Folk /
Solemns
The 'Prince' & the Marquis (Mick Turner of DIRTY THREE) unfurled the scroll together, with Tren Brother Jim White (DIRTY THREE, CAT POWER) rumbling & banging things & playing drums, & the Bonny gang crew of Van Campbell, Emmett Kelly & Angel Olsen added invaluable dimensions to the moments herein.
Decorated
"Of the players involved in the recent resurgence of fingerstyle guitar, Harris Newman has established himself as a primary envoy on the modern day steel-stringer shortlist. As with the case of his brothers-in-arms Jack Rose, Glenn Jones and Steffen Basho-Junghans, each of whom borrow from the past traditions of mavericks Fahey, Basho et al but have re-invented the sound and style with fresh perspectives, Newman distinguishes his music even further with a very idiosyncratic sound. In cont…
Farewell Sorrow
VINYL VERSION! NOTE NEW PRICING! Alasdair Roberts is bidding farewell to his nom-de-musique, APPENDIX OUT. What once was Appendix Out is now & forever Alasdair Roberts. The broadest work in young Roberts' canon so far. Heavily steeped in the lineage of European folk, the words & music of "Farewell Sorrow" evoke a spirit of youth, an air of reckless abandon, a passion not meant to stay in this world.
Imaginational Anthem Vol. 6
"If American primitive guitar begins with John Fahey and the Takoma School, then the actual origins of this sound are found within this collection of fourteen classic solo guitar performances. Recorded between 1923 and 1930, this set is the 'Rosetta Stone' of style and repertoire tapped into deeply by Fahey, Basho, and Rose, among many others. Sam McGee, Riley Puckett, Bayless Rose, Sylvester Weaver, Lemuel Turner, Frank Hutchinson, and Davey Miller are the rural artists included in this …
Queen of the Flat Top Guitar
LP version. "Impossibly rare recordings by the legendary finger-picker. Notes by John Renbourn. A musical 'amateur' that best exemplified true artistry, Lena Hughes was born in Grape Grove Township, Missouri, in 1904. Though she never recorded any 78s and only one LP, Hughes was most influential through her steady performances at various fiddler conventions and folk festivals throughout the Ozarks. She was an excellent fiddler, banjoist, and guitar picker who retained the largely extinct …
Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5
"Since 2005, Tompkins Square label's Imaginational Anthem compilations have featured some of the greatest acoustic guitarists in the world, with recordings spanning five decades. More than mere samplers, these albums have served as state-of-the-art dispatches from the front lines of the art form. Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5 is a specially priced 6CD box set, limited to 999 copies, featuring the first five volumes in their originals packaging, plus an exclusive live bonus disc from Willia…
Broken Hearted Dragonflies
There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects display their charm as masters of the high frequency airwaves, recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of L…
A Short Life of Trouble
"Compilation of truly great sorrowful American ballads recorded between 1927 and 1943. Songs mostly about murder, death, and broken hearted-ness. Lots of intense minor chords and stark gritty vocals. Artists include Emry Arthur, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Red Hot Old Mose, the DeZurik Sisters, Shortbuckle O'Rourke and Family, Jimmie Tarlton, Mississippi John Hurt and more. Mountain bluesmen and songsters presenting their darkest & most intense work. Old school 'tip on' sleeves."
Live from Festival au Desert, Timbuktu
Two days before the 2012 rebellion in northern Mali. Soldiers are everywhere. Guns mounted on pickups; low-flying surveillance planes. Several thousand people have gathered outside Timbuktu to celebrate the music and culture of the Sahara at the 12th edition of the Festival au Desert. Three months later, Sharia descends on northern Mali. A millennial history is suppressed. Shrines destroyed. Secular music banned. Before, the streets were alive with music. Weddings, baptisms, celebrations …
An Acoustic Confusion
An instantly captivating, all-original acoustic album of great depth and incredible maturity, the debut album (1971) by acoustic guitarist and songwriter, Steve Tilston. As for the making of the album: 'It was Ralph McTell who very kindly contacted Ian Anderson of Village Thing on my behalf,' Tilston explained. 'I followed it up and secured a meeting with Ian and a gig at the Troubadour Folk Club. I'd met Ralph through Wizz Jones at Les Cousins in Soho, and he'd been very complimentary abo…
This Forest and the Sea
Excellent 1976 private press acoustic album, self-recorded at various places in Colorado, and filled with beautiful fingerstyle acoustic guitar, plus some atonal bottleneck slide, string scrapes and drones (at times, very Ry Cooder/Paris, Texas about six years before that soundtrack existed). Although almost completely instrumental, what lyrics there are tend towards the dark and the satiric. The obvious points of comparison are John Fahey and Leo Kottke, although Scott Key certainly has …
The United Sacred Harp Convention - The Alan Lomax Recordings 19
The first stereo recordings of the Fiery choral sounds of Sacred Harp singing! Recorded by Alan Lomax at Corinth Baptist Church in 1959. Over 300 singers performing shape note music, shaking the walls & doors. Very intense & beautiful performances. Liner notes by Nathan Salsburg with excerpts from essays by Alan Lomax. Limited one time pressing
Kesarbai Kerkar
restocked: "One of the greatest Indian classical vocalists of all time. Kesarbia Kerkar rose up from the bottom of the cast system in India to become one of the countries most respected vocalists. These recordings from 1947 - 1953 are beautiful ragas not to be missed. First LP issue of her material to be available in the US. A real treasure for fans of our Abdul Karim Khan and Pandit Pran Nath releases. Beautiful detailed liner notes by Ian Nagoski complete with photographs and sacred…
Sorrow Come Pass Me Around
A collection of spiritual and gospel songs performed in informal non-church settings between 1965 and 1973. Most are guitar-accompanied and performed by active or former blues artists. "Most records of black religious music contain some form of gospel singing or congregational singing recorded at a church service. This album, though, tries to present a broader range of performance styles and contexts with the hope of showing the important role that religious music plays in the Southern bl…
Ethnic Minority Music of Southern China
The fifth Sublime Frequencies volume in Laurent Jeanneau's amazing documentation of vanishing indigenous music of the rural Asian frontiers, this CD focuses on ethnic minority groups of Southern China. Presented here are 17 tracks of supremely infectious vocals and folkloric instrumentals played on a wide variety of local traditional instruments. The centerpiece of this collection is the 13-minute "Do Djui Atsei" (track 5), an absolutely epic male and female group choral vocal piece which is imp…
Dabke - Sounds Of The Syrian Houran
Dabke is the celebratory music and dance found throughout the Levantine Middle East. By the mid-1990s, a new wave of high-energy electronic dabke music had emerged -- to be heard at weddings, parties and cassette-stalls region-wide. New wave dabke was first introduced to Western ears by way of Omar Souleyman and his northeastern Syrian sounds. This collection presents a hypnotic and diverse selection of electrified dabke dance cuts from a region in the south of Syria known as the Houran. …
Eye Mohini: Sun City Girls Singles Vol. 3
Volume 3 in the series of Sun City Girls singles, compilations, and rare tracks, consists of material recorded between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Much of this collection reflects the Arabic guitar instrumental and acoustic pseudo-Asian vocal folk styles of the band from the period when they recorded relentlessly. The 14 cuts vary wildly in scope yet maintain a consistent listening experience throughout, bridging a wide gap between the band's second full-length LP Grotto of Miracles (T…
Digging In The Dust: Home Recordings 1976
Mark Fosson's The Lost Takoma Sessions seemed to be the definitive statement on his earliest work upon its release in 2006, but then again, before the studio work there had to have been something around that caught John Fahey's ear to start with. Digging in the Dust: Home Recordings 1976 is just that, collecting performances of many but not all the songs that were eventually re-recorded for Takoma, along with an otherwise unavailable recording in the shape of Gene Autry's classic "Back in the Sa…
Improvisations
Some of the first eastern-jazz fusion ever recorded, finally reissued on LP. Originally recorded in 1962 for World Pacific and featuring jazz musicians Gary Peacock on bass and Bud Shank on flute, the album opens with improvisations on the theme that Shankar wrote for the 1955 Indian neorealist film Pather Panchali, by legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. 'Fire Night' was another jazz-fusion piece, recorded to commemorate the fires that were burning all around LA when this session was…
Three Ragas
Three Ragas, Ravi Shankar's Western debut (recorded in London in 1956), remains one of his finest albums ever recorded. Although Shankar was already an accomplished and well-known musician in India in 1956, he was still almost completely unknown in the West. The album, consisting of three ragas, was meant to be a kind of introduction to Shankar's music for the Western listener. Side A consists of 'Raga Jog,' an evening Raga that 'expresses the yearning of a longing soul,' while side B con…