Trembling Bells: Carbeth

Raggle-taggle Glasgow ensemble let freedom ring in the church of folk-rock.

For the past six or seven years, a loose collective of Glaswegian musicians have been chipping an escape hatch out of the prison-house of British folk. Ensembles such as Scatter and Directing Hand love the spirit of 1960s and '70s folk-rock, but don't respect it enough to pickle it in some stagnant jar. Their intuitive 'free folk-rock' redraws the historical map, imagining what might have occurred had Shirley & Dolly Collins or Fairport Convention signed to free-jazz labels ESP-Disk or BYG Actuel.