Brand new release studio album by Blue Rose Code aka Ross Wilson, the Edinburgh-born songwriter who labours under that name doesn’t write folk songs. But having discovered the traditional music of the British Isles whilst in exile down south, he fell in love with what he heard. Those sounds informed what happened next.

His new album ‘The Ballads Of Peckham Rye’ features a remarkable roll call of musicians from the folk side of the fence, including Karine Polwart, Mattie Foulds, Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke and Rachel Newton from The Furrow Collective.

To make it harder for our few remaining record shops to file Blue Rose Code in a rack, the new album also features two of the Scottish jazz scene’s supreme talents in trumpeter Colin Steele and pianist Dave Milligan. And on bass, the unclassifiable but unutterably classy Danny Thompson warms and grounds these songs, as only he can.

At the start of his career, Ross sent demos to folk clubs in the hope of a gig. One promoter posted his CD back with a post-it note, scrawled in red that simply said: “Your music is not folk.” You can’t argue with that. Or can you?

“I guess that I’m a crossover artist,” says Ross. “I’m just not sure from where I’m crossing over or where I’m going to end up.”

Over the last year, Blue Rose Code has captivated crowds at Cambridge, Moseley and Shrewsbury festivals, been celebrated by Radio 2, Radio 4 and XFM, and his adaptation of Robert Frost’s poem ‘Acquainted With The Night’ was played on the long running teen drama Hollyoaks. Ross has just completed a joint tour with BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year Bella Hardy.

As Bob Harris says, “Blue Rose Code is a very important emerging singer/songwriter”, or as David Kushar of Spiral Earth put it: “Blue Rose Code is as slippery as an eel; a genre dodger; a mess of influences and contradictions, a sign of something special”.

“This is simply beautiful, I am a folk convert.” – Emma Freud, BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends

“An affirmation of love that links human relationships with the natural world. As sublimely paced as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison.” – Folk Radio UK