This is a collection of songs and recordings from U's archive on Archenfield, a place that exists beneath the drifting borders of England, Wales and the Forest of Dean. The mix explores the area's musical history, humour and the sometimes overbearing legacy of senior nostalgia on modern rural culture. Amidst cheeky spoken word passages, rolling waves of piano and agile bucolic guitars, and twanging transatlantic connections, U juxtaposes different versions of folksongs and standards. Lydbrook Silver Band’s performance of ‘Edelweiss’ is dreamily mournful with ghostly brass arrangements, the sound of gloomy moors and overcast marshes switched out for Christine Turner’s arresting voice, while U transitions from Michael Tanner & Alison Cotton’s mystical plucks and string to his own ominously tolling drums and stories of ‘Black Vaughan’.
