British electronic artist Stephen Cracknell imagines what 19th Century British folk music might’ve sounded like with the aid of his laptop. “Apron Strings” brings together some of England’s finest young traditional instrumentalists and singers in service of songs both new and ancient. Subtle electronic textures shade the tracks, but the music is carried by the musicians, particularly fiddle player Jennymay Logan and singer Nancy Wallace. The meld of vocal harmonies and scraping, swooning strings evokes the haunted soundscapes of Fairport Convention: centuries-old music transformed into thoroughly contemporary meditations on longing and loss. The centerpiece is the 8-minute traditional ballad, “I Wish I Wish,” in which the singer declares she’d prefer death or a life of loneliness to ordinariness. In the same way, there’s nothing mundane about this stirring new-folk manifesto.
