Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word [Import]

Various Artists (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 31, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Delay
• ASIN: B0006ULVRU
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #395,015 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Bee-Ing (Intro)

2. It's Taking So Long

3. It's Love

4. Brigitte

5. (Hey Now) Who Really Cares?

6. Warm Up My Lips

7. Cefalea

8. Shadows on My Wall

9. By the Sea

10. My Aunt Edna

11. Jenny

12. You Used to Think

13. Man on Box

14. Scarborough Fair

15. Gobaith

16. Ar Goll [*]

Editorial Reviews

15 tracks compiled by Andy Votel! Andy has done remix and production projects with Death in Vegas, Lamb, and Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough). His debut album Styles Of The Unexpected came out in 2001. This 15-track compilation features tracks from Kathy Smith, Sarofeen & Smoke, Brigitte Fontaine, Linda Perhacs, The Poppy Family and more. Delay 68. 2005.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Array of Old, Odd, Great Folk, March 30, 2005

By 

Juan Mobili (Valley Cottage, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word (Audio CD)

Recent years, particularly when it comes to Folk, has seen the re-issuing of a number of albums that were lost in the shuffle of bigger marketing machines dedicated to other genres.

From Karen Dalton to the Incredible String Band, slowly but surely, CD editions have finally done justice to works that despite their substance and audacious creativity, remained confined to the mad search of old vinyl copies often at exorbitant prices.

This apparent settling of old Folk accounts have given us CD access to unarguable beauties such as Vashti Bunyan' and Linda Perhacs' thirty-plus albums.

"Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word" is another valuable example of this turn of events, thanks to the careful "curating" of Andy Votel, a musician in his own right and force behind the Twisted Nerve label.

What Votel has done is unearth, really, a number of artists who, by the most part, were not even that recognized back when these songs were recorded, defined his search for Folk songs beyond the typical array of Brit and American rarities, and presented us with a collection of tunes that proves the unbridled imagination that was at work in this genre many -many!- years ago.

Among the diverse and substantive selections, there is a number of tunes worthy of attention, that showed that Folk was a larger pan-cultural event than the Greenwich Village small clubs or Nick Drake's bedroom.

To start things off, Kathy Smith's `It's Taking So Long' rides on deeply funky bass and pre-Mahavishnu Jan Hammer on Fender Rhodes, showing some of the breadth of exploration contained here.

Brigitte Fontaine, a legend in France, offers "Brigitte," a song that may remind you that Keren Ann or Benjamin Biolay are not musical test-tube babies. Think of a French Marianne Faithfull in her youth, as much as comparing UK and France should ever be appropriate.

From her album Parallelograms, which deserves to be owned in its own right, Linda Perhacs's "Hey, Who Really Cares?" follows. A jewel of "psych-folk" years before Devendra Banhart was even born, and there was a need for such specific label.

Speaking of sheer and un-jaded Folk gems, San Francisco's sisters Wendy & Bonnie's "By The Sea" -taken from Genesis, their sole album from 1969- ranks as one of the most remarkable tunes here, infused of gorgeous harmonies and a level of maturity hard to believe, given that Wendy was 17 and Bonnie only 13 when they recorded their album.

Other songs that deserve praise and stretch the geographical borders of the music offered in this album are "Warm Up My Lips" by Breakout, a Polish combo that may remind you of songs on a any David Holmes soundtrack. Or, "Cefalea" by Musica Dispersa, a Catalan band that will strike a similar chord in your heart than the Incredible String Band might have in their early albums.

The rest of this album does not stay behind in potential discoveries although there are, to my taste, a couple of oddities that may not fare a better fate than being remembered as charming misfires. The Roundtable's version of "Scarborough Fair" played mainly with medieval instruments while indulging in free-jazz moments is not exactly a lost masterpiece. Something similar can be said of both tunes by the Welsh group Sidan -"Gobiath" and "Ar Goll"- with their proverbial flute solos and high-pitched voices, although you may not find them entirely discardable.

All in all, this is a collection that should be praised and, hopefully, only one of many Votel's anthologies to come. Think of this album as the work of the unknown ancestors to the above-mentioned Banhart or Joanna Newsom, among new and important practitioners of the boundless possibilities of Folk music.

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, November 30, 2009

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word (Audio CD)

This is not the folk that comes to mind when thinking of Bob Dylan or Pete Seger. This is more Europian folk from the early 1970s.

And it features jazzy back up bands, all the kinds of fusions Joni Mitchel was creating on Court and Spark and after. You can also aptly compare this material to Pentengle and Fairport Convention.

But why waste mental energy when you can buy this. Leave it to monster digger Andy Votel to find this great materal, perfect for folk and jazz fans.

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Folk des bois, September 16, 2005

By 

the bogus man (Nice, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word (Audio CD)

Décidément, la fin des années 60, et le début des seventies sont une malle sans fond d'où l'on ressort régulièrement d'insensés trésors musicaux, qui ravissent à chaque fois les amateurs éclairés de pop music. Sur cette compilation, publiée par Delay 68, sous-label de Cherry Red (Rev-Ola, RPM..., les connaisseurs apprécieront...), Andy Votel, DJ mancunien, producteur, fondateur avec Badly Drawn Boy du label Twisted Nerve, nous propose ainsi une visite personnelle des recoins les plus obscurs de sa discothèque, que l'on imagine forcément démesurée.

Très vite, ce périple se révèle étourdissant : personnellement, l'identité de la quasi-totalité des artistes présents m'était inconnue jusqu'à ce jour !... Une première écoute un peu hâtive fait penser à un genre de psyché-folk, agrémenté de touches de musique traditionnelle - Roundtable qui reprend cette vieille scie de Scarborough Fair. Mais reconnaissons que ce sont ces dames qui s'en sortent le mieux, leur apport oscillant entre l'américaine Anne Sarofeen, accompagnée de son backing-band Smoke, dont les élégants traits de guitare slide sont capables de rappeler les fulgurances opiacées d'un David Crosby, la française Brigitte Fontaine (dont la présence n'est pas du tout incongrue) pour un titre fantomatique, somptueusement hanté par sa voix éthérée, le folk futé de Linda Perhacs, dont l'unique album "Parallelograms" est hautement recommandable, l'onirique By The Sea, comptine mémorable de Wendy et Bonnie Flower, deux sœurs américaines âgées respectivement de 17 et 13 ans (!) lors de l'enregistrement de leur unique album, et dont la mélodie vocale a été utilisée par les Gallois dérangés Super Furry Animals en ouverture de leur "Phantom Power", jusqu'à la subtile Bonnie Koloc, qui pourrait passer pour une cousine éloignée de Judy Collins...

Bref, ce disque nous balade de plaisantes découvertes en révélations essentielles, et nous permet ainsi de goûter aux sources de jouvence où sont venus s'abreuver les jeunes loups de la scène pop-folk actuelle (Broadcast, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Devendra Banhart, Stina Nordenstam et autres Beth Orton...). Le livret fourmille d'anecdotes richement documentées, regorge de noms (Richie Havens, Rotary Connection, Ellen McIlwaine, Feminine Complex, Martin Carthy...) dont l'évocation laisserait perplexe la majeure partie de nos contemporains, quant à l'œuvre picturale qui illustre la pochette, elle mérite à elle seule l'achat du disque...