The fade in time

""Re-wilding" is how Sam Lee describes his treatment of antique folk songs, most on this second album collected by him from the Travelling community. There's certainly a free, sometimes fierce spirit to the arrangements brewed by Lee and co-producers Arthur Jeffes and Jamie Orchard-Lisle (both of Penguin Cafe) ... A wonderfully inventive creation".

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"And so, the intrepid Sam Lee grapples imperiously with the difficult second album. And wins ... The roots of the album remain firmly embedded in the travelling singers (...) with some well-known material Like Bonny Bunch Of Roses, Lord Gregory and Blackbird included. But, in cahoots with co-producers Jamie Orchard-Lisle and Arthur Jeffries of Penguin Café, each track decamps somewhere else entirely. The Bonny Bunch Of Roses, in particular, is spectacular. Liberally interspersed with an archive recording of an Eastern European cantor singer, Lee delivers the song in meditative wonder over a compelling backdrop of rumbling percussion and Gypsy violin ... Lee's singing is sublime throughout".

"Sam Lee's musical archaeology might sound like a worthy project of interest only to be-jumpered folkies, yet this outstanding record deserves a wide hearing. While The Unthanks or, say, King Creosote with Jon Hopkins have found new ways of updating folk styles, no one is as daring as Lee ... It's perhaps no surprise that a fellow world traveller, Arthur Jeffes of Penguin Cafe, is producing. And even is purists find the whole barowue confection too much, they will have to admit there's never been a record quite like this".