Some twelve years ago, the landlady of the Bleeding Wolf in Clinkskell, re-opened her Tudor concert room on alternate Wednesdays to a freshly-minted entertainer. He still plays there.

Nothing remarkable in that, you may think, except in those twelve years Wotan Althorpe has become, as the old saying goes, a glittering star in the unfathomable firmament. But roots are important to Wotan, and so it’s fitting that his eighty-seventh LP should be made inside the Bleeding Wolf, where it all began.

Wotan’s Wednesdays are unlike anything else he does. You may think you’ve had enough of his monologues to last a lifetime, but when you’ve heard Blackmore’s Ritual and Midwinter at the Cheese Museum you may change your mind! Once you’ve listened to Rotting Seaside Giants, I guarantee you’ll want to play it again and again and again.

This album contains several fine new recordings, obviously derived from his Northern background— Make do ‘wi One Eye and Dismal Today How I Like It for instance—but the whole disturbingly evocative experience is perhaps Wotan Althorpe’s most eerily scintillating work to date.