Folk /
Pass The Distance
Few albums define a genre as succinctly as Simon Finn’s Pass The Distance does for psychedelic folk. Not even landmark recordings by Pearls Before Swine or Skip Spence can stand up to the sheer madness of Finn’s sole LP, originally released in 1970. After moving to London in 1967, Finn busked around town for a couple years before entering Camden’s Chalk Farm Studios, best known for producing a string of reggae hits. Pass The Distance, however, would become more than a solo-acoustic project. Back…
Volume 1 / Blind Joe Death Volume 1
2016 remastered edition, clear vinyl edition of 500 copies. "For several years major labels had been issuing records in both mono and stereo formats. By 1967 Takoma was doing well enough financially to justify the recording of John Fahey's first and second albums for the burgeoning stereo market. Thus Vol.1: Blind Joe Death, as the record would be titled henceforth, was recorded for the third time and it is probably this release that most people are familiar with today. For the new version Fahey…
Guitar Vol. 4 / The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party And ...
500 copies. Orange vinyl Originally released in 1966. John Fahey's never recorded an album that was more thoroughly of its moment. From the groovy flute and twangy sitar accompaniment to the backwards guitar, this Birthday Party is a charmingly trippy 60s time capsule. But it isn't a two dimensional one. The album gains immense depth from the tension between his sweeping, fingerpicked melodies and discordant string-battery. It's the audible battle between yearned for rose colored luminescence a…
Volume 3 / The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites
2016 remastered edition, green color vinyl edition of 500 copies.Originally released in 1964, Dance of Death offers a glimpse of an artist in transformation. More than half the album's titles draw from the traditional blues and country repertoire Fahey had spent his teen years and young adulthood collecting, listening to, and learning to play, yet the recordings proved once and for all that his interests lay in musical transfigurations rather than preservation -- John Fahey was not afraid to use…
Volume 2 / Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes
2016 remastered edition, blue color vinyl edition of 500 copies. "Death Chants is John Fahey's second album, following the brilliantly apocryphal Blind Joe Death. As massive as that earlier work was, it represented only a tentative first step towards the fields of hodologic splendor that our hero would go on to create. Death Chants represents a much more fully realized syncretism of the modernist and primitive poles between which John Fahey wobbled. It is also the first album he deigned to relea…
The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
2016 remastered edition, gold color vinyl edition of 500 copies. Originally released in 1967. The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death is John Fahey's classic fifth album from the mid-1960s and is one of his most influential. This album has an amazing variety of styles, moods, and influences, and John has a compositional and playing style that is totally unique. "A strange man, John Fahey, with an unusual set of guitar styles. This album, originally released on Riverboat Records and later reissued…
Large As Life and Twice As Natural
Reissued by Fledg'ling in 2005. First released in 1968, Large As Life And Twice As Natural is a tremendous acoustic-folk-blues-jazz masterpiece. As always with Davy Graham, the music seems to defy categorization. Perhaps the simplest description would be "great." On Large As Life And Twice As Natural, Davy is joined by the legendary Harold McNair on flute, Dick Heckstall-Smith on saxophone, Jon Hiseman on drums (both from Colosseum) and Danny Thompson (from Pentangle) on double bass. For this ca…
Sweet Child
**Limited 50th Anniversary Sky Blue Vinyl Edition** Sweet Child, released in 1968, at the peak of Pentangle's career, is probably the most representative of their work. A sprawling two-record set, half recorded in the studio and half live at the Royal Festival Hall, showcases just how versatile Pentangle was in their unique brand of English folk, jazz, Celtic, blues, and pop styles. Some of the live covers are easily their finest performances. Furry Lewis' "Turn Your Money Green," sung by the de…
Cruel Sister
2018 Stock. 180 gram audiophile vinyl, Gatefold sleeve. Cruel Sister was an album recorded in 1970 by Folk Rock band Pentangle. All the tracks are versions of traditional songs. Whereas their previous album had been produced by Shel Talmy, and featured quite a heavily produced, commercial sound, Cruel Sister was produced by Bill Leader, noted for his recordings of Folk musicians. The whole of side two of the album is taken up with an extended version of the ballad "Jack Orion", previously record…
The Pentangle
2018 Stock. 180 gram audiophile vinyl. The Pentangle was the 1968 debut album of the band Pentangle: Terry Cox, Bert Jansch, Jacqui McShee, John Renbourn and Danny Thompson. It brought together their separate influences of folk, jazz, blues, early music and contemporary song-writing. One of the band's most commercially successful albums, it reached number 21 in the British charts.By the time that the album was produced, the members of Pentangle were already accomplished musicians, in their own f…
Sings a collection of American Folk Lore
This LP features 12 tracks that Lightnin' Hopkins recorded Recorded in Houston, Texas in April 1954. Includes edgy electric guitars, jagged rhythms and a playful rhythm section. Comes in glorious American-style cardboard cover, each copy specially manufactured by hand."The session and two
bottles of gin were finished and Lightnin' just shuffled away counting
his money. We have not seen or heard from him since, but everytime the
phone rings we somehow hope we'll hear his voice sayin', 'Man, I …
Santa Barbara Honeymoon
The second of two albums that Bert wrote in America in the mid 70s, ‘Santa Barbara Honeymoon’ foregrounds some of Bert Jansch’s most charming and addictive melodies. Album highlights include ‘Baby Blue’, ‘Lost and Gone’ and a reworking of Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Blues Run The Game’. It was recorded in America over a two month period and is another departure for Bert Jansch, mixing his familiar style with a more produced sound – utilising backing singers and session players including horns, steel dru…
Swaddling Songs
Classic, highly regarded and sought after acid folk / progressive rock album. Featuring girl singers Clodagh Simonds and Alison Williams, Mellow Candle never achieved commercial success they deserved spawning a legendary psychedelic folk-rock album akin to Fairport Convention or Fotheringay. Touring to support Thin Lizzy (Simonds played on Lizzy's album Shades of a Blue Orphanage) and Horslips, the band had a short lived existence. Clodagh Simonds later went on to play again with Mike Oldfield a…
The Words in between
The story goes that Ian A. Anderson and Gef Lucena were walking
the streets of Clifton, trying to come up with a name for their new
record label. At the time (the early 70s) Greenwich Village was
naturally the mecca destination for any musician worth his 12-string, so
the pair had taken to referring to their slice of Bristol as ‘Clifton
Village’ (long before this was taken up by estate agents across the
land, albeit in a very different fashion). And so The Village Thing was
born; home to …
L.A. Turnaround
First of a diptych of albums recorded in and influenced by Bert Jansch’s time in America. As the title suggests, this album was something of a contrast to Jansch’s usual style – taking in swathes of Nashville-infused pedal steel to sparkling effect. Produced in part by the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith, whose guidance is much in evidence on this perfectly measured slice of British country-rock.
Music of Northern Laos
Music of Northern Laos, subtitled Provinces of Luang Namtha et Phongsaly. One part of Akuphone's collection of Laotian music. Includes liner notes in English, French, and Japanese and a download code. Akuphone presents a collection of recordings of various musical practices from the Laotian provinces of Champasak, Attapeu, Sekong, Saravan, Luang Namtha and Phongsaly. These documents are a perfect introduction to the traditional music of South Laos minority groups. Popular modern music is widely …
Music of Southern Laos
Music of Southern Laos, subtitled Provinces of Champasak, Attapeu, Sekong and Saravan. One part of Akuphone's collection of Laotian music. Includes liner notes in English, French, and Japanese and a download code. Akuphone presents a collection of recordings of various musical practices from the Laotian provinces of Champasak, Attapeu, Sekong, Saravan, Luang Namtha and Phongsaly. These documents are a perfect introduction to the traditional music of South Laos minority groups. Popular modern mus…
Roscoe Holcomb and Wade Ward
Limited edition reissue of this legendary LP, issued onFolkways Records back in 1962. A magical collection of Kentucky's own Roscoe Holcomb, one of the most legendary figures of Appalachian Music and a huge influence on the '60s folk scene, and Wade Ward, a Virginia fiddle and clawhammer banjo player who's style has been often imitated. Playing banjo, guitar, and singing in that beautiful high lonesome sound, Roscoe Holcomb covers the first side of this LP, in his wild and raw style. Wade Ward h…
You Never Were Much of a Dancer
Tompkins Square is very proud to announce the signing of Welsh multi-instrumentalist, Gwenifer Raymond. Hailing from Cardiff and now residing in Brighton in the South of England, Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight. Tompkins Square released her debut 7" on Record Store Day. Praise via The Wire, BBC, MOJO, UNCUT and more. In her own words .... When I was about eight years old a pretty formative thing happened to me ... my mum bought me a cassette tape of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Being so…
Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas
LP version. On Buck Curran's second solo album, Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas, the emphasis switches to acoustic guitar, as compared to his first solo album, Immortal Light
(ESPDISK 5014CD/LP, 2016). Side A, all solo acoustic instrumentals,
seems to have fallen out of a wormhole emanating from Takoma Records in
the 1970s. There's some of that on side B as well, but there are also
vocals and other instruments, sometimes overdubbed, and the dedication
of "Taurus" to Peter Green, guitarist e…