Folk /
Bizzarrophytes
Carl Erdmann’s Bizzarrophytes was recorded in Roswell, New Mexico, during the final years of the 70’s. A desert-fried haze of buzzing sitar raga, shimmering guitar soli, and lonesome instrumental psych. Erdmann had been galvanized several years prior by witnessing an intimate performance by Ravi Shankar at Austin’s University of Texas. Erdmann spent the next several years with a sitar in the back of his pickup truck - teaching himself the instrument between stints working on an oil field as a ge…
Matir Gaan: Songs From The Earth (LP)
* Tip! * Matir Gaan is a collaboration between young Bengali migrant, Mohammed After Hussain and Italian electronic artist, Andrea Rusconi (aka Paq). The resulting album delightfully combines the ancient folk songs of Md After's homeland with Paq's cosmic synth exotica.Mohammed After Hussain escaped Bangladesh in 2015 and arrived in Italy in 2017 after a long and dangerous journey across the Mediterranean from the violence he found in Libya. In Italy he found safety and hospitality as an asylum …
The Story Of Valerie
*2022 repress* The discovery of a cassette of Carola Baer's early 90s private home recordings was the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. Made as a one off mixtape of newly recorded songs, and given away to a long-since forgotten recipient, this cassette was found in 2017 at a Goodwill "bins" location in Portland, Oregon. These chaotic, by the pound thrift stores contain 1000's of unsorted items in constant flux, which are only available for the public to buy for a limited time before…
Back To Baâlbek
The Diva Faïrouz. Her real name Nouhad Haddad, she was born in the Zokak el Blat district of Beirut. The eldest of a modest Maronite family, she developed a passion for singing very early on. Her parents are too poor to afford the luxury of a radio, so she spends most of her time listening, her ear glued to the wall, to the neighbors. Nouhad quickly memorizes the songs she hears and gives a few samples at parties organized by her school. It was there that she seduced her comrades with her vocal …
In Between The Notes : A Portrait Of Pandit Pran Nath
William Farley’s 1986 documentary portrait of the Indian classical figure, who considered by many to be the godfather of drone. Featuring interviews with Terry Riley, Mariam Zazeela and La Monte Young.
Kosterläge
*2022 stock* First ever vinyl reissue of rare and sought after Swedish psychedelic / progressive / folk underground treasures from the early 1970s. From Swedish folk to epic full tilt fuzz guitar jams it’s all in here. Originally released in 1972 on the obscure Swedish Gump label with many talented musicians of the time on board. Led by Mats Glenngård on guitar and fiddle, the album shows an interesting musical transition period before he joined the legendary Kebnekajse. One time only limited pr…
Breslin
“A set of spry, pastoral Aecoustic Guitar and errant Electronic pieces that harken back to libraries by Teisco, Vittorio Marino, and the like, yet mapped in an alien manner unlike any known lanes. Unusual, and uniformly excellent.” - Keith Fullerton Whitman
Skærsgårdslyd
The much anticipated second album from Astrid Øster Mortensen. New in Gothenburg, the Denmark-born Astrid started to frequent the Discreet Music shop in the summer of 2020. Coincidentally, around the same time Gustaf Dicksson was looking for a Danish vocalist for his upcoming Blod album Missväxt and one thing quickly led to another. Not only did Astrid contribute with vocals for said record but one day she handed us a master of her own music that completely floored us. The recordings eventually …
Café Türk
Café Türk, an inimitable Turkish-Swiss band formed in the 1980s, whose genre-bending sonic palette draws from Anatolia, the Caucasus and Western Europe. The group’s frantic trajectory connects Switzerland and the Turkish city of Kars with a background story as rich and unexpected as their sound. After three decades since they disbanded, Zel Zele Records have collaborated with Turkish crate-digger Grup Ses to give the music of Café Türk a new lease of life. This eponym compilation features origin…
Manduka
That Alexandre Manuel Thiago de Mello (aka Manduka), born in Petrópolis, a city in the south-east Brazil, isn’t a bigger name in the annals of Brazilian music is surely largely down to the unforgiving vagaries of politics rather than talent. This debut album, originally released in 1972, is up there with anything recorded contemporaneously by the big name post-tropicalistas. In figuring out its relative obscurity you have to factor in the unusual and febrile context in which it was composed, ami…
Opsigno
An important figure of the Argentinean acoustic school, his 4th album released in 2004, which is praised as the best album of his career, is now available on vinyl for the first time in the world! The latest release from SRRD label, which has released albums by Motohiko Hamase, Mono Fontana, Edison Natali, Yoshiharu Takeda and others!Alejandro Franov has been surrounded by music since he was a child, and became a multi-instrumentalist as he should. On this album, he plays a variety of percussion…
Concert 1975
Yasumi No Kuni, long-running Japanese folk group, originally formed in 1969 by the members of Jacks & Teruyuki Takahashi, recorded live just after Fy Fan second album.
Fabric Cordial
Bud Petal is the stage name of musician Eran Asoulin. His music has been described as ‘cerebral art-folk’ & ‘the music Lord Byron would be making had he lived in the 21st century’. Bud is a true outsider, a freak-folk wunderkind who has been compared to Syd Barret & Daniel Johnston. But don’t for a minute think him primitive or naive - Bud is worldly & word-wise beyond his years. He was ‘discovered’ when his self-produced first album was pulled from the trash at a local radio station. A self-tau…
Jrouli
*Edition of 300* What is fascinating with Rai is that it has never needed media, scenes or official and sponsored festivals in order to exist, progress and reinvent itself. Rai in the 21st century sustained its evolution via social media, the 3G and 4G networks and of course, the democratization of digital recording and electronic music in general. Cheba Wahida comes from that newer, incidentally very feminized, wave of Rai artists in the Oran region. Vice remains a central theme in the lyrics o…
Kleine
* 2022 stock. Edition of 300* Kleine was released in 2002 on tape only. Though it was recorded over the course of five years, this is probably their most coherent output – the record starts with mostly acoustic parts, mixed with more psychedelic parts. Towards the end, the more direct songs merge perfectly with the tape and drone experiments. On this record, Karin and Jeffrey get support from an impressive list of guest musicians: Alastair Galbraith on violin, B’Eirth (In Gowan Ring, Birch Book)…
Split EP
* 2022 stock. Edition of 200* Before embarking on a European tour, Boduf Songs and Jessica Bailiff re-worked one of their older songs in totally different versions. Boduf Songs presents a stripped own but electric and heavy version of decapitation blues, originally a vibrating and pulsating track. Jessica Bailiff brings a new take on Lakeside Blues, heavily relying on keyboards.
Old Things
* 2022 stock* This record is a collection of rare and unreleased material, mostly recorded between the release of her second and third album. As such, it can be seen as the missing link between the rather droney second record, and the starker Jessica Bailiff record. This is more than ,,just’’ a collection of older material: this records explains why it took her so long to finish her third record: she was also working on these gems which form a regular full length on their own. Songs like Your so…
Wounds Of Love: Khmer Oldies, Vol. 2
A second volume of late 50s and early 60s Cambodian slow rock, pop and R&B tracks - following the first volume's featuring as compilation of the week on Lauren Laverne's BBC 6Music show. From the late 1950s onwards a music scene developed around Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, inspired by the prevalence of imported rock & pop records arriving in the country from US & UK and also chanson and bolero records from France & Latin America. This collection documents some of these early home-grown slow r…
Wounds Of Love: Khmer Oldies, Vol. 1
From the late 1950s onwards a music scene developed around Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, inspired by the prevalence of imported early rock & pop records arriving in the country from US & UK and also chanson and bolero records from France & Latin America. This collection documents some of these early home-grown slow rock, pop & rnb 45 recordings from the early 60s, prior to the further embrace of US psych & garage rock-orientated sounds in the mid 60s and into the Vietnam war era.
Zar: Songs For The Spirits
Zar: Songs for the spirits is the second production of independent micro-label JuJu Sounds. The project focuses on building bridges between musicians from marginalised communities and niche audiences from around the world. The mission of JuJu Sounds is to revive valuable musical ecosystems, not just to sell exotic products.