Jim Moray

‘On first hearing, Sweet England is startling. By the tenth listen, it's a revolutionary experience.’ HMV Choice

Jim Moray is a 27 year old singer, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer who has created startlingly contemporary recordings of England’s traditional songs which have been described as the most significant development in folk music in the last 30 years.

Since graduating from Birmingham Conservatoire in summer 2003, Jim Moray has caused a revolution in the folk world with a series of award-winning albums and a developing career as a producer.

At the age of 21, Jim Moray released his debut album Sweet England on his own unlikely named Niblick-Is-A-Giraffe Records. Just a month before he had completed the final year of his music degree at Birmingham Conservatoire, submitting the album as his final project recording it for next to nothing in a bedroom studio made up of equipment bought with his student loan. He had played virtually every instrument himself adding in just a few pieces performed by fellow students. He had also engineered, arranged and produced the songs, learning how to record as he went along. The final album was causing waves even before it was released.

‘The reinvention of folk music, Jim Moray’s debut CD, a word-of-mouth sensation, is the biggest leap forward in folk for 30 years.’ The Telegraph

‘Hailed as the future of British folk, 21 year old Jim Moray is exciting the open-minded and upsetting the more myopic folk traditionalists with his remarkable album Sweet England.’ Billboard, US

‘Moray’s inventive rearrangement of such familiar ballads as Early One Morning and Raggle Taggle Gypsies may just be the most significant new development in English folk music since Fairport Convention’s Liege and Leif.’ Uncut

Since then Jim has gone from performing in local folk clubs to playing the main stage at Cambridge Folk Festival, Sidmouth Folk Festival, WOMAD and beyond. He has been featured in The Independent, Guardian, Mojo, The Telegraph, Uncut and The Times and reviewed in countless other publications here and abroad. He has performed radio sessions and been interviewed on BBC Radio 2, 3. 4 and 6Music and been featured on TV several times including on the landmark BBC4 Folk Britannia series. He has also had his music featured on the trailer for ITV’s drama Murder City. He has toured in the UK, Benelux, Australia and Canada.

In February 2004 Jim received both the Horizon Award as best newcomer and the prestigious Album Of The Year Award for Sweet England at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. He has followed Sweet England with two further album ‘Jim Moray’ (2006) and ‘Low Culture’ (2008) which went on to win the fRoots Critics’ Poll Album of the Year Award, Mojo’s Folk Album of the Year and gain him three nominations in the BBC Folk Awards 2009.

‘The best album of the year came from Jim Moray, whose classy and experimental Low Culture made use of anything from African kora to hip-hop.’ The Guardian

‘Those who feel that the folk idiom has nothing to express to the truly modern and young should acquire this album forthwith…This is a genuinely fabulous record.’ The Independent On Sunday, 13th July 2008

Jim has also produced albums for James Raynard, Wheeler Street and Jackie Oates.

On April 30th 2010 Jim Moray will pre-release his new album exclusively through the June issue of Songlines magazine (#68). Songlines readers will be the first to hear the greatly anticipated ‘In Modern History’, adding it to their collections for free. Never a musician to stick to the prescribed routes, Moray’s world-exclusive partnership with Songlines will see him join only a handful of artists to pre-release albums in this way including Prince & McFly (the Mail on Sunday) and The Kinks’ frontman Ray Davies (The Sunday Times).

“When you’re a few albums in, it’s very hard for people to form a different impression of you. So I wanted to do something interesting and something that’s exciting in itself… to create an opportunity for people to have the CD in their hand and give it a try. Perhaps having discovered the new album for free they might decide to come to a live show or want to investigate what I’ve done before, and we are also releasing a new compilation of tracks from my back catalogue to make that easy to do.” (Jim Moray)