Folk /
Revolución Electrónica en Música Venezolana
Ultimate space-age exotica trip from Venezuela. In the early '70s, well-known composer and arranger Chelique Sarabia (who penned the famous “Ansiedad” when he was just a kid) decided to record an album of traditional and folkloric songs from Venezuela but giving them a modern touch, using especially developed equipment (M.R.A.A.), based off of the principles of the Moog. Chelique, helped by a team of gifted musicians, employed traditional instruments like the cuatro and the bandola llanera, filt…
Ocean of Colours (A. Cuni Sings a Homage To Pandit Bidur Mallik)
**2019 stock** Amelia Cuni was born in Milan and lived in India for more than ten years learning dhrupad singing from renowned masters (i.e. R. Fahimuddin Dagar and Bidur Mallik, Pt. Dilip Chandra Vedi). She also studied kathak dance and pakhawaj drumming. She received a three year scholarship from the Indian government. Since 1987, she performs internationally and since 1992, she is based in Berlin. Her music is featured on several solo CDs and collaborations. She has recorded for radio and TV …
Malam Minggu: A Saturday Night in Sunda
Akuphone resumes its reissue operations with its latest compilation, Malam Minggu: A Saturday Night in Sunda. This release brings us once again to Southeast Asia, with a stopover in the Indonesian archipelago – to the region of Sunda in western Java. As its name suggests, this collection immerses us in the vibes of Sundanese nights at the turn of the 1980s. During the post-independence climate of the 1960s, Presidents Sukarno and Suharto encouraged artists to renew and innovate traditional Indon…
You Are Tired
**300 copies** You Are Tired features amazing finger-pick style utilising both a calm and destructive mood, the tracks title producing imagery whilst you are listening and to a degree the sounds send you back to a time. similarly to other such guitar luminaries within the same genre such as John Fahey, Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho to name a few. Rob is an extension of their ideas, using his guitar to express meaning and emotion and he does it very elegantly on the opening track. Nightmare Study is a…
The Departing of a Dream, Vol. VII
The Departing of a Dream, Vol. VII is the debut collaboration between two giants of the New York avant-garde — guitarist Loren Connors and saxophonist/trumpeter Daniel Carter. It's a gorgeous, languorous soundscape distilled from the darkest reaches of blues and jazz. For nearly 17 years Connors has used the Departing series to continue his meditation on Miles Davis' epic "He Loved Him Madly" and expand his efforts to create disappearing music. The duo does just that, vanishing behind decaying …
Shaped by Place
** 300 copies ** "Brilliant new album from Village of Spaces, a combo once described as, 'Dan and his raggle taggle band of hippies' by Michael Hurley, a guy who knows about such things. The Dan in question is Dan Beckman-Moon who, along with his partner Amy Moon Offermann-Sims, is the central core of this constantly evolving, psychedelically-inclined, folk juggernaut. V.O.S. has had many name variations and members in the 17 years since Dan and Amy formed this more perfect union, but all of the…
The Twinkling Star
Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Umm Kulthum's (Oum Kalthoum) The Twinkling Star,
originally released in 1961. Kalthoum is a legendary Egyptian vocalist
and one of the biggest celebrities of the 20th century Arab world. She
was dubbed "the voice of Egypt" and "Egypt's fourth pyramid", and is
considered a national treasure. This 1961 album originally released on
Parlophone is one of the finest examples of her vocal ability and a
beautiful example of mid-20th century Egyptian popu…
Singe Tema
The return of the Zanzibara series: a Deep Taarab masterpiece from legendary singer Zuhura Swaleh, recorded in Nairobi in 1981.
Zuhura Swaleh & Party rose to fame on the Mombasa scene in the 1970s
with a new fast-paced taarab style based on local ngoma rhythms and its
melodies. The group sound was lead by an electrically amplified
tashkota (actually a Japanese instrument correctly spelled as
taishokoto), its shape best rendered as being a kind of “typewriter
banjo”—a trio of strings shorted…
Soothing Songs for Babies
Incredible archival LP collecting lullabies recorded at different times and from several countries, co-published by the prestigious Museum of Ethnography of Geneva and swiss renowned Mental Groove Records. All the lullabies presented here come from records published with a copy kept in the Archives internationales de Musique Populaire of the Meg. Lullabies xist in almost every culture in the world: while they relate to the world of childhood, they also evoke the privileged relationship establis…
Working on the Railroad
One man band Jesse Fuller's first recordings from 1954! Jesse Fuller was a truly unique one man band who played blues, spirituals, ballads and folk songs. On these recordings we find Jesse playing guitar, harmonica, kazoo and the footdella (a bass that Jesse built which he plays with his feet). One of the greatest folk musicians of all time in his prime. Features top tunes - San Francisco Bay Blues, Railroad blues, John Henry, Lining the tracks, Hanging 'round a skin game and the Railroad work s…
Offstrings: Inventions for guitar
"Around the turn of the century there seemed to be a wave of guitarists versed in experimental and electronic musics who sought out ways of drawing new sounds from their instrument of choice; the likes of Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Keith Fullerton Whitman (on his still-superb Playthroughs album), Sebastien Roux and Christopher Willits were among the most notable artists in this movement, and now, at the start of a new decade, this excellent album strives to highlight the work of five emerging guitaris…
Olympic Girls
A rare blend of eloquent lyrical craft and explorative musicianship, the songs of Tiny Ruins are etched into the memories of crowds and critics worldwide. Traversing influences that cross genre and era, the artistry of Hollie Fullbrook and her band spans delicate folk, lustrous dream pop and ebullient psychedelia. Building on the sparse arrangements and 'a novelist's eye for detail' (Uncut) cultivated over the past several years, the group's greatly anticipated third album Olympic Girls is reple…
The Ring of the Rise
Smaldone's latest on Immune features much full band accompaniment, exploring sonic reaches of early '70s era Neil Young, or Richard and Linda Thompson's first albums, with electric guitars and homemade tube amplifiers, as well as Micah's familiar acoustic finger-stylings. The Ring of the Rise continues Micah's relentless efforts to mine future truths from the past, this time hauling out a slab of marble spanning the 1950s through the 1970s, veined with slapback echoes, plate reverbs, tube equipm…
Huge Fluid Freedom
Huge Fluid Freedom is a singular melding of American primitive & instrumental guitar rock by one of the most important young guitarists currently mining the underground. Sean Smith
conjures fire and sweat, dew and ash through the guitar. From his Bay
Area locale, Smith has been elevating the language of the acoustic steel
string & exploring volume shredding electric excursions
concurrently for the better part of the last decade, forging a tightrope
walking hybridization of 2 seemingly disp…
Solemns
The 'Prince' & the Marquis (Mick Turner of DIRTY THREE) unfurled the scroll together, with Tren Brother Jim White (DIRTY THREE, CAT POWER) rumbling & banging things & playing drums, & the Bonny gang crew of Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly & Angel Olsen added invaluable dimensions to the moments herein.
Valosta Valoon
"Viewed from the American sub-underground (aka our headquarters), the Finnish scene always looks like a haven of freaks. Surely there are lots of dull rock, pop, and rap outfits from this chilly and heavily forested country, but they don't get exported, so we don't have to hear them. The Finnish bands we've known and loved are psych, prog, hardcore, free jazz, and post-form monsters of all shapes and sizes. A new name to add to the list of Deadly Finns (thanks, Eno) is Niko Karlsson. Well, not e…
Ida Con Snock
An album of new Hurley songs and older, classic compositions from the great American folk outsider, all arranged and performed beautifully at Levon Helm's Woodstock studio. Ida Con Snock has to rank as one of Michael Hurley's most slick sounding enterprises, but it's also a completely natural and untampered with vision of his songs, and there's a tremendous purity of intent resounding throughout pieces like the wonderful and poignant 'Wildegeeses' and the Appalachian fiddle-adorned 'Hog Of The F…
Kietsuzukeru Echo
Kietsuzukeru Echo (which loosely translates to "Disappearing Echo") is Tokyo, Japan stalwart Hisato Higuchi's second offering for Root Strata - his first being an a cappella track for the Tsuki No Seika 7" series in 2011. After over two decades of releases on P.S.F. Records, Family Vineyard, Apollolaan Recordings, and a steady string on his own imprint Ghost Disc, Hisato's latest effort marks a stylistic, yet finely distilled, return to his earliest live sets from the mid-1990s - documented in t…
The Union | A Hem of Evening
Named one of the ten best solo acoustic guitar albums of the year by The Out Door and a top ten album of the year by The Liminal, Tom Lecky’s debut album as Hallock Hill elicited a powerful response when it was first released on CD by Hundred Acre Recordings last May. The album’s unique assembly of stacked and layered acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars delivered a new kind of studio improvisation: pieces that were spontaneously made, yet feel composed, pieces that glide from harmonious to …
World Slide
Courtesy of the same folks who reissued that crazy 'Killing Melody' LP comes an amazing outing from British bluesman Mike Cooper. Since the early 60s he's been active supporting American blues artists such as Jimmy Reed, and Howling Wolf on their UK tours besides earning a crust backing many homegrown R&B bands. He also mastered the steel blues and Hawaiian lap guitar before veering into more avant-garde territory during the 80s, consolidating his various styles into a unique sound. The tracks h…