Various Artist
Album: Sandbanks, Swallows, Slatterns & Saints: Songs & Tunes From The Leigh Folk Festival 2014
Label: Thames Delta
Tracks: 24
Website: http://www.leighfolkfestival.com

The Leigh Folk Festival is increasingly widely recognised as the largest free event of its type in the UK. Incredibly, it's now in its 23rd year, and this CD is the seventh in the continuing series of companion memento-cum-taster releases celebrating the festival's wondrous, if at times bewildering diversity (even by the standards set by the brilliantly, wildly eclectic nature and genuine creativity of the best of today's folk music). Like its predecessors, Sandbanks… presents, in a continuous running sequence, a typical cross-section of the musics to be heard over the festival's four-day span, topped and tailed by the "sonic detritus" of the pealing of bells from two different Leigh churches.

This year's release scores over those of previous years by its reliance almost totally on previously unreleased tracks from artistes booked at the festival (this time round, only two tracks are taken from existing releases - one's from Turkish ensemble She'Koyokh and the other's a stirring recessional hymn from The Crying Lion that originates on a rather less easily available Trembling Bells EP). Sure, the You Are Wolf and Sproatly Smith tracks are heavy-duty remixes (of Cuckoo and We Plough And Sow respectively), but these are still worth having and keeps entirely apt company. Pure old-time tradition is represented by those superbly able practitioners Cath & Phil Tyler, while there's an abundance of creative intelligence on display from the likes of Alasdair Roberts (an effective, simple setting of a Sara Teesdale post-WW1 poem), Fran Morter (a delicious, eerily quiversome take on The Irish Girl), Nancy Wallace (the enchanting self-penned gathering song The Longest Day) and Greanvine (addressing the time-honoured issues of The Captain's Apprentice). There's a wondrous, typically enigmatic psych-folk contribution from Lost Harbours, alongside generous helpings of ever-so-slightly rambling impressionism from Diamond Family Archive and Bare Bones, quality troubadour s/s from Lou Glandfield and M.G. Boulter, authentic Americana from Neil McSweeney, and country-blues from Piers Haslam. Oh, and a live recording of the iconic ISB number Waltz Of The New Moon from Trembling Bells with Mike Heron. And - a first this year - a brace of evocative, if almost scattergun poetic reflections on the festival from the punter's perspective. Yer 78 minutes goes by all too fast, and my only slight carp is that a pithy (albeit entertaining) one-liner summary has replaced the biog note for each artist in the otherwise admirable digipack presentation. And OK, some of the "biggest names" aren't able to appear on this disc, no doubt for legitimate contractual or licensing reasons - so there's no Steve Ashley, Churchfitters, Furrow Collective, Saul Rose & James Delarre or Alison O'Donnell (to name a few) - but these omissions are a small price to pay for the adventurous delights of sampling what's offer on this supremely well-stocked disc, which is excellent value as ever (just £6.50 from the festival website, I believe).

In all, this latest issue is arguably the best yet, and another treasurable "keeper" for the collection of the open-eared folkie, one that will very probably even outlast one's memory of attending the festival. Sadly, this year's promotional package arrived chez-moi too late to provide the necessary timely advance publicity for this inordinately fine festival, which I absolutely must make the effort to attend (and hopefully even sing at) before I get too infirm to travel the considerable distance from these remote parts…!

David Kidman