Folk /
Guitars From Agadez Vol. 3 (Music Of Niger)
CD reissue of the instantly sold-out Volume 3 of the now-legendary Guitars From Agadez series. Group Inerane's sophomore LP is the latest missive from the now-sound of Niger's Tuareg guitar scene. Led by guitar hero Bibi Ahmed, this new incarnation introduces another legend on second guitar, one Koudede Maman. Koudede is considered to be a cornerstone of the second wave of the Tuareg guitar lineage, while Tinariwen and Abdulla Oumbadougo are the godfathers of the scene and Group Inerane and Bo…
Not For Nobody
Not For Nobody is the third solo album from Chicago's Scott Tuma. Originally released on CD in 2008 by the Digitalis label, Immune is happy to present a first time vinyl edition of this essential work featuring new artwork by Chris Koelle. Not For Nobody was greeted with critical acclaim upon it's release in 2008 and was the much needed follow up to Tuma's solo albums Hard Again (2001, Truckstop) and The River 1 2 3 4 (2003, Truckstop). Since the release of Not For Nobody, Tuma has released t…
Opika Pende: Africa At 78 RPM
Opika Pende: Africa At 78 RPM is a 4CD collection featuring 100 tracks taken from rare 78rpm recordings of African music (1909 to mid-1960s), none of which have ever been issued on CD until now. Pan-African in scope and wildly diverse, Opika Pende is a testament to the deep riches found in early recorded music across the continent. 112-page softcover book with 4 CDs in a separate portfolio -- all housed in a deluxe cloth slipcase. Jonathan Ward is a Los Angeles-based collector, researche…
Pau
After blowing everyone’s mind at the last Kraak Festival with an unbelievable (double) performance, and following the release of their first self titled lp, France come back with the definitive drone monument! There is still no better words to describe this unique sound, as the ones we used last year to introduce their debut cassette on 8mm last year:“Europe’s best kept secret comes from south of France, somewhere between the Rhone Alpes region and the Massif Central. Now, If you are wonde…
Childhood, Christian Lies & Slaughter
"I find this disc to be consistently superb and often sublime.
Cian writes contemplative, melodic and somewhat bluesy songs that
always ring true. The one cover, Baka Dance, has more of an older,
folky theme, but all of the songs have an organic, human quality that
feels just right. If this was released in the mid-70's, it would fit
perfectly in the Takoma catalogue with John Fahey and Leo Kottke.
Pretty great company for a young whippersnapper like Cian Nugent." Downtown musi…
Red Sugar
Restocked, reduced price 'winter family are the brooklyn based duo of ruth rosenthal and xavier klaine. alt.vinyl is proud to release this double vinyl ltd edition edition (300 copies only) of their latest intensely atmospheric work. artwork by franz vesolt, layout by fabien lehalle. audio mastering by patrick klem. review: a rare and unique audio worldview expressed by the singular approach of brooklyn based duo ruth rosenthal (spoken words) and xavier klaine (harmonium, organ etc..). fro…
Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You
Subtitled: The Fonotone Years 1958-1965. More than 10 years in the making, this box set features the earliest recordings and the first book ever written about one of the most influential guitarists from the 1960s and '70s, John Fahey. The five CDs feature 115 tracks, most of which are available on CD for the first time. The audio was remastered from Joe Bussard's reel-to-reel tapes to achieve pristine sound quality. As for the accompanying book, the list of scholars who contributed essays includ…
Staring Into The Sun
The latest from Sublime Frequencies is a massive cd/dvd/book set, compiled by photographer/filmmaker Olivia Wyatt on a recent trip to Ethiopia, planned to coincide with a music festival - which the government abruptly cancelled for fear of the musicians being exploited. So instead, Wyatt travelled into the bush, to compile this sonic/visual travelogue of the music and musicians, the people and places of the various tribes of Ethiopia, and it's of course breathtaking. The music, heady and…
What I Became
"If string theory is correct, this is approximately the thirteenth album Matt Valentine has released that definitely shouldnt be filed under a group name (Tower Recordings, Bummer Road, Golden Road, etc.). On the other hand, if string theory is correct, this might also be his 11,000th album. The truth, one suspects, is somewhere in between. Since bedding down in southern Vermont at the dawn of the century, MV has been as cussedly prolific as anyone. The gout of LPs, cassettes, CDRs, singles and …
How The Thing Sings
Yet another essential cracking new set of songs from bill orcutt, showcasing a further development of his unique visceral acoustic style. the language that orcutt uses looks familiar at first glance, but cut deeper and its myriad of twisted audio thats both full on and drenched in melancholy, usually in the same gasping breath.while a lot of it is the classic face melting style, some quieter segments counter balance on the title track as well the epic closet ‘a line from ol’man river’ and ‘heave…
Trainsong: Guitar Compositions 1967-2010
UK's Michael Chapman began his career on the Cornish folk circuit in 1967. He signed to the Harvest label, home to Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and many others, recording four quasi-legendary albums. The influential Fully Qualified Survivor was John Peel's favorite record of 1970, and featured future Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson. After decades of recording and touring, Chapman remains an obscure figure in the states. His profile was raised by a lengthy interview with big fan Thurston Moore in…
Maidenstone E.P.
"A previous member of the band UN, Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa) is now one of the epicenters and key collaborators of the North American free-folk movement, along with such luminaries as Jack Rose, Charalambides, Ben Chasny and the Jewelled Antler Collective. With her hypnotic, echoey church bell chanting, Burke possesses a power-filled vocal sound that harkens back not only to those other polar queens of disaffected freakout psychedelia Nico and Barbara Manning, but she is also akin to and i…
Fully Qualified Survivor
"Although not as well known as his peers (Roy Harper, John Marytn, and Bert Jansch), the name Michael Chapman is an important one in the linage of English folk rock guitarists and singer/songwriters of the late '60s/early '70s. For those unfamiliar with Chapman's work, Roy Harper might be his closest musical cousin (and both artists were signed to EMI's seminal stoner record label Harvest -- also home to Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett). Like other Harvest artists, Chapman's music contains a …
A Prayer For Light
Heresy of the Free Spirit is a trio comprised of Dutch lute player, Jozef Van Wissem and Brooklyn based multi-instrumentalists, Che Chen (of True Primes) on violin, bowed rawap, bass recorder, percussion and tape machines, and Robbie Lee (of Howling Hex, Baby Dee) on portative organ, bass recorder, guitar, banjo and electronics. Using early European as well as non-western instruments and electronics, the trio plays arrangements of Van Wissem’s lute compositions as well as free improvisations tha…
Download
The album title Downland is a play both on van Wissem’s Lowlands home, and the Renaissance Lute composer John Dowland, rumored to have been born in Ireland. The seeds of this collaboration were sown in late 2007, when United Bible Studies were part of the bill for van Wissem’s first Irish concert. Van Wissem began recording tracks for United Bible Studies to overdub and a postal collaboration began in earnest in 2009. The Bible Students were given a free hand, and different band members were dra…
Stations Of The Cross
Ltd ed of 500 copies, first edition "New release from baroque conceptualist and improviser, Josef Van Wissem, who, for more than a decade, has been quietly but surely reinventing the vocabulary of that most unlikely of instruments, the lute. With the exception of the odd Renaissance preservationist context, the lute, which was once the most popular portable instrument in the Western world, has all but disappeared from our musical landscape. Despite the arcane associations of his chosen ins…
A Priori
“Once some music dropped through my letter-box; let’s summon their sounds into our world now, and deliver their names as Roses or Stations. The picture they imagined was both clear and cryptic: the certainties of the 17th century holding tight the ugly beauty that we now see scattered around us. I loved these CDs by Jozef van Wissem, A Rose by any other Name and Stations of the Cross. And then I received a new album, A Priori, and I immediately played it and heard its stark and repetitive intens…
Amplifying Host
Amplifying Host finds Richard Youngs wandering the guitar desert somewhere between Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas score and Neil Young's work on Dead Man. Yet, the randomly determined chord movements and Youngs' stretched-out vocal passes across the record are, perhaps, more akin to Jandek's Six And Six -- here, removed from its gauze and dipped in a dark gold. When Youngs bends strings in this anglo-americana vision, it's like he's bending spoons.For more than 20 years, the UK's Richard Youngs has be…
Ready for the House
The 1978 release of Corwood Industries Ready For The House, began one of the most compelling, disturbed, and singular legacies in musical history. In the 30 years since this unique debut, Jandek has released 53 albums of mournful, atonal music that continues to defy classification and accessibility. And while the past three decades of intense productivity have yielded a depth of discussion, a handful of legendary live performances and even a film documentary, no amount of time or experien…
Red Planet
Red Planet establishes Arborea's complex synthesis of acoustic folk and minimalist drone right out of the gate. From the opening motif of the acoustic guitar lament "The Fossil Sea", Red Planet conjures a panoramic aura, like a lost outtake from Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack. As that echoes its way into "Black is the Colour", an eerie and utterly transcendent take on the traditional tune, it becomes mesmerizingly clear how the soft confluence of texture, sound and style meld to create the …