Both in a Tune

Two giants of English folk from different generations come together with an album of tunes that follows on from their 2018 set, Well Met, which itself rose from the inspired festival pairing of the fiddle and melodeon legends at FolkEast in 2016. Inspired by a line in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Both in a Tune offers music of the unexpected across ten tracks, a mixture of trad classics reimagined and fresh-from-the-box pieces that slip down unexplored byways and throw up surprising new avenues of exploration.

Opening with a gorgeous, understated ‘Scarborough Fair’, and taking in a classic of the instrumental tradition, ‘Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance’, which stands as one of the oldest surviving medieval rituals in England, dating back to 1226, while the pair extend to a free-wheeling eight-minute interpretation of the 18th-century Scottish air ‘Yellow Haired Laddie’, as well as French pieces such as ‘Bouree de Concours’. ‘Improv 3’ is a plain pointer to some brilliant fiddle workouts from Knight, answered by Spiers’ melodeon as the music surges, swells and pulls away to a whisper. The brooding take on ‘Battle of the Somme’ is a big, arresting closer to an album that finds these instrumental giants at their inventive and creative best.