Arborea

Arborea is an American musical duo combining elements of Acoustic, Folk, Blues, World Music, and Rock. Their music is associated with the Indie Folk, Psych Folk, Indie Rock, and New Weird America genres. Arborea consists of wife and husband team Shanti Curran and Buck Curran. Shanti Curran provides lead vocals, banjo (she is also an official endorser of OME banjos), Ban-Jammer (a type of Banjo dulcimer made by Tennessee luthier Mike Clemmer), harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer and Buck Curran provides, vocals, guitar, slide guitar and sawing fiddle. They both share songwriting duties, arrangements, and production. Arborea base themselves in Maine and derive a lot of the inspiration for their music from the rugged, beautiful land and seascapes of their home state, and even record some of their music in an old family cabin that Shanti’s great grandfather built during the Great Depression that is nestled along the Western Mountains of Maine.

http://arborea.bandcamp.com/

The Olympic Symphonium

The Olympic Symphonium is a Canadian indie folk trio from Fredericton, New Brunswick. The band consists of Nick Cobham (guitar), Kyle Cunjak (bass, guitar), and Graeme Walker (guitar, bass). All three musicians swap instruments and take turns singing and songwriting, and are often joined by Dennis Goodwin (banjo) and Bob Deveau (drums).

DR. STRANGELY STRANGE

DR. STRANGELY STRANGE were a group whose initial run lasted just four years in the late sixties but whose reputation has lived on in progressive music folklore. The band formed as a duo consisting of Ivan Pawle and Tim Booth but soon added keyboardist and multidiscipline artist Tom Goulding and drummer Neil Hopwood.

The band’s connection to the INCREDIBLE STRING BAND (via shared producer/manager Joe Boyd) also extended to an appearance on the band’s 1969 record ‚Changing Horses‘. The group’s sound has also been compared to that of ISB. Dr. Strangely Strange released a couple of albums before dismantling in early 1971 after Goulding departed for a stint in a Buddhist monastery. This began a long history of recurrent incarnations of the band, beginning in 1972 when Booth and Pawle teamed with POGUES/STEELEYE SPAN mandoliner Terry Woods and his wife for a short tour, followed by another tour including Booth and Pawle the following year. The two formed another iteration of the band in the eighties to tour once again, and reunited with Goulding to release a third studio album in 1996, and for a fourth recording (‚Halcyon Days‘) in 2007.

The band announced yet another reunion in early 2008, and have performed live a handful of times in their native Ireland over the past year.

DR. STRANGELY STRANGE are a fairly minor act in the history of progressive folk music, yet their name is often mentioned along with bands like INCREDIBLE STRING BAND and STEELEYE SPAN. They deserve a place on ProgArchives for their recurrent history of producing relevant progressive music.

Lamp of the Universe(New Zealander Psych Spacey Acid Folk)

Lamp Of the Universe is the solo project from Datura Bassist and vocalist Craig Williamson. It is a formidable modern mix of pysch „raga“ folk with spacey rock elements. In its great variety the music offers astonishing acoustic guitar parts, exotic sitar „raga“ scales, „tabla“ percussions and „acid“ heavy, bluesy rock guitars. Minimal „drone“ bass lines alternate with fuzzy, sometimes aggressive psychedelic waves. This rather „cosmic“ musical ensemble is without moderation a nice discover. It is a must for fans of Amon Duul II, Pink Floyd and classical raga style. The combination between the genres is well defined, providing a freak out journey throw eastern vibes. Many albums have been recorded under this name, notably the highly recommended „Echo in Light“ (an insistent and beautiful marriage between exotic, celestial harmonies and deep psych rock sounds), „The Cosmic Union“ („trippy“ sounding heavy rock jams) and „Heru“ (meditative sitar „drone“ effects). All these albums have been released around 2001/05, notably published by „Cranium Music“.

Pond- Beard, Wives Denim

More often than not, most side-projects and spin-off bands don’t spin very far from their respective musical mothership. Take the charmingly shambling Pond, a psych-rocking Australian three-piece that shares two members with Tame Impala, the psych-rocking Australian four-piece responsible for 2010’s terrific Innerspeaker. That debut put a revisionist spin on guitar-driven psychedelia so much so that, unlike other bands mining for retrograded, kaleidoscopic gold, Innerspeaker felt beholden to no specific time or place. So it’s with Beard, Wives, Denim that Tame Impala alumni Nick Allbrook and Jay Watson (here with Joseph Ryan) give the same kind of sounds and textures a more worldly setting with Pond. This album may not deviate much from the Tame Impala playbook (and, as sort of a guiding principal, trades the sheer scope of that record in for something more organic), but instead welcomingly recontextualizes that sound while offering it in easily digestible bites.(Pitchfork)

Espers

Espers ist eine Psychedelic-Folk-Band aus Philadelphia, die der Indie-Szene zugeordnet werden kann, und ging 2002 aus dem Trio um Sänger und Songwriter Greg Weeks, Meg Baird und Brooke Sietinsons hervor. Otto Hauser, Helena Espvall und Chris Smith komplettierten später das Sextett. Der Stil von Espers erinnert stark an den britischen Folk der ausgehenden 1960er Jahre wie auch an den zeitgenössischer Gruppen, beispielsweise Six Organs of Admittance. Viele der Bandmitglieder haben ebenso bei Studioaufnahmen anderer Folkmusiker wie Nick Castro und Vashti Bunyan mitgewirkt.

Das nach der Band selbst benannte Debütalbum wurde 2004 von Locust Music veröffentlicht. 2005 folgte „The Weed Tree“, ein Jahr später das dritte Album „Espers II“. Im Oktober 2009 erschien „Espers III“.

Lisa O Piu

Lisa o Piu, das Projekt der schwedischen Künstlerin Lisa Isaksson und Ihrer Bandmitglieder übt sich im spielen schöner Psychedelic Folk Musik