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.

The first Blue Rose Code album North Ten was released in 2013. It was not an Americana album, despite the insistence of some of its enraptured reviewers. He describes his music as “audibly Scottish”. Nevertheless, the estimable Bob Harris was so struck by Ross’s acutely personal, bruised and soul-bared songs he picked him to perform in

Nashville, for the BBC Introducing showcase at the 2013 Americana Music Association conference.

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. That word again.

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."

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”.