★Death Is Not The End
Longing For The Shadow: Ryūkōka Recordings, 1921-1939
*In process of stocking* Emerging during the early stages of the recording industry in Japan, the ryūkōka style adopted western classical, blues & jazz elements into traditional and classical Japanese music.This collection of 1920s & 30s ryūkōka recordings follows on from the Kouta Katsutaro tape we put out a couple of years back, and further captures the hauntingly unique sound of a cultural merging that was starting to reflect itself via popular song, ahead of the widespread influence of weste…
River of Revenge: Brazilian Country Music 1929-1961, Vol. 1
Tip! Death Is Not The End present the first volume in a survey of a form of Brazilian country music known as música caipira ("hillbilly music") - a stripped-back forerunner to música sertaneja, the Brazilian equivalent to US country & western which in it's contemporary form has come to dominate the domestic music industry in recent decades. This collection covers some of the earliest recordings made by the pioneering folklorist Cornélio Pires at the end of the 1920s, through to records from the…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. II
The second part in a collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces, cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 2
Tip! Back in the early '90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced "a pause for the cause", I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That's something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing t…
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 3
The third volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: …
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 2
The second volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern:…
I Had the Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz and Hard-Bop in Post War London, Vol. 1
Another luminous compilation from London's Death is Not the End, this time examining the city's modern jazz and hard-bop scenes from the end of the 1940s until the early '60s.
Lamkin: Versions & Variants Across the Northern Hemisphere
Death is Not the End teams up with folklorist Derek Piotr once more for this bumper archive of North American folk music, this time focusing on every version they could find of the ballad 'Lamkin'. It's a fascinating study that displays how a standard was able to shift and evolve as it moved from person to person over the decades.
Come, Let Us Sing
What shall we sing? Folklorist Derek Piotr presents the third and final installation in the Bare family trilogy, this time highlighting lesser-known and garbled versions of local folk tunes, and again braiding the past with the present by incorporating his own contemporary fieldwork of the Bare's living descendants.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 1
Tip! *In process of stocking* "Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced “a pause for the cause”, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent …
London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 2
*2022 Stock.* Talk about a time capsule. While the obvious nostalgists out there scour and share their cassette eight packs, desperately converting the mixes they contain to digital files before the inevitable unspooling renders the original recordings obsolete, here comes Death Is Not The End - a record label that lends its name to (well, hosts) a show on NTS Radio - with the ultimate trip back to a time many weren't lucky enough to live through. As the name suggests, this is literally a collec…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. I
Tip! *In process of stocking* A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965... Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and…
Is It Really Goodbye? More Ryūkōka Recordings, 1929-1938
Exquisitely melancholy, pre-war Japanese Ryūkōka Recordings, 1929-1938, delving deeper into the style’s fusion of traditional and classical Japanese and western blues x jazz on Death Is Not The End.
Ever Since We've Known It: More North Carolina Mountain Singing
London's Death Is Not The End rope in folklorist Derek Piotr to curate another mystical collection of crackly mountain music from North Carolina. Powerful, soul-stirring unaccompanied vocal music.
A Cloudy Dawn
Death is Not the End follow up 'The Sun is Setting on the World' with another set of Greek rebetika from the 1930s to the late 1950s.
London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1
Death Is Not The End presents London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1. The first volume in a two-part collection of pirate radio adverts & idents, taken from recordings of London stations between 1984 & 1993. Many thanks to Wayne Anthony, Simon Reynolds, Stephen Hebditch & The Pirate Radio Archive.
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.
Kirkfield Non (Tape)
Duelling blues, simultaneously piquant and distorted, from one of Death Is Not The End’s few extant acts, following the label string of compilation pearls Back for third servings after an eponymous debut and ‘Fayet’ in 2017, Torontonian siblings Kevin and Patrick Cahill pick out bittersweet, wayward blues on these 2020 recordings made in their home city and out by the lakes in Kirkfield. We’re not sure if they’re twins, but the Cahills appear to work at near subconscious, telepathic levels of fa…
Longing for Freedom
Hiski Salomaa began his life in 1891 in Kangasniemi in the Southern Savonia region of Finland, emigrating to the USA after the death of his mother in 1909 - travelling via Hanko, to Hull, Liverpool, Ellis Island, Manhattan, and finally to a Finnish American community in the South Range of Michigan.
After taking to writing and performing songs as a young boy, Salomaa saw a demand amongst the growing Finnish immigrant set for music performed in their own language, and indeed in the Finnglish diale…