NEW SHEFFIELD FOLK DESCENDS ON HATHERSAGE, 17/1/2026

“Tonight we’re going to transcend Hathersage,” says Jim Ghedi, “and unleash a vortex of hell.”

Bloke in row 2: “That’s not was I hoping for.”

“Well, there’s no refunds. So strap in.”

LAUGHS. Right? Of course, there is no hellish vortex because this is too friendly a setting but Wasteland, Jim Ghedi’s 2025 album released on Basin Rock, could easily explode into sprawling, riotous dissonance with the wrong (right?) band behind it. This is robust, heavy folk. Which probably explains why my introduction to it was The Metal Show on Bandcamp Radio when Brad Sanders played Sheaf & Feld (first impressions right here, after the Pigsx7 live wordage).

So, the vortex is for another day. Tonight we have Ghedi on voice, electric/acoustic guitars and keyboard drone and Owen Spafford on fiddle in Open House, a new 50-capacity grass roots music space.

It’s a spellbinding hour and a half. Much of the set is pulled from Wasteland and none of the studio versions’ power is lost in live, stripped down translation. Old Stones, Wasteland, Newtondale/Blue John, Hester, The Seasons and Wishing Well all get played, as does Ah Cud Hew and others that I have no clue about – no doubt they’ll show up on a trawl through Ghedi’s back catalogue. Here though, with the fiddle up front all the way, we get hints of The Proposition soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: rustic, bleak, intense.

But the songs Ghedi writes and interprets are very much rooted in the regional and the socio-political, intensified by a vocal delivery that belongs to the Old Ways of folk. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just that the way he twists the pronunciation and shapes the words suggest a delivery that belongs to a different time or place or both – it’s an accent, but who knows from where or when. I’m not versed in folk tapestries, just a new fan digging the whole thing and already reaching back to Electric Eden to connect better with Ghedi’s irreverent storytelling about the songs. In his hands, the old tunes sound very now while the new songs feel familiar already, like they exist on the same timeline … but not ours. The cover artwork of Wasteland does a similar job of subverting the familiar. It’s spectral, both of person and of landscape.

Trafford Road Ballad was written by Ewan MacColl in the middle of last century. It’s the last song on Wasteland and is as devastating an anti-war lyric as you’ll ever hear. It stops you dead – because nothing has changed.

This track closes the set. Transcendence complete. NO VORTEX.

links:
Basin Rock record label
Jim Ghedi on Bandcamp
Brad Sanders and The Metal Show on Bandcamp Radio