Jamie Chambers, along with Duncan Strachan, leads art-pop orchestra, the Spolkestra, whose debut EP ‘Open Arms’ is now available to buy on iTunes. They are currently working on their next music project, ‘Everything is New’, which will be recorded with Dalit ‘untouchable’ children in South-East India and will feature contributions from Irvine Welsh, Jarvis Cocker, Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) and Margaret Bennett.

Jamie and Duncan’s favourite folk albums are Grizzly Bear’s ‘Yellow House’, Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, Talk Talk’s ‘Laughing Stock’. Animal Collective’s ‘Sung Tongs’, John Martyn’s ‘Solid Air’, Martyn and Margaret Bennett’s ‘Glen Lyon’, the Art Bears’ ‘Winter Songs’ and Fairport Convention’s ‘Unhalfbricking’.

The Spolkestra: www.myspace.com/scotlandpagans

What is folk?

I find the rigidity and stuffy traditionalism of some ‘straighter’ folk traditions too much to enjoy them in isolation. Many would seem to come associated with very stuffy cultural values such as entrenched nationalism and ‘our country’ conservatism. On the other hand there seems to be something fundamentally ‘inauthentic’ to me about the sound of Western Art Music in the current climate.