North London's midnight man tumbles out his treehouse to deliver twelve potions of minor healing in “Iron Day”, his questing, soul-salvaging songbook.

Brimming with majesty and maraud in equal parts, Genghis Cohn synthesises trad. English folk song with tik-tok fried, surrealist dream sequences on this debut long-player. A romance of two hedgehogs, devotional bone temples, broken shadows and sausage kings, GC conjures Brent Hayward strolling through the silver birch and presents to us, in a warmly recognisable form, a grand slab of folk music that challenges it’s ancient rewards.

Those acquainted with GC’s lean, amorphous strain of DIY experimentations may find a menacing apprehension haunting the interludes of “Iron Day” and struggle to immediately settle in it’s splendour in the anticipation of songs dissolving or amalgamating in rust and gob. Still minimalist and direct, but an altogether different jester, any pre-conceptions should remain as they are as the album builds and blends through paced, tempered sequencing and playful, intricate storytelling.

Amidst cavernous inner-dialogue and brilliant, contorted pastoral sequences, GC’s guitar (reported to be over 100 years old!?) laps and thrashes alongside accompaniments of Lauren Collier’s aching violin, a lethargic harmonica and emphatic hand-percussion that drifts in and then out. A dynamic, earthy collection that places future barn-stormers like “Underneath The Oak” and the gentle blaze of “Onion” in cadence with the doom-stricken, ghostly slides as on “Misunderstood” and “Secrets”, all recorded in a dazzling clarity that captures the cascading instrumentation as clearly as the settled, tormented humour of GC’s blues. Indispensable candlemeat and essential, joyous listening for fans of; Davey Graham, The Godz, Leonara Carrington, Smelly Feet, Martin Carthy