Children of Albion

Artist Ben Edge released his absorbing large-format compendium of British folk customs last year, featuring vivid narrative artworks and first-person accounts of engaging with the contemporary groups who practice the folkloric emanations from our deep past, whether that be morris, stone circles at sunrise or the Obby Oss on Mayday. Those customs, and the close attention of an artist, are funnelled into music here, though less successfully, on an album of 11 songs. As well as Edge’s guitar, and Kathryn Roberts Parker on Baroque fiddle, piano, harmonium and tin whistle, there are harmony vocals from Elspeth Anne, a singer from the Welsh borders, on the drone-heavy title-track (the album’s standout), ‘Winter and Spring’ and ‘The Great Wen’, while Angeline Morrison guests on ‘Crossbones Lament’, which, like ‘Children of Albion’, has something of a hypnotic shruti drone – but the jaunty, straightforward melodies and lyrics that act as lessons can start to pall.