Acid, freak, wyrd folk and related

Acid folk and various folk music styles have long been a big part of my musical diet. What are some of your favourites? Feel free to mention anything folky that you like, but I'm hoping to be turned on to some lesser-known stuff.

In PA, I love Comus, Perry Leopold, Spirogra, Catherine Ribeiro + 2 Bis, Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Jan Dukes de Grey, Tim Buckley, The Incredible String Band, Pearls Before Swine, The Pentangle, Trees, Forest, I like, but don't love Broselmaschine, and like various music in Indo Prog/ Raga Rock (and psych) that would also count such as Malachi's Holy Music and Third Ear Band. Also Syd Barrett for his psych folk and It's a Beautiful Day.... And Griffin was one of my early musical loves (I think the first album has music that fits such an aesthetic well). You get the idea.

Outside of music in PA, one of my very favourite albums is The Wicker Man soundtrack. I love Exuma and Mark Fry's Dreaming with Alice I like a lot, especially for the song The Witch. I like Hölderlins Traum. And I like Matt Berry's folky music a lot. Charlie Cawood has some nice modern folky music. Lots of stuff I can't remember. I also found myself liking NeoFolk, but not its ideological associations. I also like fairly mainstream folk such as Joan Baez.



So what do you like, and while I've covered quite a bit of ground and perhaps should have tried to be more narrow-focused, what would you recommend for someone into such music?

^ I like those ones I hadn't mentioned too, especially Roy Harper's Stormcock.

{And I don't feel like editing my OP, but I meant to say Gryphon (as in the Midnight Mushrumps one). Think I mixed it up in my head with a psych band called Griffin (and there's a heavy metal one of the same name)}

For a modern band you could check out The Hare and The Moon:

"I was never really a bone fide member of the folk scene," says Harper, whose 1960s and 1970s albums, including Stormcock, Sophisticated Beggar and Flat Baroque and Berserk are now considered classics -- and precursors to today's alternative folk genre. "I was too much of a modernist, really. Just too modern for what was going on in the folk clubs. I wanted to modernize music, but more than that to completely modernize people's attitudes towards life in general. I was involved in trying to bring meat to the folk music, which is a big mistake anyway." Roy Harper

Not too twee for me, though I don't really like it TBH. For a "Moon", I like TwinSisterMoon:



Edited by Logan - January 03 2018 at 16:40

^ That's a good song. I had really liked Jefferson Airplane, and this Kantner album with Grace Slick, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Jerry Garcia album is something of an ending of an era album. Must say, I hadn't heard any of this album in years.

I hope discussion doesn't die out quickly in this thread. Condor, for instance, is very good at asking questions that make threads take off with spirited discussion, but I'm not so adept at setting things off.

I'd like to turn this into a general folk appreciation thread where hopefully many people can banter and discover music that might appeal to their tastes. Maybe I should rename the topic. I'll do a disco one, that might lead to some spirited debate -- although I much prefer dialectic.

I'll do a clip of one of my favourite folk songs (so simple and beautiful to me):



And a different version by Bunyan:



I should keep the embeds down despite my desires since that can cause some people problems accessing the topic.

Cosmic: by the way, I checked out Michael Tyack and enjoyed the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asaY5Lx0eQk Circulus is wonderful -- I'm on youtube autoplay (fun way to listen to music, I find).

Thanks, David. I love that Exuma album, and I like the second a lot too. It's one that everybody into freak folk, and into certainly into Caribbean junkanoo freak folk, should know. ;) One might glibly, and not I'd say accurately, describe Exuma as Comus on coconuts (I've heard that rancid coconuts can cause visions).

My memory is not what it once was, but I seem to recall you mentioning Povl Dissing before. I listened to a track off the album you mentioned on youtube and liked it. I can hear where the vocals in part might be an acquired taste to some, but I acquired the requisite tastes long ago (even if some think my tastes show a lack of taste).

I knew Carol of Harvest; like it.

Right now I'm on a major Robbie Basho kick.

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/robbie_basho

Edited by Logan - February 10 2018 at 18:40