Perhaps because music has become so globalised, we rarely think of recording locations as having a major influence on music-making. Yet the recording site must have a huge impact on the music. Innovative Bristol folk group Three Cane Whale certainly think so, and have made a delightfully eccentric and often beautiful album to prove it. "Holts and hovers are the resting-places of otters. This album was inspired by, and recorded in, some of our own holts and hovers." These 22 gentle, wafting instrumentals, soaked in medieval character and folk memory, carry the often distant echoes of their spaces. Ruby & Elsie, a track inspired by the story of two Victorian children saved by their billowing dresses after they were thrown off the Clifton Suspension Bridge by their impoverished father, is recorded within sight of the bridge. threecanewhale.com
Download: Ruby & Elsie, The Hudding Place