Keston Cobbler's Club at Blacks

Seeing the Keston Cobblers Club for the first time at The Lantern Society around a year ago I was struck by three things about them. Firstly, they had a homespun quality that I found a tiny bit twee. Second, they were nonetheless very good in a catchy way. And thirdly, there was something rather harder to define about them that made me want to see them again. A kind of knowing exactly what they were doing quality that was relaxing and exciting at the same time. The audience was safe in their hands, on a mystery tour.

The homespun-ness I eventually put my finger on as the fashion for retro, vintage, recycled and crafty handmade things which, on reflection, is a logical response to being young and relatively poor during a massive recession. For a better sense of what I'm on about, think also of the Moulettes with their handmade stage set, Mumford & Sons in their waistcoats with their old-fashioned name, bunting at gigs and those posters that say "Keep calm and carry on". Better, surely, to look to the past for an aesthetic, implicitly asking yourself what other people did under similarly difficult circumstances, instead of going "Woe is me" and disappearing up your own fundament. This fashion is a practical response, I think: making the best of a bad lot. A kind of regrouping.

However, it also speaks of a do-it-yourself attitude arising from knowing no one is going to invite you to be successful because these days so few are.

Since then several Keston Cobblers' Club videos flung themselves in my path and made me admire them, I've explored the rest of their oeuvre on YouTube and then I saw them play live on Monday night at Blacks in Soho at a gig organised by the wonderfully named Society of the Golden Slippers that also featured Blair Dunlop - yay! - and talked to them. Now I'm massively impressed and can't wait to see what happens to them next. It seems to me that they're teetering on the edge of something pretty big. Maybe you'll see what I mean...

If you like that, listen also to this version, which is equally good in a different way.

Here's the basics: Jules, 28, with the blonde hair and her brother Matthew, 24, who sings and can learn to play a new instrument in a day, grew up in Bromley along with Tom, 25, and Harry, 24. "I'm an anomaly," said Bethan, who plays tuba, went to the Royal College of Music and is from the midlands. "When I found out she'd been to music school I snapped her up," said Jules.

There's a story about a cobbler that goes with the name.

And I had formed an impression before I met them that they'd had some sage advice on how to navigate their way through the mess that is the modern music industry. Several things had provoked this, including the fact that they had a Burberry deal...

Also I'd read on their website that they'd been snapped up by Quest music management - which manages Sir Paul McCartney and Arcade Fire. Then when I spoke to them, Jules said nonchalantly that they'd "supported Seth Lakeman and Bastille quite early on".

But how did that happen?

"Well," said Jules. "We pestered people and sent them things. Steve Lamacq at Radio 6: we sent him a CD in a wax sealed envelope... we also sent it to about 300 other people. But he picked us up."

But how did you know that was the way to approach it?

"I'm a graphic designer," she said simply - as is Harry - and she studied the subject at college, which I guess implies an immersion in all the soft skills that go into promotion and marketing. When you put this together with Bethan, who was in events management for classical music until quite recently, they have the pretty much the exact skill set - on top of making great music - that you would need in order to promote a band. This process is not, after all, magic.

In particular their videos are great. "Because of what I do for a living, I know that it's easier to listen to something if you're also watching something," Jules said. "We made them ourselves."

A couple of them play with the idea of age - For Words (above, it won an award) and Your Mother - using relatively elderly actors as their focus. What's that about? "Ha! That's my great aunt Audrey and uncle Charles. We're hoping to get a trilogy out of them," she laughed. "I think that a lot of people I know are really scared of getting old. But my mum had a bad accident about three years ago and ever since I've been a bit like "Yes! We're all still here! It's amazing!' And I find I get a bit annoyed with people who are scared of getting old."

So what's going on with Quest? (And this is the part that really gripped me: reading that they'd been taken on by Quest was a bit like reading that someone you know had been scooped up by King Kong...)

"Ah yes, Quest." Bethan and Jules looked at each other as if this were the part of the conversation they hadn't been looking forward to. "Well," said Jules. "We were signed with Quest and then on Friday we parted ways." This was on Monday and we were sitting in the corner at Blacks before their gig.

Oh dear. What happened?

"There was a three-month probationary period. But the person from the agency, she was a bit younger than we'd been hoping. It's a bit of a touchy subject but we thought it was important to say that it was our decision, so it didn't look like we were kicked off. Because we weren't."

But surely being attached to Quest would open all kinds of doors?

"You'd think so. But she was on their young management scheme. A manager can completely change the balance of a band, its whole direction and shape. She was a lovely, lovely girl but it didn't work and you've got to be quite fussy about management because they're part of the band. She had slightly different taste in music to us..."

She's also managing this lot.

Bethan took up the reins: "We do have quite high standards and we've got a specific idea about what our brand is, which is something that Jules has worked quite hard on. We have to aim high and this was only our first management experience."

Jules: "We don't want to piss off Quest because they're incredibly powerful in the industry. But they have a young management scheme for small bands. It's just that in our case it was a bit too small. We didn't get the Burberry thing as a result of Quest, we didn't get Glastonbury through them either. We need a manager who can do everything we can do and something else as well. If Quest would have us, we'd certainly be willing to try something else..."

In fact Bethan, Jules and Matthew have all recently given up their day jobs in order to go full time with the band, are getting a bus and are heading out on their first UK tour quite soon, supporting The Leisure Society. They're also about to make another video and are looking for volunteers to be in it, so if you think you might be interested keep an eye on their Facebook page. The Heights of Lola (first video on this post) was the result of the last shout out.

Other things you might like to know about the Keston Cobblers' Club include that Jules has a definite thing about Sam Beam from Iron and Wine, so much so that their next single is called Beam. "I'm hoping that one day we'll get to support him if we write about him enough," she said in a casting-her-bread-upon-the-water kind of a way.

Also, three out of the five band members play the trumpet to at least grade eight standard because they went to a school in Bromley that was a feeder for a brass band.

And, brilliantly, there is a spare tuba player called Dan hovering around somewhere and every outfit should have a spare tuba player. Their fat, brassy whump quite often reminds me of a colliery band: audible flashes of nostalgia. Like Bellowhead and Mumford & Sons they often play up tempo tunes that make you want to jump up and down with a stupid grin on your face: in fact, the more I think about it the more convinced I become that being up tempo is the secret to folky success because people like to be cheered up more than they like to be reflective. They can, after all, be reflective without leaving the house...

So the question is probably what the Keston Cobblers Club would like to happen next? Their response is practical.

"We're looking for someone to do bookings for us - and possibly a PR because it's getting to point at which we can't do everything ourselves time-wise. But the main thing is that we'd like a good manager: someone who knows the industry. We're looking for a head cobbler," said Jules.

Then they went off and did a really brilliant gig.

* Photos by the wonderful David Firn.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Mike Harding starts digital radio show

I owe a lot to Mike Harding. I think of him as a friend because after I was made redundant he encouraged me to start this blog.

We'd met for lunch and he asked why I'd stopped writing about music? I said it had crossed my mind to start my own blog but that, low as I was, I wasn't sure I'd have anything to write about. "Come to the folk awards" he said. It was kind, I went along and it was the catalyst I needed. Writing this blog has cheered me up and reminded me of a lot of things I needed to remember but which had slipped away in the chaos of losing a job I'd loved.

Tomorrow - December 30th, 2012 - Mike is starting a new venture himself in a very similar situation. His new radio show will be kicking off online at 5pm at www.mikehardingfolkshow.com, I wish him the very best of luck and had a chat with him about it the other day.

"I've been messing about with databases and other admin stuff," he explained. "I'd had hundreds and hundreds of emails from people as a result of the Radio 2 show being axed and I thought: 'Do it on the web and finance it myself.'

"I've always had the studio - two in fact, there's also one in Ireland where I have a home - and I've just invested another £2,000 in new equipment and a PRS licence - a big one. I've also had to sort out a new server for the website. But I used to co-produce my own show when it was on the beeb so I know how it goes.

"It's going to be an hour plus, starting at 5pm - which is a good time on a Sunday for a lot of people - and it'll be free streaming, live. Then it will be turned into a podcast and added to an archive for downloading."

The BBC never got the hang of turning Mike's show into a podcast.

So how will the new show be different from the one on Radio 2? "There won't be any adverts for other people's shows - which used to really annoy me. But apart from that it will keep the overall ambience."

He added that the website will eventually allow him to do some things that the BBC wouldn't, like link to the websites of bands and other people's folk ventures.

"But I'm not looking for adverts. If someone approached me about advertising on the website or the programme it would be something I'd have to think about very carefully."

I wasn't sure whether this was a political standpoint, a hangover from working at the BBC or a bargaining position: all media - unless state supported and that comes with its own baggage - are somehow subject to market forces. But there's a good argument to be made that refusing to bend to advertising pressure strengthens the brand of a show - or any medium - rather than undermining it in the long run. Why advertise on something good if all you want to do is change it? So I hope that Mike finds a way for the show to pay its way without compromising anything that matters to him: if he can't make it work after the following he's built over 15 years then what hope is there for anyone else?

He said that he's forged a relationship with a new production company, Whistledown, which makes Feedback and The Reunion for Radio 4, and that they may be doing a little PR for the digital show while also being in discussion about some ideas for programmes and series that Mike's been working on.

"There's no way I could have stayed at Smooth Operations," he said. "They wouldn't make another folk show while also producing Mark Radcliffe for Radio 2. It was the portal through which I worked for Radio 2 but I also doubt any radio station will commission another folk show at this stage."

I think - hope - that Mike might be a bit more pessimistic about that than the situation strictly requires. Mumford and Sons are arguably the biggest band in the world at the moment. And folk has an audience of young people for whom "folk" simply means "a bit historical", which they seem to actively embrace judging by the fashion for all things vintage and moustachey. Plus the recession has made very many of us necessarily conservative (with a small c) about our personal habits. Admittedly the Mumfords have a euphoric, joyful quality not often found in folk. But that's easy enough to remedy... Bellowhead also do this very successfully. It's simply a question of finding a way to lift people's spirits, as that's what the present climate seems to require.

I wondered about the short gap between the end of the BBC show (Boxing Day) and the beginning of the digital show. While applauding Mike's enthusiasm, it also occurred to me that a holiday often helps with perspective after the shock of an upheaval. "I don't need a holiday," he responded. "My work is my pleasure - the thing I enjoy most."

He added that he's hoping to get Andy Kershaw on the show to talk about his new book very soon, which is called No Off Switch, and that seemed about right under the circumstances.

Best of luck, Mike. I want to see you make it work.

* The show can be found here. Mike says the website will be ready in time.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Sound of Heimat. Or why the Germans hate their own folk music

If you think England has a difficult relationship with its folk music, pity the poor Germans.

Hayden Chisholm is a New Zealander of Scottish descent who went to Germany to study music and happened upon the country's awkward relationship with its own songs. Sound of Heimat is a thoughtful documentary exploring his love for and interest in Germany and German folk music that doubles up as an attempt to understand what has gone so very wrong for the genre. As he puts it: "I wanted to find out why the Germans have a problem with their own folk music? The same people who are moved to tears when they hear an Indian in the Andes playing on his pan pipe for the thousandth time that day go red with embarrassment at the thought of a German song." Sound familiar?

Chisholm is an engagingly genial narrator. The third child of a seventeen-year-old father, we hear that he was adopted as a youngster and, in turn, adopted music as a way of making sense of the world. His wondering where he belonged has caused him to wander. Literally - with a saxophone.

And so, mane of ginger hair knotted in a bun, he takes us to examine some rather self-conscious folk singing in a German pub, we accompany him on a yodelling course, meet three sisters who've spent their lives playing the instruments they learnt together as children and the young men trying to make folk sexy by singing traditional songs about shagging... In fact, the first time I watched it I was so taken by the uncanny superficial resemblance of German folkies to English folkies that I missed some of the differences.

I might as well get it out of the way though. Yes. German folk music's problem is the Second World War. And yet that simple statement contains nuances and subtleties that the documentary draws out rather well.

For instance, when I say that Germany's problem with its folk music is the war, I don't just mean the Nazis. National Socialism appropriated the country's culture with a special vigour reserved for that which was ethnically and indigenously German. So folk music took a right hammering. A calm Buchenwald survivor explains to Chisholm that the concentration camp had had a song specially composed for inmates to sing when someone had tried to escape, was caught and returned to be made an example of. Clearly such a thing might very well put you off singing for life (assuming you survived). In fact, he says after the war the sound of a folk song would for a long time simply produce the reaction from ordinary people that: "We've had enough of that."

But there is also an interview with a squeezebox player called Rudi Vodel, who I would say is around 70, a huge wardrobe of an easterner who has lived most of his life in the German Democratic Republic. He describes what being a folk musician under a communist regime meant and the exquisite unpleasantness of having one's songs forensically examined for political correctness by a committee of functionaries with no interest in music whatsoever. So, for instance, a song containing a lyric that ran "It was fun on the mountain and I wouldn't want to swap places with any king" was chopped from the repertoire because there was no room for kings in the GDR's ideology. "In the end it made you think 'Screw you'," he explains, after reliving the whole frustrating ordeal vividly on camera.

And yet Vodel is one of the many characters in Sound of Heimat who seem to have made a kind of peace with the music, which is important because the film implicitly makes the case that a country that is ill at ease with its own music is a country with an identity crisis. The relationship of a people to their ancestors' music is a direct analogy for that country's relationship with its past. How could it be otherwise?

Sound of Heimat is a fascinating and brave film that easily stands up to more than one viewing because of the understated seriousness with which the subject is drawn out. In fact, although it's made waves in Germany - where Der Spiegel recently printed an article asking, plangently, "Why doesn't Germany sing?" - I wondered whether it could usefully have hit the main points of its thesis a little harder for a foreign audience? It's as if it pulled its punches because Germany is still so touchy on the subject

Chisholm and the documentary's German director, Arne Birkenstock are seeking an English-speaking audience for Sound of Heimat (there is a version with English subtitles that I've been watching), so if you're interested and can help arrange this please contact Birkenstock here.

Watching it made me wonder, though, how to anatomise English squeamishness about its own folk music?

Mumford & Sons are arguably the biggest-selling band in the world at the moment despite much of it considering them to be an English folk act. This suggests to me that England's problem with its traditional music is - like Germany's - down to two big historical factors. Germany's have been fascism and communism. For England it's about class and post-colonial anxiety about what the world thinks of us: the usual suspects - and frankly they're nothing that the rest of the world gives a hoot about.

There is a very interesting moment in Sound of Heimat when Chisholm asks one of his interviewees whether the women at a dance would be wearing dirndls. In response she says that the good thing about folk events is that all classes of society are present, the dirndl-wearers and the non-dirndl-wearers, the doctor and landlord as well as the baker. I don't know whether dirndls are considered posh by Germans or not. The point is that German folk is not about class.

English folk still is though.

It's why the Mumfords get such a hard time - though their massive fame and success will, I imagine, go some way to taking the edge off that particular problem for them. They are highly visible posh boys in a genre that thinks of itself as the music of the masses.

However, the rest of the world doesn't really care about the niceties of English class distinctions in the 21st century, whether the acts themselves are worried about appearing "too big for their boots" to  sharp-tongued failures on internet messaging boards or whether aiming high is denounced as arrogance by those without the courage themselves to try. The English have over centuries developed a million habits of mind to keep people in their places: generation after generation replicates its steeply unequal class-based behaviours and it's not something that's being done to us, it's something we do to ourselves. What the Mumfords have neatly demonstrated is that - whatever doubts English folk has about itself - the world has nothing against English folk acts.

And that's useful information.

Whether we're comfortable showing the version of England represented in the English folk tradition to the rest of the world is a different matter.

* If you'd like to talk to Arne Birkenstock about showing Sound of Heimat in the UK contact him at this address. It would be fodder for a lively debate afterwards.

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Blue Horyzon sow intergenerational confusion at Shrewsbury

Blue Horyzon were busking in between cloud bursts at the Shrewsbury festival yesterday and made quite an impression.

Genevieve Tudor interviewed them about a terrible train journey they made recently, for use on her show today - Sunday - on BBC Radio Shropshire. And I believe Spiral Earth also interviewed them for one of the talky bits on the somewhat amazing Shrewsbury festival webcast.

So not to be left out...

They've got a banjo, which is fine by me. And before too long they had launched into Mumford & Sons' Little Lion Man. The thing that marked it out, though, more than anything else was that they had altered the lyrics, removing the most memorable line - which goes I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear? - so that it ran I really messed it up this time... instead.

As you can probably tell, from the picture and also from a close textual analysis of the way they spell their band name, Blue Horyzon are young, both in absolute terms but also by comparison with many people at Shrewsbury this weekend.  I would go as far as to say that they were among the youngest people in sight when they were busking.

So when I asked Lyndon, their drummer, "Why change the lyrics?" and he nodded towards the audience and said, apparently seriously, "the children" I was momentarily bewildered.

Lyndon, I should explain is the old man of the band at the age of 29.

Young people today.

Cuh.

Here's them playing something completely different.

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Mumford and Sons being Brave

Brave is a lovely film. If Pixar's earlier triumph Finding Nemo proved definitively that fish are people too, then Brave does the same for the Scots. And their bears.

Set in 10th century Scotchland, it's the story of a mop-headed princess, Merida, who doesn't want to wed when her parents decide it's time. "I don't want to get married," cries Billy Connolly, as her mountain of a father, imitating his daughter for the amusement of her wise mother, Elinor, played by Emma Thompson. "I want to stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen firing arrows into the sunset."

Its big theme of mother-daughter relationships is wonderfully and economically thumped home when Merida accidentally has a witch turn her poor mum into a bear, in a kingdom where bears are the great enemy (one ate her father's leg). Metaphors don't come much better than that.

This is where the Disney/Pixar thing comes into its own. In no other medium would it be possible to convey exactly when the bear contains the spirit of Merida's mother and when her spirit is departing, leaving only a terrifying ursine husk (anyone with a mother affected by dementia may find this unbearably moving, no pun intended.) The sight of a prim grizzly bear, humiliated and fearful and yet also maternal for her human offspring is both pitiful and hilarious and therefore hard to forget.

I wanted to see it because I'd heard that Julie Fowlis had done some of the music and I wasn't disappointed. There was a lovely folky vibe that ran right through the film.

And yet at the end I found myself momentarily speechless, apart from a few expostulations, to see on the credits that Mumford & Sons were also on the soundtrack.

I like Mumford & Sons. I do. But you can just imagine how that particular conversation went in a Hollywood meeting. "Who do we know who's British and folky?" "Hey, what about those guys.... Mumfords & Son? Didn't one of them just marry Carey Mulligan? And we could get that little girl in from The Hunger Games. She's a Brit, isn't she?" Yes, she's from the New Forest.

In order to get a more celtic feel uilleann pipes were added to the usual Mumford banjo sound - and it works. I had no idea it was them until the credits rolled.

But it bothers me for the same reason that having Emma Thompson playing a Scot bothers me. I mean, what's the point of casting her in a movie in which you'll only be using her voice and then asking her to change her voice? Wasn't Gina McKee available?

I know, I know. Thompson's an actress. She's supposed to do voices. And Brits going to the huge English-speaking market that is the US are so used to having to do an American voice that it's really not an issue for them. Work is work.

Similarly, it would be unfair to blame the Mumfords for being English but adopting a Scottish accent, musically speaking, in order to appear in a Hollywood movie. You just would, wouldn't you? To refuse would be self-defeating.

Yet even the film's name references the only other movie about Scotland - Braveheart - that most Americans have heard of, thus turning the place into a kind theme park of references for cloth-eared tourists.

I guess what I'm experiencing is the habitual shirtiness of the culturally colonised. We can see the difference between being British and being Scottish - and God knows the Scots certainly can - so why can't you, Hollywood?

I guess this is what it feels like to be Scottish...

Sigh no More, indeed.

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Six Moulettes, one Mumford and a new addition to The Copper Family

Talking to Hannah Miller, the Moulettes' cellist and lyricist, I was aware that she kept expecting me to misunderstand her. "A lot of people don't get this..." she said at one point. "No scrub that, that sounds mad..." at another. She even offered to write her thoughts down for me, lest I was unable to do them justice aurally.

Because in her mind there is an epic story unfolding. More of that in a minute, but first a few basics.

I was handed a small pile of Moulettes CDs the other day by a promoter called Joe Cushley, who was at The Lantern Society in Clerkenwell, and got simultaneously invited to a gig. Listening to the CDs, I liked them a lot and intended to go along. But it was in Brighton (where most of the band lives) and on the day I wasn't feeling 100 per cent. Then I got a text message from Joe saying that the added filip that had spurred me to agree to go to the Las Vegas of the South Coast wouldn't be available for interview. So me and my inner sloth gave in and stayed home.

However, the more I listened to this band - and in particular to their second album, The Bear's Revenge, to be launched in July - the more I liked them (a process that continues to this day). And then, upon consideration, it became obvious that I should do something about it sooner rather than later. Because sometimes it's good to be first.

So here's the thing. The "added filip" had been that Ted Dwane, Mumford and Sons' bass player, was supposed to be at the Brighton gig and I'd hoped to have a word. As it turned out he wasn't able to make it because Britain's second most lucrative export with the initials M&S had over-run at the London studio where they're recording their second album.

What a shame, I thought, first assuming that mentioning him had been a ploy on the part of the promoter to get me to the gig. Though there was a nagging doubt because if it had been done with any cynicism, surely Joe wouldn't have texted me to let me know Ted couldn't make it?

Anyway, I now realise Ted Mumford wasn't being dangled as a PR bauble. He's listed as a band member on the CD cover, which eventually arrived a week or so later, so I think I'd been under-sold rather than over-sold.

As a result of the Mumford connection I'd imagine there's going to be a bit of a hoo-hah about the Moulettes in the mainstream media pretty soon. And I'd also imagine that the band knows it.

This because one of the Moulettes, Ruth Skipper (bassoon, vocals), is doing her medical finals at the moment but has decided to have a year out from doctoring because it looks as if this might turn out to be the band's big year - and that's not a decision to be taken lightly. "Having a doctor with us encourages my hypercondria," said Hannah. "I'll say to her 'What is this pain in my heart?' And she'll say," there was a pause for dramatic effect, "'You ate your food too quickly'."

Other clues include that they are booked to play the Mumfords' Gentlemen of the Road mini-festivals in Huddersfield and Galway in a couple of months' time and that - this is where I came in - they've just made a brilliant album.

It has the multi-instrumental virtuosity of Bellowhead, the urgency of Mumford & Sons - though without the lyrical directness (they haven't fucked anything up this time) - and the winding, melodic complexity of The Indigo Girls. It also has something unique that I was having trouble putting my finger on.

"I really enjoy fantasy realms," said Hannah. "Not crap fantasy, like lurid album covers with wizards on them. But going to other worlds, like you do in Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Philip Pullman. The songs draw on this love." We'd been speaking for a while but when I asked whether she was watching Game of Thrones,  it was as if  I'd taken all the tension out of the situation by mentioning the thing that she really wanted to talk about. I'd hit the main vein.

"Yes! I'm so glad you brought it up. We love it. It's amazing." I love it too - what's not to like about Lord of the Rings with shagging? So we talked about how that dwarf rocks, that it was a shame that Drogo the horse warrior had to die and how I was really missing out by not having seen any of season two yet.

"That show is like crack," she said, correctly.

Anyway, it turns out that many of the songs on The Bear's Revenge are part of a fantasy narrative that Hannah's inventing: she's writing her own mythological world through songs. "I also weave tapestries. I make them out of fabric and buttons and things. But the funny thing about fantasy is that there is a certain snobbery about it - as if it might not be real or good," she mused. Here's one of her tapestries, which is also artwork for the album. That might or might not be a dragon.

In a way the aesthetic of the Moulettes is like the title sequence of Game of Thrones: all hand-made with a theme containing swooping fiddles and cellos. Apparently several forthcoming videos will involve animating Hannah's tapestries. I must stop dwelling...

So where did the Moulettes come from? "The band started with Ruth and me when we were at school and we've picked people up along the way. We were both at school with Ted." Millfield public school in Somerset, as it turns out. "Ruth and I were both music scholars, so we didn't get out much, and I had a free haircut one day that turned into a mullet. We were joking that it was a moule-ette."

These days there are six full time members. "Myself, Oliver, Ruth, Georgina, Jim and Rob. But there are nine who can call themselves Moulettes. It's very much like an extended family. Ted was in the band until three or four years ago, until things with his other band started taking off. But it's been great having him back again. He worked on the second record with us.

"And while he was touring the States," during which Mumford & Sons were said to have cracked America, "he made some great finds. For instance, he sent us this extraordinary mandolin and banjo player called Matt Menefee who came all the way down to Winchester one day. We picked him up at the station and he did a day's session work for us. He plays progressive bluegrass."

There are lots of trad instruments on the record and Hannah describes the band's sound as "rock, pop, fantasy folk". The fiddle player, Georgina, plays folk and blue-grass, as well as sometimes making noises so assured that her classical training shows through. "She went to the Royal Northern. But Ollie (drums, vocals, guitar, banjo) is completely self-taught and Laura (Hockenhull on vocals) is a real folk-singer. She grew up in a folky family, singing with some of the Unthanks." Hannah's own father is a folk musician who makes musical instruments for a living.

And then there's this. On Friday Laura, whose partner is Ben Copper, gave birth to the newest member of The Copper Family. "Yes! We've got a tiny little Moule baby. I haven't seen her yet but her name's Georgia Rose."

Their fecundity knows no limits. Despite The Bear's Revenge not being officially launched yet, Hannah said she'd be recording some stuff for the next album as soon as we put the phone down, something which is possible, she said, because they have many years' worth of material to fall back on. She's in her late twenties now, so that's probably a decade's worth.

They've got a single out called Sing Unto Me.

"I was thinking about the Nordic mythology of singing the world into being. In the Bible it's The Word, in Narnia the lion sings the world into being. It's about the idea of the world being born and dying in a blaze of harmony," said Hannah.

And there's this, which gives you a bit more of an idea what they're like when they can hear each other.

I should think there'll be some more from them along shortly. I'm going to finally get to a Moulettes gig for a start.

In the mean time, here's that Game of Thrones title sequence in full.

* Moulettes are sexually deviant pagans, says Liverpool Echo. Yay!

* If you really like Game of Thrones you might also be interested in this post about The Medieval Baebes ;-)

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How did Seth Lakeman's music end up on Coast?

A few weeks back I was slumped, semi-sentient in front of the telly watching a rather wonderful episode of Coast, when a peculiar feeling crept up on me. I recognised the background music - at least I thought I did - but there was something about it...

As my somnolent mind lumbered back to something approaching full speed (for a Sunday evening), it dawned that it was Seth Lakeman but that the vocals were missing. I can't remember which song it was now: it was no longer really a song anyway, since the lyrics were gone. But at least one more of his tunes as well as an instrumental version of something by Mumford & Sons were also used on the programme, which was about Sweden and the Baltic.

It turned out that this wasn't an isolated happening.

A choir of voices on Twitter told me that Seth Lakeman's music in particular makes regular appearances in the background on BBC factual programming, including on Countryfile, Lambing Live and Springwatch, which made me wonder exactly how it got there. My first thought was that there could be some kind of cultural bias at the BBC's Natural History Unit in Bristol. But then I realised I only thought that because I knew someone who went to work there, and he had long, blonde hair that made him look like a folky. God, I'm shallow. Better start from the beginning...

It turns out that the office for Coast is based at BBC Birmingham. However Mike Taylor, the freelance director who made the programme in question, was in the middle of making an episode of Time Team for Channel Four when I caught up with him. "Yes. I chose all the music for the Sweden and the Baltic episode of Coast," he confirmed, though an inquiry whether it reflected his taste led to a declaration in favour of Arcade Fire.

"I try to find stuff that will work but that doesn't impose itself too strongly on the editorial. At the same time you want it to add character, warmth and humanity to the programme. So I'm constantly on the lookout for music that has its own personality but which will not completely overwhelm the film. Lyrics, for instance, get in the way of your voice over." I've since discovered that it's a straightforward thing to remove vocal lines from digital recordings these days, including those to be found on CDs: it can be done on a laptop.

"With that Coast episode I was trying to find a way of keeping the music the same vibe all the way through because it was a series of individual stories, so I thought 'Let's look at modern folk'. I think I ended up with some Noah and the Whale and Laura Marling, as well as Seth Lakeman and Mumford & Sons.

"There used to be a library and researchers you could call on for help with music, but those days at the BBC are gone. It might be just as well really, as the new arrangement puts more control in the hands of the director and you did used to get some odd things happening. For instance, I remember once asking for some music that evoked parks and receiving, from a researcher, Parklife by Blur. I mean, really...

"The new facility is called BBC Jukebox, it's on auntie's intranet and you need permission to access it. It's definitely helped because you have a much wider choice of things to listen to before you make a selection. I think I must have put in two or three days of trawling and sending stuff off to the editor."

Apparently the BBC's music library still exists but the corporation is trying to use the available technology to simplify the process of music editing. Taylor wondered out loud whether Seth Lakeman minds hearing his music used in this way, although since royalty payments are involved I would have thought he could probably stifle any nagging artistic doubts? Especially since there is a move afoot within the BBC to encourage the music industry to volunteer more samples by compiling lists, to be supplied to the public on BBC websites, of music played during programmes.

"I suppose it could have been worse - it could have been on an advert," he mused. "I really think some tracks should be saved for the nation, like listed buildings. I remember once hearing Heroes by Bowie on an advert for insurance and just thinking 'Noooooooooo!'"

So what's BBC Jukebox? And by what process of alchemy does the music that it contains arrive there? I found myself consulting a lady called Maggie Lydon, who rejoices in the job title of Head of Metadata at the BBC. Now here was a woman, I thought, with the ability to bend powerful, invisible forces to her will, if ever I met one. And sure enough she was extremely helpful, pointing me in the direction of a private company called I Like Music, which provides the BBC Jukebox service.

Dugald Brown has day to day responsibility for the BBC contract and explained that the history of I Like Music goes back to the late 1990s. It involves a man called Andy Hill - who is the owner of the company - and a private music collection belonging to a man called Phil Swern (who has worked as a producer for Bob Harris) that includes every tune ever to enter the top 40 in the UK and much of the US top 100 too. It also involved a feeling on the part of the BBC that the since the payment of royalties to musicians ultimately benefited the music industry, the service of showcasing music to directors should also be provided by the music industry. They got them outsourcing blues...

"Andy Hill spotted that the music industry hadn't got its act together and that there was an opportunity to become a music aggregator," explained Dugald. "He bought Phil Swern's collection and set about digitising it. Then in December last year we won the contract to provide the Jukebox service for the BBC. But since it wears BBC branding on their intranet there's really no way that a BBC employee would know that it's a service provided externally."

He describes the company as a small business, providing access to its vast online database at a rate of £50 for 100 downloads and added that 6,000 BBC producers have access to the facility. I Like Music is hoping that film makers and advertising executives will also catch on to its existence, as the BBC contract alone will not make its fortune.

"At the moment we rely on good relationships with record pluggers, as well as buying a lot of CDs, to keep the collection up to date. But we'd like the music industry to start sending us its stuff - anyone who's been recorded by a record company with PRS (Performing Rights Society) and PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) affiliations can go on the database. That's because there has to be a way of paying the musicians."

He says that because there's a strong demand for instrumental versions of songs, he often fields requests about whether they're available: they save clients the trouble of digitally removing the vocal lines themselves (once they have permission to do so).

It could be a coincidence but Seth Lakeman's music is published by EMI, where Dugald formerly worked, and there is regular musical traffic from there to I Like Music's database as a result of good contacts. However, Dugald emphasised that I Like Music's database is a tool used by producers and directors and that the service does not actively promote individual pieces of music. It simply makes them available.

* I Like Music can be contacted at St John's Studios, 6-8 Church Road, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 2QA dugald.brown@ilikemusic.com

* If you enjoyed this post you might be interested in How to get yourself on Jools Holland

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