It's a pleasant surprise that countertenor Daniel Taylor is approaching something like superstardom, especially since most of his renown has come through the exceedingly remote realm of baroque opera. Yes, early music is in, and so are countertenors, but it's a stalwart audience indeed that will sit through Handel's Rinaldo or Theodora and come back for more.

Yet there are other things a countertenor can do. One is to team up with a lutenist, preferably someone as good as Sylvain Bergeron, and record a collection of 17th-century English Ballads and Folk Songs.

The present collection consists of 24 items, seven of them traditional songs like Greensleeves and The Foggy Dew that everyone knows, ten for lute alone and seven art songs by the likes of Dowland and Campion.

Even those of us for whom the countertenor voice is not a favourite must admit that Taylor sings beautifully. Taken individually, each song he does is a gem. Fourteen songs with the same exotic timbre and roughly similar tempos and melodic vocabularies become monotonous.

Bergeron must be one of the finest lutenists around. At least in this repertoire his playing is a model of poise, taste and moderation.

Although I don't recommend this CD for repeated, attentive listening, it would probably make excellent background music where a dreamy, archaic ambience is what's called for.