Today, Weds Decem­ber 15, we present a pro­gramme of folk music from the British Isles (well near­ly — there are a cou­ple of North Amer­i­can artists in there if truth be told), cov­er­ing the last 50 years or so.

In par­tic­u­lar, we are cel­e­brat­ing the new album from Spell Songs, “Spell Songs II — Let The Light In” by play­ing a track every hour.

Spell Songs is a musi­cal evo­lu­tion of both The Lost Words and The Lost Spells books by acclaimed author Robert Mac­far­lane and award-win­ning illus­tra­tor Jack­ie Mor­ris; cre­at­ing a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence that inter­sects music, lit­er­a­ture, lan­guage and art, as a call to reawak­en our love of the wild.

The Spell Songs ensem­ble fea­tures the mul­ti­fac­eted tal­ents and col­lab­o­ra­tive genius of Karine Pol­wart, Julie Fowlis, Seck­ou Kei­ta, Kris Drev­er, Rachel New­ton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux — all renowned musi­cians in their own right. Togeth­er, their music blends a diverse array of sounds from instru­ments like the kora, elec­tro­harp, cel­lo, Indi­an har­mo­ni­um and more, which are gor­geous­ly lay­ered with musi­cal and lin­guis­tic influ­ences span­ning from Orkney to Senegal.

In addi­tion we’ll be hear­ing a col­lec­tion of British folk music from the last half-cen­tu­ry or so, with the likes of the Unthanks, Chum­bawam­ba, Four­told and others.

Some of today’s selec­tions are def­i­nite­ly on the rock side of folk, so be pre­pared for a fair­ly up-tem­po day.

And don’t miss the lat­est episode of our Sec­ond Life trav­el fea­ture Where’ve You Been? in which Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er and Elrik Mer­lin dis­cuss places to vis­it and things to do around the Sec­ond Life grid. This time, we vis­it Let It Snow! and men­tion a few oth­er win­ter venues. This episode goes out at 12 noon and 4pm SLT / 8pm and mid­night in the UK, repeat­ed on Sat­ur­day at the same time.