Folk /
Wayfaring strangers: ladies from the canyon
With the resurgence of interest in folk music it's hardly surprising to see countless compilations showing up week after week, but compilations this moving and this important are rarely chanced upon. This disc puts together the lesser heard folk tracks, songs recorded by artists who weren't sponsored by major label money, artists who simply made music because they were desperate to make music, artists free from poisonous delusions of grandeur. You will likely not have come across one of the four…
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 in 2006. James has since forged a remarkable career achieving critical praise for his dexterity, his deep, connected songwriting and his beautiful arrangement.
Written at a time of great emotional disquiet, the hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet ninth full-length studio album, Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, from British guitarist-composer Ja…
Christmas Soli
Remastered edition: John Fahey has made a habit of recording a new album of Christmas music every five or six years, but The New Possibility, which was originally released in 1968, is still his best. One of the best and most influential acoustic guitarists of his generation, John Fahey's music fused past and present, borrowing from the traditions of blues and folk music and filtering them through a modern musical viewpoint. Some of Fahey's most striking (and most popular) work appeared on a seri…
Folk And Pop Sounds Of Sumatra Volume 1
Limited edition full-color gatefold LP version of the first Sublime Frequencies CD release from 2003. The equator runs through only ten countries on earth and I bet that you cannot name them all without consulting a map. Indonesia is one of them and the only nation in Asia with the equatorial stripe impaling it. There are so many different cultures spread out on this chain of islands that it would take several lifetimes to experience them all properly. Within this umbrella of diversity is one of…
Princess Nicotine: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Myanmar (Burma)
...Vol. 1. Limited edition full-color gatefold LP version of the Sublime Frequencies CD release from 2004. Original description from 2004: How do they do it? Are they smarter? Are they better? How can it be ignored or denied? How is it possible that one of the most unique, perfectly composed and performed, intense and awe-inspiring musical legacies the world has ever known is looming north of the equator physically tucked between world cultural giants India, China, and Thailand, without more tha…
Hassaniya Music from the Western Sahara and Mauritania
In 2006, Hisham Mayet returned to West Africa to continue his search for an unknown musician he had heard six months earlier on the radio in a Morocco hotel room. Knowing only that it was Sahrawi music -- music of the south -- he headed down through the vast and remote desert landscape of the Western Sahara and Mauritania in hopes of finding someone who could identify these revelatory recordings. The story of how he finally found this elusive artist is the stuff of ethnomusicological legend. But…
Choubi Choubi Folk And Pop Songs From Iraq Vol. 2
In 2005, Sublime Frequencies released Choubi Choubi: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq, and in the ensuing years it has become one of the most beloved and venerable titles in their catalog. Now almost 10 years later, this highly-anticipated second volume is finally here. Compiler and producer Mark Gergis has once again put forth a revelatory and poignant collection of Iraq's national folk music. What has happened to Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion and eventual occupation? Endless death, destructio…
Indonesia Pop Nostalgia - Pan-Indonesian Pop, Folk, Instrumental
It is an eclectic collection of inspired Indonesian folk and pop music culled from cassettes and vinyl recorded and released during the 1970s and 1980s. The music on this collection spans several contemporary popular genres - each inherently unique and born from very different cultural and geographical origins within the archipelago. All, however, are also vitally informed by Islamic, Arabic and South Asian popular and traditional music, alongside various Western musical fads -- a distinctly Ind…
Leh Jani
First release on Sham Palace, a new label from key Sublime Frequencies conspirator Mark Gergis. "Leh Jani" -- the legendary Omar Souleyman track -- was originally released in Syria as a sprawling 30-minute epic groove, alongside two additional tracks. The entire 60-minute cassette album was recorded live to tape in 1998 at the home studio of producer Zuhir Maksi in the village of Ras Al Ain in northeastern Syria. Many of Omar's early tapes were recorded in this fashion to replicate the feeling o…
Dabke 2020: folk & pop sounds of Syria
Sublime Frequencies is pleased to present the second volume of Northeast Syrian dabke music from legendary vocalist Omar Souleyman and his group. This record was compiled by Mark Gergis to coincide with the Sublime Frequencies UK/European tour in May and June of 2009, featuring live performances by Omar Souleyman himself. Culled from dozens of cassettes recorded in Syria from 1999-2008, the music here is an extension of Omar's Highway to Hassake: Folk & Pop Sounds of Syria (SF 031CD) release, to…
Live from the Sahara
The Kel Tamasheq people of the Sahara respect an ancient social order of noble families supported by lesser nobles, craftsmen and former slaves. Noble princes never would pick up a musical instrument -- that was for the craftsman, the griot, the professional bard, or the lesser nobles. But all that has changed during the droughts and rebellions of the past 50 years. The whole social order has been challenged. In the 1970s, electric guitars appeared in the desert. Everything began to c…
Live at Caffe Lena: Music from America's Legendary Coffeehouse
"Unreleased performances by Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Kate McGarrigle, Rick Danko, Anais Mitchell, Sleepy John Estes, Arlo Guthrie, Sarah Lee Guthrie, and more. Caffè Lena, the oldest continuously operating folk music coffeehouse in the US. Opened by Lena Spencer in 1960, this tiny room has played host to influential artists across diverse genres of music; traditional folk, blues, singer-songwriters, jazz, and bluegrass. Luckily, many performances were caught on tape through …
Visions of the country
Recorded in the height of Robbie Basho's creative career, "Visions of the Country" was originally released in 1978, and has been out of print for nearly 35 years. The album is comprised of technically superb instrumentation (6 & 12 string guitars and piano); majestic compositions; transcendent singing and whistling; and astonishing lyrical, emotional, and spiritual depths. It is with a feeling of tremendous honor and joy that we offer this re-issue, which we hope will please existing Basho devo…
Ethnic Minority Music Of Northwest Xinjiang, China
Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding have returned from the northwest corner of China's Xinjiang province with an amazing batch of recordings collected during the weeks leading up to the volatile Uyghur uprising of 2009. Armed with their trusty audio gear, the couple was set on getting married and recording various styles of regional ethnic music near the Chinese border with Kazakhstan. However, the local authorities suspected that the pair had other intentions, shadowing and interrogating them wher…
To Allen Ginsberg
Regarded as the link between Italian acid folk, Library music and Krautrock, Living Music was a collective of Italian Musicians, artists and poets active in the counterculture and student movement of Rome in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Taking their name and concept from the New York experimental theatre group ‘Living Theatre’ husband and wife duo Umberto Santucci (jazz critic, graphic designer (Brainticket) and photographer, library composer) and Gianfranca Montedoro (Jazz and rock singer, m…
Forest of Eden
Previously unreleased tracks from the legendary eccentric folk singer Jackson C.Frank. He was Sandy Denny's boyfriend; Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Al Stewart and others have covered his songs. His first and only album was produced by Paul Simon. After being burned in a fire and the death of his son, he became an NYC vagrant and eventually succumbed to pneumonia and cardiac arrest in 1999 at age 56.
Longing for the Past: the 78rpm Era in Southeast Asia
Compiled and edited by David Murray.Longing for the Past: The 78 rpm Era in Southeast Asia is the first survey of the 78 rpm record era in Southeast Asia. It is a kaleidoscopic collection featuring 4 CDs with 90 tracks of music spanning six decades (1905-1966), accompanied by a 272-page book with essays and annotations by leading ethnomusicologists that is richly illustrated with more than 250 vintage photographs, record labels, and sleeves.
"The consistently amazing Dust-to-Digital label presen…
Qat, Coffee & Quambus: raw 45s from Yemen
Compiled by Chris Menist, Qat, Coffee & Qambus: raw 45s from Yemen features vintage oud and vocal music inspired by the qat-chewing, coffee-sipping, qambus-playing culture of Yemen. Although part of the classical Arabic musical tradition, the music of Yemen takes its rhythmic lead as much from the East African coast (a mere 20 miles across the Red Sea) as the surrounding Arab Peninsula.Little has been written about the music and culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations, and each 45rpm …
Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco
Features six extended tracks from the Golden Age of the Moroccan record industry. 'Kassidat', the Arabic word for poetry, is one of the essential ingredients in Moroccan song. Despite the bewildering array of musical styles in Morocco, the Moroccan sense of poetry is found throughout the music, regardless of the style or language. This isn't the language of high art, but an often impenetrable vernacular poetry of oblique references, symbols, metaphors, and double entendres that describes the liv…
Luk Thung: classic & obscure 78s from Thai Countryside
Compiled by David Murray. Luk Thung: classic & obscure 78s from the Thai Countryside features fourteen outstanding funky performances of Thai country groove music from the 1950s and early 1960s. All previously unreissued, carefully transferred and mastered from the original 78rpm records of collector Dave Murray and presented with detailed full color liner notes by Peter Doolan.