Events
Folklore Presents…
An intimate night of ambient folk and experimental songwriting from two shape-shifting artists.
Rapt is the solo project of Brighton’s Jacob Ware, whose genre-defying catalogue blends reverb-drenched folk, ambient textures and raw emotional storytelling. His latest work, Until the Light Takes Us, is his most stripped-back and mystically charged to date.
Black Brunswicker is Etta Helfrich, a Midwest-born, Manchester-based guitarist crafting immersive, nature-infused instrumentals. Their recent album Been Around Here Before is a warm, reflective journey built from tape loops, field recordings, and sun-glazed melodies.
Two boundary-pushing artists in one of London’s most intimate spaces.
RAPT: Jacob Ware is Rapt, but what Rapt is isn’t so simple. The Brighton native describes it as less of a typical music project and more like a label, in which he just so happens to play the part of each artist. Ware first cut his teeth in the UK’s extreme metal scene as the founding bassist for Enslavement, but this belies the directions he would later take his music when striking out solo.
His self-titled 2018 debut was a series of serene, stretched ambient instrumentals, while subsequent releases None of This Will Matter and Drouth saw Ware explore swirling, reverb-saturated singer-songwriter fare and a techno twist on the ideas from Rapt, respectively. Brand consistency be damned, Ware’s an artist’s artist: helplessly compelled from one idea to the next.
Ware’s latest, Until the Light Takes Us, is yet another singular entry into his ever-growing and exceedingly diverse catalog. At first blush, it seems the most linear evolution in his discography. 2022’s Wayward Faith was a folk record crafted with the philosophy of ambient music, packed with understated details that rewarded close, repeated listening. Compared to None of This Will Matter, Wayward Faith pared down effects to create a record that dared listeners to lean in and scrutinize its tiny shifts and rich storytelling. Until the Light Takes Us moves similarly, though it’s at turns more mystical and more harrowingly real than anything he’s made to date.
BLACK BRUNSWICKER: As ambient folk artist Black Brunswicker, Etta Helfrich creates rich ground for reflection with roaming instrumentals closely rooted in nature, casting a restful spell. The Bloomington, Indiana-born artist grew up in the Midwest and brings the sweeping plains of the landscape into their expansive guitar-led sound, drawing you closer to something primordial, vast, and earthy.Accordingly bound up with a sense of adventure and wanderlust, much of Helfrich’s output has been shaped by the experience of travel (Helfrich is now based in Manchester, UK), from the small trips taken around her new UK home on Wanderers in the North (2020) and the pastel-hued snapshot of the Czech Republic on Age of Aristocracy (2019) to the daydreaming that propelled the 2020 lockdown release Wilder Paths. Her 2024 full-length Been Around Here Before used DIY tape loops, field recordings, and washes of ambient guitar to map out the Midwest through a collection of mellowed-out, sun-glazed postcards. Recorded with local musicians from the Indiana-born artist’s new home in Manchester, England—including vocalist Emily Mercer—the LP revisits US road trips and natural beauty spots to build a summer scrapbook of her past, helping her to process present-day anxieties and find a quiet stillness through music.
