Folk /
Space Chanteys
Matt Valentine creates, has created, and will continue to create from inside of a continuum that unspools from a source that is also so distant as to be invisible. Mysterious Translucence is not just the name of his shoe. Space Chanteys is really the first honest solo album that Matt Valentine has created. There have been others that are somewhat like it, or are related to it, in shape, or in style, but they are not it. This alone is it. It is Space Chanteys. Recorded live, back in October ’00, …
Leaves From Off the Tree
Bo' Weavil is so excited to be releasing Leaves From Off The Tree: a three-way project of Sharron Kraus, Meg Baird (Espers) & Helena Espvall (Espers). This is a beautiful recording of traditional folk material, with the most stunning singing and arrangements of some of England and Appalachia's finest songs. 'The songs on this record were recorded after many an evening swapping songs (and beers!) in Fishtown, Philadelphia, where Sharron had moved from her native England, and Meg and Helena were a…
Judee Sill
Judee Sill's first album is now available in special miniature replica gatefold LP style packaging. This album heralded a major new talent in the airy, contemporary folk world of the early '70s. Featuring all original compositions, many of which relied on Sill's unique cosmological imagery to make their point, Judee Sill is a remarkable debut. There is a cohesive feel to the album; her lyrics are exceptionally poetic and her smooth voice gives every song a shimmery feel. The essence of the music…
Dreams Come True
Subtitled: Hi -- I Love You Right Heartily Here -- New Songs. Singer/songwriter Judee Sill died of a heroin overdose in 1979 before she completed her third album that was, like her first two, to be released on David Geffen's Asylum Records. The eight songs intended for that album are included here, freshly mixed by Jim O'Rourke (Wilco, Sonic Youth). This 2CD set also includes many Sill rarities from the '60s and '70s, including a 12-minute five song live video clip on enhanced CD. This replaces …
Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs and Folk Tunes from Tuva
Recordings from 1969 of Tuvan folk music and throat-singing with liner notes by Dr. Pekka Gronow of the University of Helsinki. With the advent of the folk music revival in the 1960s, a new interest in Tuvan music swept through Asia and Eastern Europe. Capitalizing on this appeal, these 16 recordings were issued in 1969 in the Soviet Union. Dust-to-Digital is proud to reissue for the first time on compact disc these traditional performances including several khoomei songs plus one modern take on…
Later On
The third Jandek album from 1981, reissued for the first time ever. "Another installment in the digitization of the Jandek back catalog, and for those who have never heard his earliest records because of their scarcity, you can now own another piece of the Corwood catalog without having to fend off those cutthroat members of the Jandek 'community'. This record, like Jandek's first (Ready for the House), is comprised of not just basically one chord throughout, but as far as I can tell he barely e…
Six and Six
2005 remastered version. The 2nd Corwood album, reissued on CD. Originally issued in 1981, this was the first actual album to be entitled to an artist named Jandek (the first Corwood album, 0739, was credited to the Units -- although that practice has been abandoned in the CD domain, an epic travesty in the minds of a few hardliners). The cover features a crude black & white photobooth-style portrait of the man we've come to assume as the singer, depicted at his most youthful, ready to accompany…
Ready for the House
There were plenty of significant events in 1978, ("You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta & Olivia Newton John was quite a popular track, for example), and one of the most low-key yet significant events was the debut LP release on the Corwood Industries label out of Houston, TX. Mysteriously enough it came out under the name "The Units", but it was obviously a singular vision and not a band. That individual would come to be more commonly known as Jandek, and a total of 40+ albums have been…
Kabiyé Orchestras & Lithophones
Rhythm is paramount to the Kabiyé of Northern Togo. This recording presents a selection of music played by the tribe's orchestras consisting of percussive instruments, flutes, whistles and trumpets. Also heard is the rare pichanchalassi lithophone ('the sound of the stones') -- an instrument played for entertainment and in initiation rites of young boys. These fascinating ethnic music recordings were made in Togo between 2001 and 2004 by Lorenzo Bianchi and Daniele Segre Amar.
Burkina Faso: Lobi Country
The Lobi people of Southern Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana and Ivory Coast were fiercely resistant to colonization and remain a relatively close society today. This has aided the continuing existence of marvelous xylophone music to accompany funerals and initiation ceremonies. This album is of music played on buur xylophones, buur also being the name for the closing ceremony of the initiation of diviners. Recordings from 1998.
Central Africa Musical Anthology of the Aka Pygmies
The Aka are one of the three groups of Pygmies found in Central Africa today. They are monogamous and settle in small family encampments that comprise parents, children, sons, and daughters-in-law and offspring, groups of thirty to forty persons organized in democratic communities. Pygmy music ,in the image of all their social activities, presents very similar characteristics, that is to say, relative autonomy of each participant within implied but strict structures. The recordings of this antho…
Ironclad
This is the same Clayton Noone who isn't (but will soon be) a legend; the same man behind the art-punk Futurians and junk-noise Armpit. Nevermind his super obscure CD-R- only collaborations with Last Visible Dog label-mate Antony Milton, going under the name 'Claypipe.' Ironclad however differs from so much of Noone's output in that it is both more personal and more accessible. While none of the trappings of the low-fi New Zealand noise aesthetic are gone, this is more gentle, more melodic; a fo…
The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick - Live 1969
Live at the Matrix, SF 1968/69. "One of acoustic music's true innovators and eccentrics drawing from blues, Native American music, Indian ragas, experimental dissonance, and pop, John Fahey was living in Berkeley, California in the late Sixties when this set at San Francisco's legendary Matrix club was recorded. Drawing the best material from his two sets at the club that night, The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick shows the influential fingerpicker at the height of his prodigious technique. Deluxe…
Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973
Nearly 40 years after her passing, Judee Sill remains one of the most important and singular talents of the Laurel Canyon scene. Her two releases for David Geffen's Asylum (1971's Judee Sill and 1973's Heart Food) are critically celebrated masterpieces of orchestral folk. Her songs have been covered by artists as diverse as The Turtles and Will Oldham, and her fans include Jim O'Rourke, Devendra Banhart, Graham Nash, Sleater Kinney and more. This amazing collection of previously unreleased live …
Constant Companion
Ruthann recorded a single early '70s Reprise album of superb loner folk psych with fragile singing and delicate acoustic guitar playing...stark and deep meditations on lost love, topsy-turvy moons, ringing bells... First time on CD. Detailed liner notes, rare photos. And oh yeah, she was the writer of the Association's hit 'Windy.
A Raga For Peter Walker
Guitarist Peter Walker came up in the Cambridge, MA and Greenwich Village folk scenes of the '60s. He recorded two albums for the Vanguard label in the late '60s. Their style can best be described as American folk raga. He studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and was Dr. Timothy Leary's musical director, organizing music for his 'Celebrations.' His debut album from 1967, Rainy Day Raga, features one of the first studio appearances by jazz flautist Jeremy Steig, as well as guitarist Bruc…
Fate Is Only Once
Released as a short-run private press LP in 1965, Fate Is Only Once has long been a coveted collectible among American Primitive guitar enthusiasts. The only other recorded work by Taussig surfaced on the out of-print Takoma LP Contemporary Guitar Spring '67alongside John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Max Ochs and Bukka White. 'Dorian Sonata' was recently featured on the acclaimed acoustic guitar compilation Imaginational Anthem Vol. 1, and now the album is here. remastered, with original liner notes and…
Bury The Square
From the vibrant Southern quasi-capital of Durham emerge Megafaun, wearing earnestness across the chest and abstraction along the sleeves. They pour forth dulcet harmonies, as seeking vocals tug banjo lines up the Appalachian mountains; redemptive noise soaks everything, like thick air wafting from the Atlantic. Clawhammer banjo and strummed acoustics lock and roll with electric guitars and electronic textures. They realize that folk implies deep, personal, intense expression, whether the instru…
Daze on the Mounts
Dredd, aka Dan Ireton, has finally come out and ended a near decade of silence and Daze on the Mounts, a spiraling three-dimensional crest of the so-called avant-folk expression, is the celebratory homecoming. Originally a limited 2004 CDR, this reissue presents the colossal side for all. In collaboration with Matt Valentine & Erika Elder (MV&EE/Bummer Road and Tower Recordings), two of modern-time's purest interstellar travelers, Dredd Foole bounds between Tim Buckley-esque bellow and a hyper-e…
Venus in Cancer
The 1969 guitar classic, remastered from the original tapes. With new reflections by Will Ackerman, Max Ochs, Steffan Basho-Junghans, and Pete Townshend. "Robbie Basho released Venus in Cancer in 1969 on the Blue Thumb label. After five albums for the Takoma label in the '60s, Basho had cemented his reputation alongside John Fahey and Leo Kottke as one of the most brilliant guitarists of his generation. His wide range of musical influences from around the globe set him apart from other blues-bas…