The first track - Bob Copper was fine, he was just being himself, but drowning it in the background music made it sound pretentious.

The only track I really enjoyed was Sheila Chandra's. I quite liked the reworking of Tam Lin too, but the rest of it seemed to be perfectly good music destructively interfered with. I was gratified, however, to discover how many singing voices I could recognise - far more than it would have been a few years ago.

My feeling about the whole album it that it wasn't cohesive: there didn't seem to be any kind of overall message to it. As concept albums go, I found myself comparing it with Ashley Hutchings' 1970's creations: Morris On, The Compleat Dancing Master and Rattlebone and Ploughjack which were really inspiring, but The Imagined Village did nothing of the sort for me. Maybe I've grown cynical with old age...

I borrowed a copy from a colleague at work, and listened to it once.
I'm not going to buy myself a copy (and no, I didn't burn a copy either)

Anahata