Folk /
He Is My Story: The Sanctified Soul of Arizona Dranes
A singer sits at the piano and loses all inhibitions while in complete control of the instrument: Little Richard, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis. Although church singer Arizona Dranes doesn't come close to the stature of those icons, she set the mold for rockin' singer/ pianists in 1926 with six 'test records' that have stood the test of time. Until now, very little has been correctly reported about Dranes other than the facts that she was blind, from Texas, had a piercing Pentecostal voice …
Staring Into The Sun: Ethiopian Tribal Music
A contemporary survey of the tribal music of Ethiopia. Recorded in 2009 by Olivia Wyatt, this double LP showcases an array of mind-blowing sounds from the "land of eternal sunshine." Presented in this visually stunning gatefold are audio examples ranging from remote tribes -- of the Ethiopian highlands, the lower Omo and the Great Rift Valley -- to their electric analogues in the sweaty beerhalls of Addis Ababa. This collection features songs from the Azmari, poet-musicians who play the k…
Blues Sermon With Congregation
The first vinyl document of the Dredd and MV & EE collab recordings, this is a reissue of two deep sides originally released in 2004, as companion volumes to Kissing the Contemporary Bliss, in extremely limited runs. The sessions behind this record represent a singular apex of high in the catalogs of both Dredd Foole and MV & EE, where the playing and being of each of the three individuals involved coalesces into a singularly cosmic perception and extrapolation of the blues doctors' truth…
Entourage
Formed in Baltimore, MD in the early 70s, The Entourage Music And Theatre Ensemble played a kind of experimental, ambient, new age, proto-world music, made to accompany multi-media performance art pieces. This is the first of two albums they released on Folkways, reissued lovingly on vinyl in an exact replica of the original jacket and booklet. Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble uses saxophone, keyboards, percussion, viola, recorder, guitar, drums and thumb piano to explore an"experimental-spi…
Death Pod
Last copies, special offer...Our very first one sided LP is a bizarre trip from Michael Curtis Hilde's Mountainhood project. This one follows on from the two LPs on Time Lag's Red Records label a few months back which vanished super fast, as well as other releases on Reverb Worships and Yod. Total outsider midnight missions into weirdness... strange strings twang and rattle into the darkness, a very strange experience spread across one side of black wax.
The Union | A Hem of Evening
Named one of the ten best solo acoustic guitar albums of the year by The Out Door and a top ten album of the year by The Liminal, Tom Lecky’s debut album as Hallock Hill elicited a powerful response when it was first released on CD by Hundred Acre Recordings last May. The album’s unique assembly of stacked and layered acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars delivered a new kind of studio improvisation: pieces that were spontaneously made, yet feel composed, pieces that glide from harmonio…
Dispossession
Dispossession is the second full length from Brooklyn’s Mike Wexler, and his debut for Mexican Summer. An artist who defies easy categorization—a songwriter/guitarist without a traditionalist bone in his body, with an ear for far flung sound-worlds and sonic atmospheres both high & low, Wexler brings all of his manifold interests to bear in carving out a space for a singular vision uniquely attuned to the present moment. Dispossession is the product of over two years of intermittent recor…
Life Is People
Gatefold double LP version with download of the entire album - Bill Fay is one of English music's best kept secrets. At the dawn of the 1970s, he was a one-man song factory, with a piano that spilled liquid gold and a voice every bit the equal of Ray Davies, John Lennon, early Bowie, or Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. He made two solo albums but his contract wasn't renewed, which left his LPs and his reputation to become cult items. But he never stopped writing, the music kept on coming. Now,…
Third Mouth
British avant pop artist Alexander Tucker releases his much anticipated new album, Third Mouth, on Thrill Jockey in 2012. This album builds on the strengths revealed by his landmark debut for the label, Dorwytch released in April 2011, culminating in his finest work to date. Using songs written over a 12 month period he achieves his own inimitable blend of psych rock and ambient pop using a variety of studio crafted effects, rudimentary beats, guitar and bass, as well as synth and cello drone…
Leaving The Commonwealth
D. Charles Speer & the Helix came together through a shared love of musical interplay that moves the mind and body. Born from the obsessions and predilections of David Charles Shuford, strains of glassine cruelty, broken glasses and ruptured knees mixed with memories of Chet Atkins lullabies and ZZ Top vids to generate a songcraft steeped in tradition but themed for the burned. A practicing multi-instrumentalist in various New York City improvisational ensembles for the last 15 plus yea…
Space Homestead
Apart from the fact that “MV & EE” is slang for zero gravity and that they’ve been doing it consistently “better” with good vibes/jams they still WANT to give you more of the best of them. This is their “space homestead” and for good reason this wall of sound applied thru DIY sensibilities was recorded over the course of a year in 9 different studios, presenting as clearly as circumstances can permit, a living idea right here in the now of what it is all about. These are sonics in motion,…
Ascent
Six Organs mainstay Ben Chasny has become one of the high shamen of the US psychedelic underground, disseminating his hairy vision between at least three bands and a couple of genres over the past decade. His umpteenth album begins with a sonic white-out called Waswasa – a thrilling myocardial infarction of guitar more in keeping with another of his bands, Comets on Fire, who are, in fact, on board here. How Chasny tells his sprawling, incandescent guitar solos apart, we may never know; this is …
The Iron Gates At Throop And Newport
In the year since Luke Roberts recorded his debut Big Bells and Dime Songs a lot has changed. Luke now owns a guitar (a Collings 000 2H model) that his sophomore album was written on, he has moved from Brooklyn to Montana to Nashville, his childhood home, and the songs were written over a long period of time in his Brooklyn apartment (as opposed to largely on the bus down to the studio on the debut). The combination of changes made a significant and noticeable impact on the songwriting an…
Live 1976
Well further gifts abound, as this 1976 concert on Galactic Zoo Disk/Drag City will attest. Clearly, the explorations of Sandy Bull were not lost on the far-out audiences of the Bay Area, and though the heady days of the '60s have gone, the Berkeley heads are still in full force, hanging on Sandy's every note with a clearly expressed delight as they wait for headliner Leo Kottke to take the stage. Even though there were no further albums after 1972's Demolition Derby (a candidate for unhi…
The Seal Of The Blue Lotus
180-gram vinyl, Tip-on cover. Originally released on John Fahey's Takoma Records in 1965, The Seal Of The Blue Lotus is the debut album from American guitar soli legend Robbie Basho. In college Basho immersed himself in the study of Asian art and culture, even changing his last name to that of the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, and his music shows a much greater Eastern influence than contemporaries like John Fahey and Peter Lang. Basho was particularly entranced by the raga form which is apparent …
Vibracathedral Orchestra
Public service reissue of this impossibly rare and choice title in the Vibra oeuvre, originally issued by the band in 2004 as an edition of 250. Featuring the “classic” lineup (Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley) that made “Queen of Guess” (vhf#77) and “Dabbling With Gravity and Who You Are” (vhf#66), this self-titled double takes a wild ride through the inner-workings of VCO’s stream of consciousness.
Many of the tracks (selected from research & dev…
Street Musicians Of Yogyakarta
Another amazing Mississippi reissue. Old style tip-on jacket with extensive liner notes and bonus 7"** " In 1978 Jack Body recorded an amazing amount of street musicians in java. His ear was geared not just towards traditional folk forms of music but also to all the new hybrids of pop street music. Here we find a mix of his recordings that really cannot by classified easily. Influences on the music include Bollywood soundtracks, American rock & pop, Javanese traditional songs & modern gam…
Golden Tree
Duo collaboration between the Japanese female accordionist à qui avec Gabriel, who previously released a solo album on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and Acid Mothers Temple guitarist and guitar-drone soundscape artist Kawabata Makoto. Kawabata's guitar traces heretical designs through the stoically beautiful illuminated manuscripts of à qui avec Gabriel's accordion and voice. The combination is deeply phantasmal
VDSQ - Solo Acoustic Volume Six
VDSQ (Vin Du Select Qualitite) is an acoustic guitar LP series curated by Steve Lowenthal of Swingset Magazine and Plastic Records. The series is released on high quality LP with letterpress sleeves, each with a picture of the guitar used to record the record. Track-by-track notes included on the back cover. 'The idea behind VDSQ was really to do a label that was a nod to the great guitar-oriented labels like Takoma and Transatlantic but focusing on contemporary artists rather than reissues…
Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death
Important is proud to welcome back James Blackshaw for his first full length on Important since his breakthrough album O True Believers was released on the label in 2006. James has since forged a remarkable career achieving critical praise for his dexterity, his deep, connected songwriting and his beautiful arrangement. Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death is available on CD & LP. LP pressed in an edition of 1000. Limited stock of color vinyl for mailorder customers.