Folk /
Osharaku
Osharaku is a traditional Japanese form of musical entertainment, featuring mainly voice, shamisen and percussion, with a repertoire of folk and popular songs, performed by farmers and fishermen for local audiences. This compilation, compiled by Riyo Mountains, is the fourth release in the EM Records / Riyo Mountains Japanese folk series. These recordings feature legendary Osharaku masters, recorded in their homes, brilliantly capturing the casual warmth and vitality characteristic of the style.…
Witness Tree
**400 copies** "Vinylization of a self-released cassette issued earlier this year by our favorite Virginia-based guitar player. Witness Tree is a brilliant follow-up to Perry's eponymous debut LP (2018), and expands upon the form-abstractions he first displayed there. Mr. Perry has a firm and solid touch to his string wrangling, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he doesn't seem to feel compelled to resolve all the melodic questions he raises. Perry often stops in a place he finds interestin…
But a Night That Ends as All Nights End When the Sun Rises
Tashi Dorji is a celebrated free-form / improvisational guitarist. Born and raised in Bhutan, but transplanted to Ashville, NC in the early 2000’s. He is a musical force that is in a caliber of his own. The amount of originality in his playing could have only been summoned when one is forced to confront limitations and raise a big middle finger to the ‘status quo’. He is known to focus his attention heavily on tonal qualities over melody. Mellow harmonics that integrate interference of seemingly…
For Octavio Paz
Ben Chasny's last ultra-indie label release before moving onto greener pastures with Drag City is finally available once more on vinyl thanks to Hermit Hut. Originally released in 2003 on the fabulous Time Lag label, we are now safe to bask in it's psych-folk sunlight again and let me assure you it's worth it. Ditching the voice almost altogether (save for a few wails), For Octavio Paz sees Chasny focussing on his primary skill - the guitar. This is a collection of some of his best solo guitar w…
Unpentangled - The Sixties Albums
Long acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential acoustic guitarists to emerge from the British folk scene, the late John Renbourn is best known to the wider world for his membership of Pentangle, the genre-busting band that he was instrumental in bringing together in 1967. Pentangle’s recordings are widely available, most recently with Cherry Red’s 2017 highly-acclaimed box set Pentangle: The Albums. in 1966. Housed in a clamshell box that boasts replica album sleeves, some very ra…
Philos
Park Jiha’s debut album Communion - released internationally by tak:til last year - drew well deserved attention to the young Korean instrumentalist / composer’s vivid soundworld. The widely acclaimed album graced 2018 critics lists at The WIRE, Pop Matters and The Guardian. Her new album Philos - which she calls an evocation of her “love for time, space and sound” - is every bit as inventive, elegant and transcendent as her debut. While Park Jiha’s music is often contextualized by its kinship w…
End of the Night
End of the Night was conceived based around a simple, yet extremely emotionally resonant concept. Late one evening the musician and myself were listening to records at home. After many hours it got to the point where everything became completely still, the silence permeating the walls, reverberating. We agreed to listen to one more record, but what would it be? What music could answer that existential quandary of the perfect last record of the night at home? I instantly asked him to make me the …
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…