Jim Moray

Jim Moray is an English folk singer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer from Macclesfield, Cheshire, in the United Kingdom. Born Douglas Oates in 1981, he studies classical composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire and begins releasing music while still a student.

Early releases and first albums

Moray issues the home-recorded I Am Jim Moray EP in 2001. In 2002 he appears at both Glastonbury Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival. The following year he receives a nomination for the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Horizon Award before working on his first full-length album, Sweet England, which he records in his bedroom during his final year of study and releases on his own Niblick Is A Giraffe label. At the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2004, he receives Album of the Year for Sweet England and the Horizon Award for best newcomer, and he is also nominated twice in the Best Traditional Song category for “Early One Morning” and “Lord Bateman”.

Subsequent records and style

His second album, the self-titled Jim Moray, is released in 2006 and moves towards a more orchestral sound with denser song structures than Sweet England. Low Culture follows in 2008 and uses instruments including African kora, melodeon, mandolin and mbira thumb piano. It wins the fRoots Critics Poll Album of the Year and the MOJO Folk Album of the Year, and is nominated for the BBC Folk Awards Album of the Year in 2009. In Modern History is released in 2010, followed by Skulk in 2012, which appears on Bandcamp.

Later work and collaborations

In 2014 Moray and singer-guitarist Sam Carter form False Lights to play traditional music with electric instruments. His sixth album, Upcetera, is released in 2016 and is nominated for Best Album and Best Original Track for “Sounds of Earth” at the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. On The Outlander, his seventh album, he uses a more stripped-down approach to playing and arranging, influenced by the British folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s, and includes Bellowhead fiddle player Sam Sweeney on six tracks. In 2023 he re-records songs from across his career at Abbey Road Studios; the resulting release, Beflean, appears later that year and is named Tradfolk.co’s album of the year.

Other work

Alongside his own recordings, Moray produces other artists, initially from his own studio in Bristol.