Umpteen

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Cat No: NMCD46

Release Date: 27 May 2016

Label: No Masters

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 5020393904629

Genres: Folk Singer Songwriter

Description
Working out of Wath Upon Dearne, at the still-thumping heart of post-industrial South Yorkshire, Ray's cultural roots are in the Irish music of his parents. His songs try to court traditional melodies and to mucky them up, respectfully, with ways of speaking borrowed from local steel and coal communities.

'Umpteen' is a selection of fourteen songs drawing on those aspirations. Bringing together in a great chorus of celebration, landscapes and stories, some personal, some inherited, striving for the joyous but occasionally bleak, searching all the time for a sing-song language of affirmation. A set of anthems on behalf of rubbished imagination's ability to stand up for itself, voicing its own versions of the way things have been.

Ray is chair of No Masters Co-operative. He is a contributing writer to BBC Radio 2's Radio Ballads series. Ray's songs have been performed and recorded by schools and choirs, and artists as diverse as Roy Bailey, Kate Rusby, Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Maggie Boyle, Grace Notes, Heidi Talbot, and John Wright.

In 2013 Ray's poem, 'A Sing Song for Stainless Steel' was cut into fourteen benches now sited along the Moor in Sheffield City centre.

"The promise is kept. The masterwork is made. Beautifully produced and magnificently sung befitting the writing of this genuine master craftsman. The best album I've heard in years. Buy it - it will make you better." John Tams on 'The Wrong Sunshine, 'Ray's previous album on the No Masters label.
Tracklisting