Mazes

On her second album, Mazes, Harri Endersby subtly blurs the line between traditional and contemporary folk music, with added birdsong and shoreline field recordings and electronic percussion. This album doesn't grab you by the neck for a foot-stomping folk blast; it's not about that. It's about a collection of slow-burning tracks with more of an arc to them. That said, the album is bookended by the Americana-tinged ‘Mountainside’ and pacier ‘Close to Home’ with a more uptempo feel.

Electronic percussion in folk music is something I'm wary of; however, in tracks such as ‘Mazes’ it blends beautifully in a very understated way, and here's one of the album's main strengths, it's so well put together. The pizzicato strings and inventive rhythms in ‘Glow’, the swelling string arrangement in ‘Mazes’ and the more Celtic leaning whistle and fiddle melodies in ‘Isla’ allow Endersby to explore different folk aesthetics from the continuity of these well thought out and uncluttered arrangements. Tracks such as ‘Flight’ give room to showcase Endersby's vocal talent and tonal qualities, not too far from the likes of Julie Fowlis at times, with an ethereal feel to the slower tracks that reminds me of some contemporary Scandinavian folk artists.