Bellowhead - Pandemonium : The Essential Bellowhead CD (Mega Blowout Sale)
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23-Navigator 093
“Although they began and continued to work as a duo, John Spiers (melodeon) and Jon Boden (fiddle and vocals) had a vision of a larger sound for their music. In 2004, they put together Bellowhead (the name derived from their album Bellow) to play the Oxford Folk Festival. The 11-piece group was an immediate success, its mix of strings and brass virtually unprecedented in traditional English folk music. They took the band into the studio that autumn to record a five-track teaser, E.P.onymous, which proved very popular with fans as well as industry types, and settled into playing festival gigs (about the only ones that could afford them), increasing their repertoire and bedding in as a group.
During the summer of 2015, the band announced their separation; a mutual decision following Jon Boden's intent to step down as frontman; the group felt the project would never be at its best unless they were all together...
Having announced their impending breakup in early 2015, clamorous British folk ensemble Bellowhead celebrate their end times with the anthology Pandemonium: The Essential Bellowhead. Under the leadership of frontman Jon Boden, the sprawling 11-piece band cut a mighty swath through U.K. folk music, adapting sea shanties, work songs, and traditional dance tunes into the exuberant and often bawdy brass and fiddle-laden arrangements that were their hallmark.
Their big sound seemed fully formed from the beginning, and the songs from their 2006 debut, like the clever ska-inflected "London Town," sit easily alongside later cuts like the sprawling theatrical sea shanty "Roll Alabama," which arrived on 2014's excellent Revival. Bellowhead are anything but subtle and their energy and flair aren't for everyone, but their bold vision is theirs alone and it plays out nicely on this 13-track highlight reel.”
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