Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours Vol 1

It’s amazing, some 40 years after the Balearic ethos of DJing coalesced, how its essential principles and methods continue to spread and mutate. Take the RE:WARM label from the English South Coast, which is rooted in Balearic record collecting and DJing culture, digging up and polishing up obscure tracks including anything from New Zealand space disco to 90s South African pop. And on this fantastic collection by DJ Paul Hillery, they apply the ethos to folk, country and gentle psychedelia new and (mostly) old. This is all ultra obscure stuff in an area somewhere adjacent to Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Everly Brothers in their psyche-kitsch days. And as ever with the Balearic approach, it’s not just the individual tracks, but the juxtaposition, the presentation of them as part of DJ culture, which makes them not museum pieces but living, breathing treasures in the here and now.