Folk /
Music from Saharan Cellphones
2017 repress, originally released in 2012. "A compilation of the most popular music circulating the Sahara desert on the unofficial network of cellphones -- where mp3s are stored, played, and traded in very literal peer to peer bluetooth transfers. The contemporary West African sound from the new school of DIY production with little or no commercial release outside of their locales, from spaced out Tuareg autotune, Ivorian club jams, Mauritanian synth, and Malian hip hop electro. Collected from …
Lie, The Love and Terror Cult
ESP-Disk present a reissue of Charles Manson's Sings, originally released as Lie: The Love and Terror Cult in 1970. Charles Manson visited New York City in the early '60s with his guitar and his songs in a vain search for recognition. Later, he had better luck in Beverly Hills, where famous musicians let him use their studio to produce this album. He has vocal backup from the women of the "family". During a stay in a San Francisco prison, he met a fellow inmate and gave him the album to rel…
Lescudjack 10''
"Lescudjack" is one of the finest moments in Michael Chapman's epic discography. Originally featured on 1978's "Life On The Ceiling" album, the instrumental track melded the British guitarist's distinctive finger picking style with throbbing synthesizer lines and heavy space rock influences. Famously a favourite of Daniele Baldelli, and a long-standing secret weapon of Kosmiche-minded DJs, Chapman's peerless original version is joined here by a brilliant Lexx edit that subtly extends it into a m…
Rosemary Lane
Release Date on May 5th. By the time Rosemary Lane was released in 1971, Bert Jansch had covered a great deal of territory on numerous albums as a solo artist, collaborations with John Renbourn and records by the band in which he and Renbourn sang and played guitar, Pentangle. Returning to the intimate economy of his self-titled debut LP from a half-dozen or so years earlier, Rosemary Lane was recorded on portable equipment by engineer/producer Bill Leader and featured Jansch with no accompani…
Birthday Blues
Release Date on May 5th. Bert Jansch's freewheeling fifth album, Birthday Blues, occupies a unique place in his solo discography. Released in 1969, the same year Basket of Light propelled Pentangle into the UK pop charts, Birthday Blues almost sounds like a Pentangle LP missing John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee. Backed-up by bandmates Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, Jansch neither holds back his characteristic moodiness nor takes himself too seriously. What's more, Jansch is in love. Heather Rosem…
The Grail & The Lotus
A reissue of Robbie Basho's The Grail & The Lotus, originally released in 1966. It's become an oft-quoted statement that John Coltrane was the Father, Pharaoh Sanders was the Son, and Albert Ayler, the Holy Ghost. It could arguably apply to the holy trinity of steel string guitarists as well. Many claim John Fahey to be the Father, Kottke was considered the Son, and Robbie Basho would certainly be considered the Holy Ghost. The Basho/Ayler similarities are many, and both pushed their idioms furt…
Basho Sings
A reissue of Robbie Basho's Basho Sings, originally released in 1967. It's become an oft-quoted statement that John Coltrane was the Father, Pharaoh Sanders was the Son, and Albert Ayler, the Holy Ghost. It could arguably apply to the holy trinity of steel string guitarists as well. Many claim John Fahey to be the Father, Kottke was considered the Son, and Robbie Basho would certainly be considered the Holy Ghost. The Basho/Ayler similarities are many, and both pushed their idioms further physic…
Agrim Agadez: Musique Guitare de la Republique du Niger
Agrim Agadez is a compilation of contemporary field recordings of guitar music from the Sahelian empire of Niger. Focusing on guitar music throughout the country, from meditative starlight ballads, fuzzy Hendrix covers, rag tag wedding bands, to political minded folk guitarists. A beautiful encapsulation of the diversity of guitar as it exists today, recorded over years of travels. Like most of the Sahel, the guitar is found in every corner of Niger. Whether acoustic, electric, or built …
Living In The Shadows
Signifying a return to form that heralded one of the most prolific periods of his life, this special collection features some of Jansch’s finest work. Living In the Shadows includes an extra disc of demos, alternate versions and never-before heard tracks, transferred from Jansch’s personal tapes, alongside the three studio albums of the 1990s: The Ornament Tree, When The Circus Comes To Town and Toy Balloon. This trio of works represents quite different facets of Jansch’s talent; where Circus is…
Live In Australia
Bert Jansch, playing Live In Australia, in a cafe in 1998. This is a highly direct set, being mostly comprised only of Bert and his guitar, singing familiar favourite songs and newer lat-90’s material alike. The audio has been carefully remastered for this release, which is available on CD or LP, both with liner notes by Colin Harper. On Earth Recordings.
Dakhla Sahara Session
LP version. Includes an eight-page insert and a download code. The random-access memory of an hourglass. On the one hand, there's Cheveu, the French three-member band, whose soundtrack has never ceased to question music codes by exceeding various genres and pushing back their limits. On the other hand, you have Group Doueh, a Sahrawi band from the Sahara desert (Dakhla). Their music spans across many styles and hammers tradition with unprecedented finds. In between both their remote musical univ…
Waande Kadde
Dreamy instrumentals from Fouta Toro. Improvisational session of acoustic guitar and hoddu, drawing on regional folklore, ancient praise songs and epic ballads. Recorded in a fishing village in Northern Senegal, with an ever present backdrop of children's voices culminating in a clapping and stomping rhythm section. Debut release on Sahel Sounds & Mississippi Records new international imprint "Songs from Home."
An Introduction to Ored Recordings, Pt. 1: Song
The tireless Death Is Not The End returns with the first of two primers of Caucasus folk in conjunction with the Ored Recordings label. Established in 2014, Ored Recordings is a free ethnographic net-label that has drawn together a truly enlightening collection of field recordings based on documenting the folk and experimental musicians living in villages and towns throughout the North Caucasus region. Working together, the two labels draw together a 13-track collection that offers an illuminati…
An Introduction to Ored Recordings, Pt. 2: Dance
The tireless Death Is Not The End returns with the second of two primers of Caucasus folk in conjunction with the Ored Recordings label. We’ve been blown away by this joint endeavour from Death Is Not The End and Ored Recordings, a Nalchik, Russia-based net-label that is a treasure trove of ethnographic folk and experimental music spanning the North Caucasus region. This second volume profiles an intrinsic social function of the Circassian people; the urge to dance. Some ten tracks deep, it real…
Flight Of The Light Air Force
"A companion EP to the recent double LP retrospective This Song Was Borne, Flight Of The Light Air Force features three exclusive tracks by cult favorite outsider-folk duo Fraser & DeBolt. The majestic title track is an outtake from their second Columbia LP With Pleasure; left off that album for reasons of space (it clocks in at eight minutes), it would've easily been the finest song on the record and a highlight of their career. On the flip side, we have two cuts recorded live at a February 197…
Ragas And Talas (1959)
One of his earliest LPs in its entirety, Ragas & Talas (origibally on His Master’s Voice ALP1665), issued in 1959 is finally available again. All played with a hypnotic quality that's really wonderful! Indian musician Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) was one of the best-known exponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century. In 1956, he began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his …
London Taximi
The "London Taximi" cassette consists of some tracks recorded by Greek experimental musician Tasos Stamou and international artistic explorer Mike Cooper. These recordings took place from 2014 to 2016 in London. Although they have been playing together for some time, this is their first joint record attempt. In 66 minutes we hear the two authors "talk" in a very special musical language, whose vocabulary is derived by their common (and not) influences, using lap steel guitar, bouzouk…
Raga Piloo
Virtuoso Nikhil Banerjee, one of the 20th century’s greatest masters of the Indian sitar, passed away in 1986 at the age of 55. Banerjee was widely acclaimed for his intensely individualistic pursuit of the poetry of raga. Nikhil Banerjee studied northern Indian classical music with the sarodist Ustad Allauddin Khan, father of sarodist Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna and also teacher of Ravi Shankar and Pannalal Ghosh.
Raga Puria-Kalyan
Pandit Ram Narayan, brother of Chatur Lal (the first tabla player to impress the western world on a larger scale in the company of Ravi Shankar), ranks as the most eminent sarangi player of today. His novel style of musical expression has changed the role of the sarangi forever, from that of an accompanying instrument to a full grown solo instrument. Take particular note of his alap in Puria Kalyan, perhaps the best this writer has heard him play.
Raga Desh
Virtuoso Nikhil Banerjee, one of the 20th century’s greatest masters of the Indian sitar, passed away in 1986 at the age of 55. Banerjee was widely acclaimed for his intensely individualistic pursuit of the poetry of raga. Nikhil Banerjee studied northern Indian classical music with the sarodist Ustad Allauddin Khan, father of sarodist Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna and also teacher of Ravi Shankar and Pannalal Ghosh.
For his second recording he had chosen Raag Desh.