Thursday 26 March 2009, 8pm
Mary Hampton
"a woman who appears to have spent much of her life attempting to imitate the shimmer of wind-chimes. The effect is mesmerizing" (The Guardian 10/11/06)
"spine-thrilling attic folk"
(Time Out London)
“ it's an unqualified joy to discover a collection of songs that sit proudly and uncomplicatedly within the folk tradition. And yet, while Mary Hampton's debut CD ... certainly derives much of its appeal from its appropriation of centuries-old folk idioms, it is certainly no museum piece. Its unearthly radiance and undercurrents of desolate modernity transform it into a vital and contemporary living document"
(Sound Projector, issue 15, 2007)
"terrifying and gorgeous....unusual and strong…'My Mother's Children' is an album I know I am going to love for life." (Eliza Carthy, fRoots April 08)
"songs, which recline with shimmering sensuality in various shady cloaks of weirdness...fragility, desolation and humour...scurrying around Dartmoor under cover of darkness."
(Colin Irwin, Telegraph, 26/04/08)
"her bizarre flights of fancy are the dreams of children, far more unsettling for an adult.....evoking Eliot’s Wasteland in it’s beautiful bleakness".
(Wyl Menmuir, Fly, June 08)
"coffee-table-shattering purity...these are songs of unnerving delicacy, elemental and acoustic simplicity...potent and enchanting" ****
(David Stubbs, Uncut, August 08)
Men Diamler
" tears away at your singer/songwriter preconceptions, replacing them with black humour and visceral gore" Rottenmeats
"Men Diamler cannot be ignored. He looks a little like electric-era Bob Dylan, and it's just him and his guitar, and sometimes it's just him, a cappella – not even always in front of a microphone – but his voice is so astonishing that traffic literally stops. He makes sure we know we're watching a performance of spiritual-gospel-blues, but it's authentic as it gets. It's ridiculous, in all honesty, because somebody with much more influence than I have should be writing about him.”
FACT MAGAZINE
Jo Burke
I have played fiddle for the amazing folk singer and song-writer Mary Hampton for the past three years. I am also a member of the London Bulgarian choir. I have a great passion for traditional music and I have been arranging traditional songs on my fiddle and piano in secret for many years. Finally I am ready to share my songs with the world and hope to start playing gigs of my own with the wonderful Debbie Chalmers very soon!
Gary Goodman
