Pre-Order
Goblin Band - A Loaf of Wax (Live from MOTH Club) - 1LP
14/11/2025
BH-016
Artist:
Goblin Band
Label:
Broadside Hacks Recordings
Version Description:
First press, black vinyl. Tipped on artwork on reverse black board
Sound Carrier:
1LP
There is a reason that Goblin Band’s immensely anticipated debut album, A Loaf Of Wax, is a live recording. It’s onstage that the foursome fire on every cylinder, that the euphoric power of their traditional folk performance hits with maximum impact, that the electric connection between the musicians and their intensely dedicated community is felt most viscerally.
Just listen to the way the album’s opening instrumental, “Goblin Theme”, builds and builds in intensity until it is a stomping and swirling whirlwind of fiddle, hurdy-gurdy and drums; listen to the scale of the audience’s roar as it finally hurtles to a halt. The record is packed with such rushes of energy, but also with tenderness and serenity, eldritch horror, flamboyance and humour.
Connection was core to Goblin Band’s very formation. The group — Gatherer along with Sonny Brazil (vocals, concertina and accordion), Gwena Harman (vocals, drum, pump organ and recorder) and Alice Beadle (violin and recorder) — formed out of sessions they organised themselves, carving out the space that was lacking for traditional and early music obsessives similar to them.
Before long, it became apparent that that community was larger than just those intimate early sessions. The band swiftly embedded themselves within a larger movement of young London folk musicians finding the radical and progressive energy at the core of traditional music, honing their skills on stages across London and beyond.
Some of the best moments on A Loaf Of Wax are to be found in the songs, in the back and forth between Goblin Band and the MOTH Club crowd. In a way, they have more in common with DIY punk music than with those staid, overly formal approaches to traditional music.
They know because they’ve played in those spaces, “and whenever we get asked to do those things by radical people, hardcore punks and metalheads, who aren’t primarily into folk music, people absolutely love it.”
Whereas in more mainstream spaces for traditional English folksong audiences are often supposed to be passive, treated to a recital of dusty old songs, for Goblin Band “that doesn’t make any sense, given the radical history of this music.”
They see that “young people have been robbed of their ability to enjoy traditional music in a way that involves dancing, singing along, genuinely being carefree. That’s been taken away from them by the establishment,” Gatherer continues. “We’re trying to tap into a rebel tradition which in the English perspective has been separated from traditional music – which isn’t fair.”
And it’s that energy that’s at the core of A Loaf Of Wax, a record that captures in microcosm what makes Goblin Band not just outliers within a burgeoning young folk scene, but among the most vital bands in all of England.
1. Goblin Theme
2. “Goblin Band Reporting For Duty!”
3. Rosin the Beau
4. Willie's Lady
5. "GOB! GOB! GOB!"
6. John Barleycorn
7. "The Magic Of Grain"
8. All Among The Barley
9. “We Can't Write Songs”
10. Tuppeny Nudgers/Puddle of Newts
11. “Jesus’ Childhood In Scotland”
12. The Bitter Withy
13. The Worms
14. "A Wall Of Death (With Decorum)"
15. Hole In The Wall
16. “Please Eat Berries Responsibly”
17. Wild Wild Berry
18. "Making The Canal Corporate and Boring”
19. Hard Working Boater
20. “Now We’re Gonna Do Widecombe Fair”
21. Widecombe Fair (Version 2)
22. "Who Are Those Slowpokes?"
23. Widecombe Fair (Version 1)
Manufacturer:
Broadside Hacks Recordings 10 Inverness Street, London, England, NW1 7HJ INFO@BROADSIDEHACKS.COM
EU Representative:
UAB Mushroom Agency
Saulėtekio al. 15-1, LT-10224, Vilnius, Lithuania
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