Sedayne - I'd suggest you might listen to the samples on the Imagined Village website. It sounds as if the Front Row item didn't impress you, but the samples on the website did indeed impress me. I rather object to you talking of media blandness and the intended demographic, implying that the intended demographic are impressed by media blandness, especially after I'd said how much I liked what I'd heard! I don't go for media blandness in any form, didn't hear it in the samples and don't think that's what's on the album - but as neither of us have heard the entire album I'm not making categorical statements. However, nothing I've ever heard from Martin and Eliza Carthy, Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and Sheila Chandra has been bland, cynical, mainstream or corporate in the past, and I'd be very surprised if this project could be described in this way by anyone.
I doubt if it's the future of folk, but it's a fascinating collection of different approaches to the music. And why not?

Anne