MUMFORD AND SONS - BABEL (VINYL) 2012

When Mumford & Sons entered the studio to commence work on their second album, Babel, in August of 2011, they never envisioned it would be to follow-up a debut record that had connected with so many music lovers from all different corners of the globe, and all the roads in-between. Their success is even something the four members struggle to trace. "It sort of just happened," Marcus Mumford has often mused to journalists. The earliest memories of the band performing together are within the close confines of a rehearsal room in Putney, and of last minute street-side jamming sessions on the pavement outside Bosun's Locker (a now defunct basement venue on Kings Road in London) ahead of a show. It was a scene already common to the band as musicians falling in and out of bands of each and every genre. Ben Lovett and Marcus were already working on songs together from their school days, but those songs didn't realise their full potential until Winston Marshall (armed with a banjo and dobro), and Ted Dwane (double bass, but with a penchant for being a multi-instrumental marvel) had learned and lived those songs, given them new arrangements, and injected them with a real 'band' dynamic.