Night Visiting Songs

“While her original material is appropriately timeless, Greig's techno-minimalist approach to folk music offers a genuine new pathway” —Stewart Lee
Twenty five years after its initial release, Charlotte Greig's debut album, Night Visiting Songs, still sounds like nothing you've heard before. Though, if you're looking for reference points, you could try imagining English folk legend Anne Briggs armed with Nico's harmonium and the Young Marble Giants' ancient beatbox. The album was recorded entirely solo in her bedroom on an analogue four track cassette recorder. She backed herself on harmonium and dulcimer, plus an idiosyncratically programmed Dr Rhythm drum machine. It’s a mix of traditional and self-written songs, but so much of a piece that it’s not always easy to tell which is which.
Originally releases as a very limited edition CD it nevertheless gained a wide range of admirers, including musicians from James Yorkston to Julian Cope, tastemakers from Stewart Lee to Joe Boyd. One song appeared on Topic’s survey of the finest female folksingers, A Woman’s Heart. Radio 6’s Gideon Coe still regularly plays track from the album on his late night show. Long out of print this is is first appearance on vinyl. Design is by Sandhya Ellis (Honest Jon’s), incorporating a portrait of Charlotte by the famed rock photographer Bleddyn Butcher. The inner sleeve features sleeve notes fro Charlotte herself and an overview of her career, written by her husband the writer John L Williams.
Charlotte Greig first heard English folksong at her village primary school in Suffolk. She was a writer and journalist, author of the seminal study of girl groups, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, before devoting herself to music in her thirties, inspired by the examples of Lal Waterson and Shirley Collins. She recorded six albums in all, which will be reissued in order. She died in 2014.