Dave Swarbrick with Martin Carthy & Diz Disley: Rags, Reels & Airs (Topic Records)
A worthwhile CD reissue of this 1967 album by this rangy Yorkshire Dalesman: one of the few instrumentalists of the English folk revival, with a frenetic fiddling bow-style and a whites-of-the-eye molten shorthand, which burns the corners off tunes betimes. Apart from your bog-standard fiddle, he also wields an eight-string variant and indeed a mandolin, double-tracking with himself over Carthy's warm, subtle accompaniment. Apart from ragtime fun with Disley, there are foot-stomping country dances and true olde Englishe-y stuff with beautiful shuddery ornament, but more often reels and strathspeys from the Scotsy canon, and indeed lots like The Blackbird, The Sligo Maid et al, which will be familiar to your average Irish session muppet.
Mic Moroney
Terry Oldfield: Spirit of the World (New World Music)
After an appalling piece of ambient Celtic twaddle last year, Oldfield's latest compilation makes filmic wallpaper from his own pretty flutes, recorders and ocarinas, embedded in Moogy synths and the sonic sweeties of Aboriginal didgeridoos and chants; Tibetan temple bells and growly monks; a soulful rain-dance from Native America; rainforests, children, Christianised choirs and down-tempo Burundi drummers from the Tribes of Africa, etc. There's an edginess to the Aboriginal track which is kind of interesting, but the rest is pure New Age sugar: a Disneyland of doomed cultures. It's great for doing something repetitive, like sweatshop labour. Otherwse shut down three-quarters of your brain, and you'll be fine.
Mic Moroney