Ashley Hutchings and Ernesto De Pascale
Album: My Land is Your Land
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 15
Website: http://www.folkicons.co.uk/ashley.htm

Ashley Hutchings MBE can rightly claim to be one of the true icons of British Folk Rock music. Famed for his work with Fairport Convention (1967 - 1969), The Albion Band (1971 - 2002), Steeleye Span (1995), and the Rainbow Chasers, Ashley is now 70 years of age but continues to make quality music and tour.

This, his latest album, is a collaboration between Ashley and his great friend the eminent Italian journalist Ernesto de Pascale who has since sadly passed away. "My Land is Your Land" can best be described as a journey through two special lands and their cultures and is a fusion of both Ashley and Ernesto's musical passions and loves.

The album has been many years in the making and brings together a total of thirty two musicians from both countries and recorded in numerous sessions in the two locations, no doubt accompanied by enormous lashings of pasta and wine. There are enough performers featured on this album to almost fill a London double decker bus!

Folk rock is a pretty good description of the music on offer which is also interspersed with poetry and readings. A fine selection of vocalists and musicians are featured including both Ashley's wife, Judy Dunlop and his son Blair Dunlop. Blair is one to watch for the future and was quite superb when I saw him live a couple of years ago. I am not sure how he feels being featured on an album with a song about "The Lion of Highbury" as he is a confirmed Spurs fan. The song does however describe a match between England and Italy in 1934 so patriotism may well prevail.

You can hear the sounds and influences of Ashley's previous bands in some of the songs, most noticeably in "Café Culture" and "No Juliet Dreaming." Listen to Ernesto's spoken voice in the story telling of "The Call of Yesterday" and let the words wash all over you like a cup of warm chocolate.

"New Italian Shoes" is a real throwback to the 1960's with its nostalgic words and sounds. "The Song of Two Bridges" has a real Elizabethan sound and is a tale of Westminster Bridge and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Undoubtedly two of the most recognisable bridges in the world and, in the case of the latter, most certainly one of the most beautiful! The music does them both proud and is possibly my favourite track on the album. Its structure seems to have been partly influenced by the vocal qualities of Jon Anderson.

"Come Join Together" will please all fans of classic literature with its words from Dante Alighieri and William Shakespeare. The accompaniment is simply perfect for the voice over.

So much to listen to and admire on this album of sheer unadulterated quality!

I would be interested to see what category a music shop will place the album in as it seems to cover so many styles of music. I quite liked it the album on first listen and have grown to really like a d appreciate it the more I have listened to it even if it would not normally be my first choice of musical genre.

Rory Stanbridge