Local singer David James Riley began the Big Boulder rolling on with a set of delicately crafted songs that referenced the roots of folk and the story as music, his version of ‘Running Up That Hill’ a perfect foundation for Maia; the progreesion of the ethereal into electronica and beyond setting the scene for the Hardest Working Sci-Fi Folk Band in the cluster of Pleiades…
Tom Clegg, Joe Haig, Simon Robinson and Will Fletcher have been propelling connection between roots buired deep and the cosmos since forming Maia in Huddersfield back in 2010, and were playing in Heeley as part of a winter tour also passing through Whitby, Cornwall and Camden. The tight set and easy interplay with the crowd have been earned over a hectic few years that has seen Maia performing on Radio 4 and at Hop Farm, Port Elliot and the Cambridge Folk Festival as well as landing a residency underneath the Three Crowns in North London.
Their intensely progressive use of harmony and percussion conjures up a Neolithic rave that hasn’t yet occured, with simulataneous care to highlight the folk, roots and blues traditions that have got them there in the first place.
Familiar to anyone attending the last Big Boulder Music and Arts Festival, Maia were playing for the next one, scheduled for Summer 2014 and funded by proceeds from acoustic winter gigs at the former Chapel on Gleadless Road, the acoustics in which matched the transient ambience of Maia’s atmosphere.
