|
Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder.
In her music making she is focused on exploring traditional tunes, developing extrapolations on folk styles and techniques, and investigating drone, ambience, and improvisation within and beyond folk music. She organises the Betwixt & Between tape series as one avenue of these investigations. She plays and records solo and in collaboration - with Shovel Dance Collective, Sullow, and others. She also builds and repairs banjos and other instruments, with a focus on folk craft and vernacular styles. This practice and these instruments inform and facilitate her music making. "Elswyth's disregard of boundaries might at first seem like a successful exercise in iconoclasm, but rather than riding roughshod over those boundaries, her music occupies a place where they don't exist, where the differences between contemporary composition, traditional melody and improvisation melt away" - KLOF "Jacken Elswyth is an increasingly recognisable name on today’s folk scene. A member of the celebrated Shovel Dance Collective, she has been building a reputation for some time as a solo folk musician, an improvisational banjo player, and the brains behind the Betwixt and Between label." - TradFolk "[Jacken is] an emotive player with high technical ability. Further, she builds banjos and other instruments, and that intimate knowledge of the bones and fibers holding everything together means that her playing has very few cracks. " - Foxy Digitalis Press: Uncut, Aug 2024 - Interview Songlines, June 2024 - Interview The Guardian, May 2024 - Review KLOF, May 2024 - Review The Quietus, May 2024 - Review Tradfolk, Nov 2022 - Interview The Quietus, Nov 2022 - Interview TradFolk, Oct 2022 - Interview KLOF, Jul 2022 - Review The Guardian, Jul 2022 - Review TradFolk, Jul 2022 - Review Loud & Quiet, Jul 2022 - Interview Foxy Digitalis, Mar 2022 - Interview Foxy Digitalis, Oct 2021 - Review |