-Jigsaw banjoist-singer Seth Buncombe. A quite challenging track.

Three 3-stars pieces, 2 of which long and a 5 minutes 5 stars song. I'm rating it 3, but this band is a really worth trying.