We are very pleased to welcome Brighton's Foxpockets to the world of the Folk Police. The band create a woozy, enchanting and slightly scary melange of otherworldly sounds - one part sea chantey, one part re-imagined early music and one part psychedelic folk. Think of the Incredible String Band lost in the Wildwoods, singing about the things that lurk unseen in hedges... 

We'll be reissuing Foxpockets' very limited edition mini-album, The Albatross and the Coracle, later this summer, with new recordings to follow in 2012. The band are about to embark on a mini tour of Wales (see live page for details) with further gigs to follow. 

And can we nominate banjo player Sam Tetley as the man with the best folk name of 2011?

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Elle will be doing a free in-store appearance at Rough Trade West, 130 Talbot Road, London W11 1JA on Monday 4th July at 6.00pm. Please try to get along if you're in the area, and do let all your friends know about it. Copies of the new album will be available and it's a chance not only to hear Elle perform an acoustic set in an intimate record shop setting, but also to support independent music retailers... you can pre-order the album from Rough Trade by clicking on the logo above.

Here's a link to the Facebook event page for this gig: Elle at Rough Trade

We are very pleased to welcome Lancastrian lovelies Harp and a Monkey into the Folk Police fold. Memorably described as "Elbow for seafarers and ramblers", they wrap their deep northern slice-of-life vignettes in a tasty coating of harp 'n' banjo driven electronica. The debut album will be released later this summer, date to be announced. In the meanwhile, you can catch them live this coming Thursday 30th June at Verve Bar in Leeds, Saturday 2nd July at the Vintage Rock Bar in Doncaster, Sunday 17th July at Milo Bar in Leeds and Saturday 30th July at Kendal Calling Festival. You can listen to tracks from the forthcoming album at the Harp and a Monkey Myspace page.

"Perhaps Elle Osborne isn’t really a folk musician, but an avant-garde experimenter using traditional tunes as vehicles for her ragged, ripe visions... It’s taken Osborne ten years to complete her second album. Luckily, her approach appears to be timeless." (Stewart Lee)

"An instant winner. Whether its a 19th century Shaker hymn or a modern piece like Barry Dransfield's Handsome Meadow Boy, she inhabits a song fully... Slowly Slowly marks a welcome return to the fold." (Neil Spencer, Uncut ****)

"Quality trad... she brings a modern dewiness to the 10 traditional tracks here. Although the musicianship is excellent, I particularly found myself drawn to the unnaccompanied Fair Annie." (Jeanette Leech, Shindig)

"Wayward focus and maverick intensity... the sheer rawness with which she presents this mostly traditional collection is slowly winning me over. There’s something wonderfully eerie, for example, about the way her droning fiddle dominates the mix over her voice and the waves of Alex Neilson’s drums on the shanty I’m Bound Away and it takes a rare sort of recklessness to bring something new to a song as well-known as Three Score And Ten. Whatever else, she doesn’t want for courage or imagination." (Colin Irwin, fRoots)

The album is released via Proper Music Distribution on 4th July. You can now pre-order a copy to ship on the release date at the folk police shop.

Our critically acclaimed Peter Bellamy tribute album Oak Ash Thorn is now available to download from iTunes. You can also download it from Amazon and its still available from our Bandcamp page.

We are delighted to announce that future Folk Police releases will be distributed by the UK's leading independent distributor, Proper Music Distribution. This will not only mean that you'll be able to find Folk Police albums in places other distributors can't reach, but also that our releases, starting with Oak Ash Thorn, will be available for download via iTunes, eMusic, Amazon and so on. More on this soon.

Elle Osborne is appearing at the Slaughtered Lamb, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 0DX on Wednesday 8th June to support her forthcoming album So Slowly Slowly Got She Up. Support is from the excellent Irish traveller singer Thomas McCarthy. Tickets are £6.00 from We Got Tickets and the doors are open at 8.00 pm. This should be a great night for any of you in the London area.

And if you're in the Lewes area, Elle plays a free in-store set at the Union Music Store on Saturday 28th May at 3.00pm. The store is at 1 Lansdown Place, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 2JT and is just the sort of increasingly rare independent record shop Folk Police Recordings is proud to support.

We've migrated the Folk Police Download Store to Bandcamp, which we like better than the last lot and we hope you'll like better too - you can download in all sorts of different formats and its dead easy to use.

We've added EIGHT (count 'em!) albums by the Kitchen Cynics already with more to follow. What we most want to tell you is that we've made Rites of the Mainspring, Alan’s excellent 2008 24-track Kitchen Cynics sampler available for a limited period as a pay-what-you-want download with a minimum price of just £1.00. This album spans Alan's recording career from 1991 to 2006 and is a bit of a corker. At that price it would be daft not to get one...

Also available: A’ the Bonny Bumps and Bruises - Cornkisters  - Where Are We Now?  - Dust  - I Went to an Alehouse - Disconnected – Compulsive Songwriting Disorder. Happy listening!

Visit the download store HERE

We've made Elle Osborne's self-released debut album from 2000, Testimony, available as a download via Bandcamp. There are still a few CD copies left, which you can buy from the Elle Osborne website.

Meanwhile, Elle's forthcoming album, So Slowly Slowly Got She Up is out on 20th June. Here's what James Yorkston has to say about it: "I asked Elle to play a show with me back in 2003 after I heard her amazing debut album Testimony ... I've kept in touch with her ever since; collaborating on the odd track, meeting up at festivals and such. Then, recently, she sent me her new album. I was amazed. The singing, the arrangements, the atmosphere... It's my album of the year so far, for those who are interested in that sort of thing. And there's been a few good albums already, including one or two I've bleated my way onto. God Bless the good ship ElleO and all who sail with her." 

Here's a sneak preview:

Oak Ash Thorn is reviewed in the May issue of Uncut Magazine, available in newsagents now. Graeme Thomson calls the album "Grave but undeniably beautiful and always finely judged… anyone who hasn't investigated (Bellamy's) legacy should find this an ideal entry point."

In the same issue there is an Unsung Heroes feature on Peter Bellamy by Rob Young, author of the excellent Electric Eden. He too finds time to praise Oak Ash Thorn, calling it "An excellent compilation." And its very gratifying to see Peter covered in one of the non-folk music monthlies.

Finally, John Mulvey also writes about Oak Ash Thorn in Uncut's new music blog, Wild Mercury Sound. He writes "There's an impressive tribute album called 'Oak Ash Thorn' on Folk Police, on which a well-chosen cadre of newish folk artists tackle Bellamy’s Rudyard Kipling-derived songs from the early ‘70s."