Comus.. goes without saying.

Mr Fox, Mellow Candle, Lal and Mike Waterson ('Bright Phoebus') come rapidly to mind; Its not Acid or Wyrd but Ashley Hutchings' 'Morris On' lps, the Albion country band, Steeleye Span's 'Hark the village waites' and of course Fairport's 'Liege & Lief'

Of a more contemporary nature, Circulus (Michael Tyack) are pretty zany!

A couple of years ago I saw a duo called 'Arch Garrison' in a very small gig; they are Craig Fortnam and James Larcombe both who play in North sea radio orchestra. It wasn't folk exactly but had a very English acoustic vibe with songs about Roman roads, Hill forts and ancient straight tracks across the chalk hills of southern England.

Talking of 'old straight tracks', the Ex Lindisfarne members who formed a band of that name, I fully recommend their first lp..

Not really folk but very folk influenced, 'Sume' from Greenland; their first lp 'Sumut' was released about 73 predominantly Inuit and sung in Greenlandic and definitely worth a listen.

Two of my favorite obscure acid folk albums are both self-titled, Justine who were made up of Americans and Brits, and String Cheese which had connections to It's a Beautiful Day. 

And while I wouldn't consider them acid, freak or wyrd Errobi's 'Ametsaren Bidea' is a pretty killer Basque folk album with some funky sounds.

Outside of what has already been suggested, i'm a huge Buffy Saint-Marie fan. She was wyrd when Simon & Garfunkel were hip. Her lyrical screams of pain affect me deeply every time i dare play her albums. 

I find the French band Ripaille's "La Vielle Que L'on Brûla" to be somewhat freaky folky as well although it is uneven, it still has an overall vibe.

Personally i feel nobody did it better than Comus on "First Utterance." It simply doesn't get any better for freak folk. That was downloaded from the god-force, whatever that may be.

Exuma's first album is really pretty excellent as well.

If you extend the "folk" term globally then there are many excellent folk musicians. Some of my favorite comes from the Slavic countiries with Gypsy influence but i'm game for any style really no matter where. It's just that most of the time it's not weird enough for me to be OMG excellent! 

I think someone mentioned 'Circulus' also.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8a8cutYP7foOZw-ts7-F07ZOvQdz7weH

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=9002" rel="nofollow - ATMAN discography and reviews

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=2558

Fuchsia......another great one from 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt6vYF4ZxZQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhsh3Xql1i4

This was completely new to me but I just checked it out on Youtube after seeing your review - I like it quite a bit. Thanks for the tip.

Staying in France, but with a Breton folk-rock vibe, I'm also a fan of the Dan ar Braz album Douar Nevez. Another record with a consistent vibe.

^ Really like Gorky's; got hear of them through Super Furry Animals, Gorwel Owen who produced and played keyboards on some the early SFA stuff also worked with GZM. I saw them at a tiny free festival in mid Wales in 1996 and they were great, a little shambolic in places but very charming and very influenced by Kevin Ayres!

Gruff Rhys' solo lps are very much in a similar vein, particularly 'Candylion'.. also worth watching are the documentary films by Gruff Rhys 'Separado' and 'American interior'. 

The two compilation lps 'Welsh Rarebit vols 1 & 2' which are compilations of Welsh language psych, folk and proto-prog from the Welsh 1970 label 'Sain' partly curated by Gruff Rhys.. which then brings me to Meic Stevens, the 'Welsh Bob Dylan' who was a good mate of Syd Barrett..

Bruce Palmer of Buffalo Springfield released this one psychedelic folk ablum in 1971. Pretty cool!

:)

Icarium wrote: "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

Hi,

To me, this is the biggest issue with some folk clubs around here. It is ALL about kissing as* to a bunch of traditional songs, and you will be damned if you don't have a Farina, or some other oddball song in there. You CAN NOT, in America, create an original song, because no one will listen to it, and will instead go play "Annie got My Gun" ... totally ignoring the work of someone like Roy Harper, and many others along the way.

These days, trying to keep track of some big names in the old days, like Baez, Dylan, and so many others, it's hard to believe that the only one not doing a traditional song is actually Bob Dylan, and he was deep fried for taking things electric, which is where it went, but in a club or two around here or up and down the coast, it is ELECTRIC, but it is not loud ... it has to be soft, so it stays with the theme/idea of "FOLK". But here, the applause is only for a "known" song ... so you trying to bring something else to the table, you will be lucky to have your groupie applauding your effort and everyone else leaving the room!

It is just a sad thing to see, how commercialized and totally brainwashed by the media so many of these clubs are, and I get scared every time I visit many of these clubs around here. And FOLK music is not the only one with the problem ... rock'n'roll's thing is even worse!

Haunting stuff.

One of the least known that I know are the great original folk/electronic duo Solarference from Bristol that should have far more fans.

Richard Dawson immediately comes to mind as a successor of Comus, Spirogyra, Incredible String Band, with his album Peasant incorporating neo-medieval influences to his off-kilter English-traditional-folk-inspired sound:

Kim Myhr is one of my favorite guitarists active. The things he can do with an acoustic guitar boggle my mind. He comes from more of an avant-garde/New Music background, but his music should please many free folk and chamber folk enthusiasts. 

Crescent is most known for their brand of melancholy indie rock and post-rock, but, in 2003, they released By the Roads and the Fields, featuring psychedelic acoustic guitar led songs that fall into a particular twilit crevice in the mind that few pieces of music occupy. Lots of influence from Zen in the lyrics, it seems:

Gjallarhorn is traditional Nordic Folk with a... digeridoo. And sometimes mandolin. Even though it's heavily rooted in Nordic Folk traditions it reaches to other traditions, much like ISB does, and fills a certain pagan folk void that much of the psych stuff doesn't:

Unlike the other songs on Five Leaves Left, this brilliant string arrangement was not by Robert Kirby, but by Harry Robertson.

I mentioned Mount Eerie in the other thread. Phil Elverum has flirted with and gone all the way with, at times, avant-folk and pysch folk both as Mount Eerie and in his former band The Microphones. The album Mount Eerie by the Microphones (confusing, I know) is a good example. He kind of sits between Sufjan Stevens and David Tibet (even having Tibet's darkness and atmosphere at the beginning of this decade with Wind's Poem, Ocean's Roar, and Clear Moon).

Robbie Basho is known most as John Fahey's Hindustani-influenced American Primitivist compadre, but imo he fits in like a glove here. Also, his guitar work is to die for. 

James Blakeshaw, of course, deserves a mention, being heavily influenced by Basho and also being on Current 93 records.

And to end with another traditional-not-traditional rec, you have Kíla, a Celtic folk band from Ireland who uses more progressive structures and draws from other traditional folk musics aside from Celtic and is one of the few folk bands I've heard rival Comus in intensity. The title track of Luna Park is one of my favorite tracks period. 

Admirals Hard

Arch Garrison

Stars in Battledress

The Unthanks

Circulus

Kate Rusby

Lady Maisery

The only old name I will mention is that of the sadly now largely forgotten  Anne Briggs. For some, I need say no more. For others, Google and Spotify. The purest voice you will ever hear, still gives me goosebumps.  She started singing and gigging as a teen in the late 50s. She recorded a total of about 30 songs. But she came to hate recording and hated the sound of her own voice. Then in 1971 aged only 27 she stopped and kind of became a recluse. She was the influence for so many other female folk singers back in the day.

Apparently Anne Briggs is the basis for the Richard Thompson song Beeswing below..beautiful track one of RT's best

Last year, David Garland released a 4-hour electroacoustic chamber folk mammoth Verdancy. It strikes me as sort of a folk version of Jim O'Rourke's Eureka. It can be a bit sweet at times, but there's not a moment on the record that isn't crafted with care, and the moments that venture into more experimental territory are exhilerating. I'm mainly posting "Periodicity" for length's sake, but the best tracks are the lengthier ones which make use of his "modified guitar" in which "electronics... provoke the vibration of wire and wood," producing resonant tones and feedback which give his performances a droning ambient feel. 

Of course, you have Natural Snow Buildings and TwinSisterMoon (a member of NSB) who create a special kind of lo-fi drone avant-folk. I prefer TwinSisterMoon's solo work, so I will post this song from The Hollowed Mountain: 

Then there's Spires That in The Sunset Rise, who get even stranger than NSB, evoking some of the "witchiness" 

You also have Greg Malcolm and his album Some Other Time, full of highly experimental semi-improvisatory drone folk:

And then there's this gem:

People interested in this category should check out this RYM list:

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Liero/folk-horror-in-music/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Liero/folk-horror-in-music/

 

I don't think I've heard anyone mention Loudest Whisper so far - they were a rare Prog-Folk/Psych-Folk band from Ireland. Their LP "The Children of Lir" only had 500 pressings and the album was only sold in Ireland, although I was lucky enough to buy it on CD from Amazon. This is the opening track from the album...

 

 

Not to worry, it's early days yet - I have a new Folk poll coming up soon which WILL feature lots of Acid/Psych-Folk artists, including many of those "wyrd" and wonderful artists you mentioned in my Prog-Folk thread.

 

I never get tired of listening to that amazing Loudest Whisper album. It's just one of the many hidden treasures of YouTube where I never would have discovered that rare and long-lost album without the help of the Internet.

 

One of the rarest Folk albums of all time is Susan Christie's "Paint a Lady" album from 1970. There were only three pressings of the album ever made!

 

 

There's a lot of great psych folk hidden under the guise of Krautrock as well. This is just one such case that may not technically be completely folk but has a lot of it

 

Thanks for the link. When you mentioned Disco,  Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" was the first song that came to mind, and purely by coincidence, I noticed you mentioned Giorgio Moroder in the first line of your thread.