Folk/Traditional

Kevin Henry: "One's Own Place A Family Tradition" (Bogfire Records)

This archive album of timber flute and "war pipes" (one track only), from a 69-year-old Chicago-based emigre truly burps up the Sligo Coleman country of old - even further back than the fine recording here of his late fiddler-brother Johnny in 1962. The tunes are reels mostly, played in marbly ceili unison with a rousing tattoo feel which Henry claims comes from Land League fife-and-drum bands - and you certainly get that Lambeg feel off Malachy Towey's bodhran. Apart from Henry's own hearty, yowping solo flute style, he delivers patriotic or humorous song "recitations" (his brother Martin composed McAlpine's Fusiliers) in a stirring brogue you could cut with a shovel. By Mic Moroney

Gillian Welch: "Hell Among The Yearlings" (Almo)

For the follow-up to her acclaimed debut, Revival, Gillian Welch and her co-conspirator, David Rawlings, have wisely kept to the same stark tableau of dark, moody, songs set in skeletal arrangements of guitar and banjo. Against this grey backdrop, Welch's plaintive voice sound-paints a range of moods from the vengeful Caleb Meyer (about the death of a rapist) to the junkie's lament of My Morphine. These original are so evocative and timeless are they could have been written at any time in the last 100 years; the predominant influence is that of the moody traditional music of the Appalachians, but the rustic rock'n'roll of Honey Now and the atmospheric Whiskey Girl show other avenues worthy of pursuit. And if it all seems a mite too grim, take heart because there is very sweet pleasure in all this pain. By Joe Breen

Djivan Gasparyan & Michael Brook: "Black Rock" (Real World)

A weirdly spacey, ambient-jazz world-meld album this, which unites the elegiac strains of this veteran Armenian singer and duduk exponent (an ancient variant on the oboe) with Real World regular, studio boffin Michael Brook. The pair musically jam themselves horizontal, hovering over Jason Lewis's advanced jazz cymbal textures and Richard Evans's various instruments; while Gasparyan's sound itself becomes the theme, as much as any musical content. Brook's backing textures and spatial engineering glide plastically between alienated moods and chilly musaks; it all grows on you even if, despite the frequent jazz-groove build-ups, it often recedes into its own hookah-puff of mystique. By Mic Moroney