What news

"Folk album of the month" - "A collaboration with early music scholar David McGuinness and electronic sonologist Amble Skuse, "What News" is Roberts' fourth album of entirely traditional material. It is a gentler proposition than that collaboration sounds on paper, the main instruments being a 19th-century piano and a fragile 1920s dulcitone (a keyboard instrument in which tuning forks on the inside are rung by gently pressed keys). The dulcitone sets off the tenderness in Roberts' beautifully unworldly voice well (...) on Rosie Anderson, in which a "gentle man as ever lived on earth" sees his wife kissing another. Skuse's laptop textures offer slow-burning, elemental accompaniment throughout: flutters and shutter-clicks in The Dun Broon Bride, watery bubbles in Babylon, and falling rain in the beautiful closer, Long A-Growing, in which the grass keeps on lengthening in life as well as in death. So many intricate ideas here, so beautifully done".

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"A gorgeous collaboration between Scottish folk singer Alasdair Roberts, electronic composer Amble Skuse, and early music pianist David McGuinness, What News frames a set of historical U.K. ballads within a minimalist context that is both powerful and immediate. Although the project originated from an idea of Roberts' and was released by his longtime label Drag City, this is undeniably the union of three peers combining distinctive but complementary disciplines ... With its beautifully chosen material and unorthodox construction, What News has that rare timeless feeling to it, effortlessly placing the ancient within the present as only the right group of artists can manage to do".

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