Demalebysse
Album: The Trad Sessions
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.facebook.com/DeMalebysse

According to their Facebook page, De-MaleBysse are 'a collective of professional musicians currently encompassing 3 continents whilst they are recording an array of traditional melancholy 17 Century English, Scottish and Irish folk songs.' Well since that was written, the band have now released their debut album and morphed into a live band as well.

The title of the band's debut album, "The Trad Sessions" is an apt description of what you get for your money, or free as it's available on a pay what you feel appropriate basis as well as physical copy. The album consists of nine tracks that will be familiar to a lot of folkies, including amongst their number "She Moved Through The Fair", "The Cuckoo", "Claudy Banks" and "Blackwaterside" and are given their own arrangements by the band.

As a rough guide I'd say that most of the songs on the album have a longevity of two to three hundred years and songs don't do that without being very good songs with universal themes, life, death and infidelity, another trait the songs share is their adaptability these are songs that can be performed in many configurations, which is what allows a band to put a stamp on what is already familiar.

De-Malebysse have unashamedly gone for classic songs and have done a good job on them, one that reflects that growing trend towards proper instrumentation and arrangement as folk's third wave gains height and power.

"The Trad Sessions" would also serve well as a 101 of folk to reach out as a way of understanding what the tradition is about and to an extent what it sounds like. I could give you better versions of all pretty much every song on the album, but each would be by a different artist with different nuances, De-Malebysse give a consistency of an act rather than a compilation of artists that you're never going to see in the same place, if at all...

Neil King