The Fox

Best known as the guitarist and fiddler from Balkan mayhem merchants Sheelanagig, this intimate acoustic duo setting allows Kit Hawes and Aaron Catlow room to explore the traditional music they grew up with. Their fleet-fingered and ingeniously-arranged takes on favourite old tunes such as ‘John Barleycorn’ and ‘The Fox’ jostle for space in this briskly delivered collection with a brace of lively originals, opening with ‘The Fighter’ – a stout-hearted tale of a female fighter whose bloody occupation ‘shocked the landed gentry.’

While there's no doubting their individual instrumental prowess, neither Hawes and Catlow ever resort to grandstanding. Instead they have developed such a richly textured, intricate and empathetic sound that it can often be hard to believe there are only two of them playing. Nor do the vocals really let them down, as can sometimes be the case with superior instrumentalists. There are already plenty of violin and acoustic guitar duos out there but, on the evidence of The Fox, Kit Hawes and Aaron Catlow deserve to be thought of as up there with the best of them.