Debut album by the Berlin-based duo of singer and guitarist Joe Armstrong and Guido Kreutzmüller, who also provides vocals, percussion and other instrumentation. Ian Canty writes…
Both of the members of The Strange Encounters had built up a long track record in music prior to them teaming up. Glaswegian Joe Armstrong started out busking and had the kind of art school background that set many up for a future in Rock & Roll. Over the years he has played guitar in many outfits including Nikki Sudden’s Jacobites and Last Bandits. For his part Guido Kreutzmüller brought together his band Forest Four at the tail end of the 1980s. The pair came together fairly recently in Berlin, with both seeking the perfect vehicle for their own songs.
The first long playing fruits of their collaboration All In The Mind brings together 12 examples of breezy Folk Pop/Rock with Psychedelic and Indiepop touches. Don’t Hold Back moves All In The Mind into action, offering a bright and agreeable sound that gives one a decent introduction into what The Strange Encounters do. The tune is gentle but well paced and evocative, with an endearing hook that cosily embeds itself quickly into the mind. In addition to all that, there’s a little of jangle thrown in for good measure. This is smartly followed up by Recognise, which fades itself in before settling into another very attractive groove. Combined these two make for an accessible beginning to All In The Mind, something that the pared-down acoustic prettiness of Surveillance Town keys into. The ideal sound of hazy Summer afternoons really.
Under The Sun sets forth more assertively, speeding out of the blocks via some neat organ work and loud guitars crashes. Initial impressions point to The Faces, The Stones and Slim Chance roughly occupying a similar sonic neighbourhood as The Strange Encounters, but crucially they add their own slant. Different is more Pop and ballad-like in structure, the rolling piano acting as a nice contrast to the rowdy moments on the LP. Next An Hour Or A Day takes us to the halfway stage of All In The Mind with strings and a decided cinematic tinge.
Acapella and guitar alternate during the intro to They Keep Walkin’ On By, before it kicks into some fine Power(ful) Pop that has a genuine swagger and then a stylish Twenty Sixteen quickly establishes itself as an admirable demonstration of Armstrong and Kreutzmüller’s craft. A spunky rhythmic pull launches the rueful observations of Think’/Drinkin’ and A Smile For Everyone proves again that The SE are as at home with quiet reflection as they are with out and out Roots Rock stormers, as it is mainly achieved with just piano and vocals.
The Boy In The Mirror fuzzes along at a restrained tempo and plots a path that resolves itself with the refrain that named the LP “It’s all in the mind”. Long Lost Days brings down the curtain by veering very much towards Folk, with fiddle and guitar initially doing a large amount of the instrumental work. But there is beauty here too, a knack for Pop nous that The Strange Encounters demonstrate all the way through All In The Mind.
Being totally honest, there is not much on this album that is mind-blowingly original. But all of it is well-crafted, appealing and hugely listenable. The Strange Encounters imbue what they do with their own brand of warmth and empathy for the human condition and all its failings and do so in a melodic and attractive manner. That is great to witness here and one can be certain that good times are just around the corner after every body-blow they take. A promising first collection of charm and value.
The Strange Encounters’ website is here and their Facebook page is here
Various Artists – Before The Day Is Done: The Story Of Folk Heritage Records 1968-1975
Grapefruit Records
3CD/DL
Released 19 August 2022
New 3CD collection that anthologises Manchester’s Folk Heritage record label and its various subdivisions, from the imprint’s launch in 1968 to 1975. This set features bands that tended towards Folk Rock, like Stained Glass and Music Box, plus more rootsy items from the likes of The Combine Harvester and Folkal Point. One may also get a fair idea of the state of Folk in the UK during the seven year period documented. Ian Canty writes
Folk Music has a history in the UK that reaches right back into the Middle Ages and was firmly established by the advent of Pop. Nevertheless, it received a real shot in the arm during the “Cold War” era. The style of Folk worked as a more introspective alternative to the US-inspired kinetic energy of Rock & Roll and as the 1950s ended, its rise in popularity gradually began to gather real steam by meeting the challenges of the modern environment head-on.
Key to the revival of its fortunes was the coming of Folk Rock, even though Bob Dylan’s infamous switch to electric appalled hardcore Folkies. But this move also marked out an area for Beat bands to dabble in and that link solidified, meaning there was even more of a crossover through the Psychedelic years. Acts like The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan and Dr Strangely Strange blurred the lines between Psych and Folk and Marc Bolan’s Tyrannosaurus Rex moved it on a stage further in the years prior to his Glam Rock triumphs. The Anti-War protest movement of the late 1960s also found a natural outlet in the style as well.
The Folk boom in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s meant there were clubs in virtually every major town, forming a network for performers to tour the nation. Indeed, even as late as the 1990s, I can recall my local boozer having a Folk club night every Tuesday. Which usually meant if I wanted a quiet pint on that day I went somewhere else, as it wasn’t really my thing and one of the club members could easily descend into embarrassing hey nonny no and finger in the ear clichés at the drop of a hat.
The few times I dared to venture there while the Folk club was in progress it also seemed to operate as an in-crowd clique, as these things often do. Anyway, I digress – the point is that Folk Music was popular and had established a firm base in the UK before the years profiled on Before The Day Is Done.
This new set looks at the work of the Folk Heritage group of labels, established in Cheadle Hulme by Alan Green in 1968. Green built a studio in his house that mainly consisted of discarded BBC equipment. He recorded many Folk acts there between 1968 and 1975, mostly from the local area, but not always. He put the records out on a variety of imprints including Westwood and Midas, mostly in very small runs. These items have over the years acquired cachet among Folk collectors, due both to their rareness and quality.
The first disc of the set eases one in with the very pretty Folk Pop of Songs Of Sunshine, played by the duo Music Box. Michael Raven And Joan Mills’ Death And The Lady also makes a good impression, which is mainly down to Mills’ crystal clear voice and another pairing of Ann Rhodes and John Wilson, dubbed Penny Wager, weave a hypnotic version of Joni Mitchell’s Marcie.
Folkal Point’s Sweet Sir Galahad offers yet more proof of how well female vocals can work in this style, though having said that the breezy Photographs by three-piece Porter Cunningham is attractively in the mode of early Simon And Garfunkel. Peregrine were similar and Pop-inclined, as witnessed on Lazy Day and reminding one of Folk’s roots in unaccompanied song, The Harvesters’ She Moved Through The Fair is sung acapella by band member Sue Cornes.
Nothing to do with The Wurzels, The Combine Harvester were straight out of Preston and right on a trad Folk tip as their Fanny Blair proves, but a languid Queen Of Hearts by Gallery, a four piece fronted by the married team Royce and Barbara Seabourne, is lovely. Youth crew The Young Folk cover The Strawbs’ You Keep Going Your Way pretty well and Saraband were Folk Heritage’s big noises, with a comparatively massive 2000 copies of their album Close To It All being pressed. Their Retrospect is a chilled acoustic excursion with some definite Pop appeal. An arch version of Mike Heron’s Hedgehog’s Song by Geoff Smedley offers a good deal of fun, before this section of the set ends with some more traditional fare.
If some of the tracks here may put one in the mood of the Merriman Weir episode of “Man To Man With Dead Learner” (Anather by the misspelt Oldest Proffession for one), there is just about enough on this first disc for the more casual listener to enjoy it.
On disc two we open up with a version of Matty Groves, a Trad Arr death ballad that the Fairport Convention made famous. It may well have been the inspiration for the aforementioned Merriman Weir’s Gallows Man too. Here it is rendered by The Wayfarers, a Lancashire quartet and this is followed by the gentle Folk Pop of Parke’s Dancers Of Stanton Drew. Paul And Glen’s version of Dave Gounder’s January Man nudges close to Nick Drake territory and from Derby Saga provide Yesterday’s Rain, a tidy composition well performed. A jolly Lark In The Morning by The Blue Water Folk is pretty good and Stained Glass, from Sudbury, give us the polished and elegant April Come With Me.
Horden Raikes’ The Two Magicians brings home how down and dirty Folk could be and The Bards from Accrington cut an unaccompanied version of the bitter Folk/Protest oldie Blackleg Miner. Friends O’Mine were a duo that featured a young Mark Kjeldsen, later of New Wave contenders The Sinceros. Though you wouldn’t know it necessarily from the gentle and pleasant strum Mice And Old Clocks and then Gallery proves their worth once more with the haunting beauty of Icy Acres, which ends this disc.
The final part of Before The Day Is Done sees the return of Saraband with the breezy and catchy title track to their 1973 album Close To It All. The hopes of Folk Heritage for some commercial success unfortunately were never realised, but this Folk Rock tune is one of the loudest and the best here. Led by Jenni Trevitt, Raggerty were a Kent-based duo that specialised in the likes of the sunny Take Me For Your Friend and Spinning Jenny continue the more Pop/Acid Folk approach on show in the opening of disc three with Connemara Cradle Song.
Parke return with an entrancing The Trees They Do Grow High and Saga also drop in again, this time with the restrained Ballad Of A Falmouth Man. Heading For The Sun by Ron Neep throws in a bit of Country via pedal steel guitar and Weymouth’s Oddsocks featured Nick Saloman aka Bevis Frond in their line-up. Their Oh So Nice shuffles along ably enough, more straight acoustic Pop than Folk and none the worse for it. Christmas And Tchaikovsky by Stuart Marson in somewhat in the same line and Steve Rostron’s strange Snail builds up to something of an epic.
Stained Glass offer up an icy Folk Rock ace in Poll Miles and Once I Knew A Pretty Girl by Folkal Point is nicely accomplished. This disc ends with Penny Wager’s deftly performed Dylan cover I’ll Keep It With Mine and full vocals of All The Good Times by The Blue Water Folk. I found this to be the best disc of the three, with plenty of Pop goodies that smartly deviate from the Folk basics.
While of course Before The Day Is Done is a hard sell to anyone who doesn’t care too much for Folk Music, for the more receptive there is a fair amount of very accessible material included here. This is a well put together, excellently researched set that also acts as important reminder as to the seam of Folk which runs through Popular Music from its beginning right up to today. Alan Green laboured long and hard on Folk Heritage and deserves this day in the sun.
Like the sound of what you have read? You can get a copy here
slicing through the static 