New Age Folk Prog troubadours of the 70s and beyond: Artists listed as being similar to Claire Hamill on Last.fm

I have no idea who Brian Short is, but I did like his bio:

Formally the lead vocalist of Black Cat Bones, Brian Short went on to create a solo album entitled Anything for a Laugh in 1971, which failed to win critical acclaim.

That's the uncut version btw

One disappointing thing about this list is how very little of it sounds like the Claire Hamill of the Voices era, which was basically what I was trying to look up suggestions for in the first place.

Scott Seward and I are charter members of the String Driven Thing fan club. The Machine That Cried is a great, great record, but I don't know that it sounds anything like the little Claire Hamill I've heard.

Louis And Bebe Barron are New Age Folk troubadours? that's some awesome lateral thinking right there.
anyway would vote for Bridget St. John, even though i'm not a fan of the arrangements on her 2nd LP.

I don't know what process Last.fm has for assigning similarity, must be a calculation based on listener overlap, but yes, I should have weeded that one out really...

Strangely Strange are ok ISB ripoffers. Subway and Fresh Maggots should be on this list.

My girlfriend's mother used to do her ironing in the seventies to the Tir Na Nog s/t on Chrysalis.

I have sampled many of these but I don't like any of them as much as I like June Tabor and John Renbourn.

Louis And Bebe Barron are New Age Folk troubadours? that's some awesome lateral thinking right there.

Ha, my exact reaction. I voted for them a) out of perversity and b) because they are the best.

^

man i just read the book Electric Eden by Rob Young and a gang of these ppl are featured heavily in that book.

Louis and Bebe belong if you come at it from some kind of 21c Ghost Box perspective

ums i have that book i need to read it soon.

june tabor for sure, she's absolutely amazing

Is Sharron Kraus too trad for this list? She has a lovely voice and I like her arrangements (I've never heard Claire Hamill)

jade warrior, but june tabor is #2

lots of good stuff on there, hard time choosing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOXB9eGxrGE

okay, Claire Hamill started off as a folky singer-songwriter with quite a heavy Joni influence, think she was pals with the likes of John Martyn, and then later in the seventies she started moving more towards the prog end of things and even briefly joined Wishbone Ash iirc. Then in the 80s she went more in a new age direction and put out this one awesome record called Voices which was basically constructed out of vocal loops and sounds more like the Cocteau Twins than anything else. Most of the people in this list skew more towards the earlier phase, then there are a bunch of folky proggers (Lindisfarne, Strawbs etc) that you always see in the bargain bins and I've always been kind of fascinated by those sorts but also slightly repulsed. The only person here that fits with her Voices phase would probably be Virginia Astley whose work I absolutely love to bits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhAd3dQ-8b8

^ enjoyed this Curved Air song, sounds a whole lot more rocking than their usual thing. Always see their albums around for cheap, can never get it straight in my mind which ones are supposed to be good. This one's off the debut and this particular song is supposed to be their Terry Riley influenced one (obv that's where they get their name from amirite), but I can't really hear that so much - maybe that comes across better on the studio version? Liked the shrieking and the gorilla in the video though.

Okay, I'm listening a second time and hearing a Riley-ish pattern at around 0:50 onwards, I see what they're getting at now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zny53R1cJE

^ maybe I've been doing Lindisfarne a disservice all these years cos, this song is quite lovely (most of the rest of their stuff that I've heard has been horrid clompy fog-on-the-Tyne nonsense). Verses sound a bit like Solid Air, chorus sounds like Matthews' Southern Comfort or something, I'll take that any day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAVyeXFqr-s

^ Wow, is the whole first Dulcimer album like this? This is beautiful, so gentle and hazy, almost like a Pearls Before Swine vibe going on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0pddQEVTzc

^ Amazing Blondel, not into this AT ALL, this is way too twee and drippy. Guy in the yellow suit is amazing though, looks like he's just wondered in from a Dostoyevsky novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zo9qwQANNM

^ Judy Tzuke - Stay With Me Till Dawn. God I love this song so much, always have done. Mostly for her voice, which really reminds me of Tasmin Archer in a rather plummy way. Don't know what is going on with this video, she seems to have trapped Santa in a snowdome along with some other random guy, which gives a sinister twist to the song title I think.

voted agincourt, "though i may be dreaming" would be my favourite song by anyone on the above list, absolutely beautiful track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbLGsUqghEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3UgnRLoDFA

^ Mr Fox. Not really into them all that much, but this one song is a very weird witchy classic. Youtube commenter says this about the name of the song, which I'd not heard before:

"The story is that Carole Pegg was reading the book 'Mist over Pendle' [by Robert O'Neill] when they were resident in Lancashire, and they wrote a song called 'Pissed over Mendle' which the record company shortened to 'Mendle'."

Pendle famously was home to the Lancashire coven of Elizabeth Demdike in the 17th Century.

Not heard that Agincourt song before Jim, thanks! Damn does that girl sound like Trish Keenan.

The Enid.

Never knowingly heard the Enid, but I've had a couple of different friends who have been really into them and then a few years later they've done a complete reverse and just laugh about them instead. What's a good song to try?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgbZyYRmVKs

Kim Wilde's first album?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

oh man forgot to vote in this pollllll! add one for john renbourn, cuz i've been listening to him a bunch.

I was gonna say! Poor John Renbourn!

(I voted for June)

Scott Seward and I are charter members of the String Driven Thing fan club

He used to drink in my local... in Glasgow that is... Chris Adams that is