Part I of The Song Has No Ending: Spring in April two concert series (see part II, Tartine de Clous with Toby Hay & Aidan Thorne on Thursday 24th April).

Nick Hart is an award-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist whose work with English folk song has gained him a reputation as one of the most acclaimed performers of his generation. Brought up amongst English dance music & ballad singing. His considered approach to accompaniment is informed by a deep respect for the nuances of traditional song and his captivating live performances are a testament to the importance he places on story-telling. A worn, unaffected clarity & the assured steel of voice that sits amongst the regional toned singing tradition of The Watersons & The Copper Family with a cascading lived-in phrasing & guitar style that echoes the great Nic Jones & Martin Carthy.

Nick has performed as an actor/musician, has worked as a composer/musical director for theatre, and is a sought after teacher, instrument collector and workshop leader. He has released three solo albums, all to critical acclaim, and a wonderful duo record, The Colour of Amber, with fiddle player Tom Moore.

This is a rare Bristol show and a debut one in the wood panelled auditorium of The Cube.

‘an austere, unfussy traditional singer…humanity and sly humour crackle warmly through his work…Hart’s stark musicianship is…devastatingly direct. Hart guts and skins these songs, amplifying the eeriness in their ordinariness' Jude Rogers, The Guardian


Linus Vandewolken plays the hommel, an ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. A combination of melody & drone, in its simplest form, the hommel resembles a long thin box with strings on top. Since the 1400's it was a household instrument of the Low Countries, strummed with a goose feather, fretted with a sliding stick and accompanied both religious and secular tunes around the kitchen table.

An outsider musician with an open landscaped primitivism that echoes the boundless guitar work of John Fahey & Robbie Basho with the early music adventurism of David Munrow or contemporary nyckelharpa player Benjin. Linus Vandewolken seeks to expand the hommel’s repertoire away from a stifled bygone museum curiosity towards a living contemporary avant-garde instrument.

Alongside the hommel, Vandewolken plays a selection of home-made aulos (Ancient Greek double reed instruments), recorders & percussions. The latest album, "Oude Geuze uit Niemandaal" released on Morc Tapes, was recorded on travels across Poland, France, England & Sweden, and at home in Belgium.

Linus Vandewolken is an alter ego of US born-Belgian McCloud Zicmuse. Musician, instrument maker, potter, printer & regular collaborator of Tori Kudo / Maher Shalal Hash Baz, McCloud will be performing with them at both Cafe OTO & Glasgow’s Counterflows earlier in April. McCloud has worked with Okraïna, Shelter Press & Crammed Discs and last played in Bristol at the mythic Brunswick Club New Years Eve party with Lankum.

This is the debut UK tour for Linus Vandewolken.

‘Killer out-folk medievalism’ BBC Radio 3, Late Junction, Jennifer Lucy Allan

Caio Wheelhouse will be playing stretched out folk undercurrents from his record collection, before, between & after.