(Mon 19th / 8 pm / £5)

Sharron Kraus creates music rooted in the folk traditions of England and Appalachia. Characterized by soil-rich vocals, haunting banjo, fine acoustic guitar and visionary wordcraft, her songs are populated by a carnival array of fatally charismatic characters, telling tales of enslavement, perversion, incest, obsession, love and death. Sharron's live performances are stark, compelling, and delicate, continuing the tradition of the balladeer. A roving storyteller, bringing tales of terror, sadness and joy to a stranger's hearth on a dark and stormy night.

Using a heavy thumb-led finger-picking technique that harks back to traditional country-blues and early ragtime, C Joynes explores alternative melodic traditions: the English folk-tune; North and West African music; elements of classical Indian music; proto-minimalist and impressionist musics from the European classical tradition. His approach to the recording and compositional process contains a subtle and unassuming experimentation, at times including collaged fragments, field recordings, processing, en-plein-air recordings, and cut-and-paste.

Soft-spoken and aloof, Peter Delaney sings almost at a whisper, always on the cusp of collapse due to the nature of the rapidly decaying sound of the ukulele, drawing the listener in slowly into the calm quiet at the centre of his compositions.

http://www.myspace.com/sharronkraus
http://www.myspace.com/cjoynes
http://www.myspace.com/peterdelaney