A Casual Invocation

George Hoyle, aka Cunning Folk, is a folklorist, storyteller, folk artist, magical ritualist, a former member of Gay Dad, Circulus, and currently bassist with Stick in the Wheel, as well as the guiding force behind the Bermondsey Folk Festival. His new album is a stark contrast to his recent acoustic albums – 2018’s Constant Companion and 2017’s Ritual Land, Uncommon Ground. It’s more akin to Can or Popol Vuh than it is to conventional acoustic folk, with Hoyle on bass and guitars, joined by the brilliant drummer Sam Kelly and keyboardist Olly Parfitt (both former Circulus members) and Norfolk singer Gemma Khawaja for a powerful, incantatory set that Hoyle describes as ‘a magical working.’

It begins with a startling protective spell for Traveller singers, taking us into ‘We Are the Harvest’, drawing on corn dolly lore, while ‘Pan to Artemis’ is a heavy, psychedelic, mindwarping setting of one of Aleister Crowley’s poems. The title-track is spooky, liminal, synth-haunted, with a magical knot of a bass line, while ‘Witches’ tells of the Witch of Wapping, Joan Peterson, hanged at Tyburn in 1652. But save the best till last – the 17-minute epic freak-out of ‘A Song of Low & High Magic’ is there to carry you away. Don’t fight it.