Live Book tickets What do we know of Milkweed? Enough, and nearly nothing. They are a duo. They use voice, guitar and banjo. They describe their sound as slacker-trad, which is both true and somehow insufficient. For three years Milkweed have refined a formula – taking existing source material (a folklore journal, a book on Welsh myths, another on bronze age human remains), cutting up the words and feeding them through a woodchipper of lo-fi production and experimental folk music. This time, however, they decided to push themselves further – to use all 400 pages of Thomas Kinsella’s masterfully stark translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge , rather than manipulated snippets. After it took an entire year just to process 20 pages, the band found themselves humbled. “It made us appreciate oral traditions in a completely different way, the intensity with which you had to engage with the work to feel like you could understand and transmit it.” With Milkweed having applied energy befitting a 400-page epic to just the fragments of the Remscéla, the record bristles with more lifeforce than anything the band have yet produced. The band have raised the bar when it comes to their production, the blend of manipulated vocals, eerie beats and potent instrumental scraps twisting around each other like a thick, potent smoke. This is an album that places the band firmly in the lineage of storytellers through whom these epics have become immortal, channelled from one century to the next and for centuries hereafter. “A sort of Karen Dalton in dub…like an Alan Lomax recording of an Appalachian Séance. You like it weird? They like it weirder.” MOJO “an early AOTY contender…Milkweed are the crown jewel of the UK’s current vibrant folk revival.” Loud & Quiet Co-presented with Broadside Hacks. Supported by d&b Audiotechnik.