Seth Lakeman, Tales From The Barrel House, CD review If Seth Lakeman were sold as a supermarket product, he would be labelled as a maxi-multi-instrumentalist. To say the 35-year-old from Dartmoor had complete artistic control over his album Tales From The Barrel House would be an understatement. He wrote/adapted/played on/sang/mixed/and produced the record. He may even have made the tea. The album was originally issued as a strictly limited website release last November and now gets its national release and distribution. Tales From The Barrel House is like an extended, tender, love song to a lost age. There are laments and tributes to blacksmiths, carpenters, fishermen, tin miners, cider-makers. In tone, it's about as far from glossy folk-pop as you could get. More Than Money, a song about copper miners, was recorded down the George and Charlotte mine of Morwellham (once the greatest copper port of the British Empire). The rest of the album was recorded in a cooperage and the atmosphere of raw and simple folk permeates every track. As well as the cello, banjo, guitars, bouzouki and viola, there are the unusual sound effects of a Salvation Army drum, clanking chains, bellows and a railway track being thumped on an album where fast songs such as More Than Money sit happily alongside slow, seductive tracks including Apple Of His Eye. The album may make you sentimental about a lost age of craftsmen and, in his song about carpenters, The Artisan, Lakeman sings: His truth to be humble, and fashion into tools, Tables and benches, kind words from his youth, Draw those even lines, Share his peace of mind, As the artisan shines. The music is an acquired taste but Tales From The Barrel House is certainly a modern musical artisan at work. Seth Lakeman: Tales From The Barrel House (Honour Oak Records)