Folk /
Stone Academy
The latest addition to the fast-growing Digitalis catalogue comes from Zelienople, a band from Chicago who have a certain knack of making that other-worldly folk ambience we've all grown so addicted to sound totally singular and incredibly beautiful. Maybe it's because they aren't afraid of occasionally breaching into the odd pop structure or two that 'Stone Academy' is so inviting, in fact if you hear it at a distance you might even mistake it for a decomposed cassette recording of an old Pavem…
Simulacrum
On his third outing, Jozef Van Wissem, with his ten-course Renaissance lute (aka retrograde lute), employs not only his notion of using palindromes and backwards reading of music for the instrument, but also brings electronics and field recordings into the discussion. Van Wissem applies mirror images in compositions for solo lute. He inserts a microphone into the body of his lute, records the sounds inside (known as "wolftones"), and then electronically alters them by sampling, cutting, and past…
O True Believers
Like most of his previous work, O True Believers may be born of a finite moment of hope in a sea of infinite sadness, a fleeting moment of fragile beauty that extends beyond it's physicality. Unlike past albums, the listener's feeling upon conclusion is more ambiguous: there is no happy and immediate resolution, as if ghosts of the past will find themselves resurfacing time and time again in the future, an idea which is reflected in several reoccurring themes within the songs themselves. Colourf…
A Year In The Kingdom
Since Joshua Tillman had his profile raised by association with Seattle folk favourites Fleet Foxes, whose drumsticks he wields, he hasn't exactly been making an attention-seeking racket in his solo career. In contrast to Fleet Foxes' dawn-chorus harmonising, Tillman favours a spare style, and his sixth solo album may be the year's most subdued record. "I possess a taste for blood. I have numbered mankind's days," the 28-year-old murmurs on "There Is no Good in Me", throwing in a reference to fi…
Ex Patris
The title Ex Patris (from the fathers) plays on the idiomatic baroque lute compositions presented here which emulate the classical repertoire. It also refers to this almost forgotten instrument, which was passed on by the fathers. The aim is to bring back and liberate the lute. The four compositions on Ex Patris form a circular narrative of interlocking repetitive melodic series. The follow up to Important release “ It is all that is made” kicks off with the pro apocalyptic track “The Day is Com…
Boerum Palace
Steve Gunn's prodigious talent for fusing traditional American song structures with a raga influence is almost criminally unheralded. Gunn's songcraft is so strong and his playing style so effortlessly beautiful that folks should be shouting his name from every tall building and mountaintop. It is with such high esteem for the man's work that Three Lobed Recordings is humbled by the association and thrilled to announce the release of Boerum Palace by Steve Gunn. Without any doubt, Boerum Palace …
Luminous Night
CD edition: Luminous Night is the first set of new Six Organs Of Admittance material to leap forth from Ben Chasnys' cerebral cortex in 18 months, and what a joy it is. With the release of odds-and-sods collection RTZ earlier in the year there to bridge the gap between 2007s Shelter From The Ash it doesn't seem like he's been away for long per se but for serious Chasny-heads a new album is something to get pretty excited about and with his other musical outlet Comets On Fire either on extended h…
Gilberto Gil
2009 repress. First ever U.S. reissue of this album, with new liner notes by Peter Margasak. Released in 1971 while Gil was living in London, this is the third self-titled release from the bossa nova and tropicalia legend. Gil recorded this album while in political exile from his native Brazil and its somber, straightforward tone is a welcome change from the experimental, psychedelic assault of his 1969 long player. Featuring 8 originals and a brilliant cover Steve Winwood's 'Can't Find My Way H…
Six Organs Of Admittance
Rare 1998 LP reissued on CD with two rarer bonus tracks, all on CD for the first time. In 1998 Ben Chasny self-released an LP of his 'acoustic based project[ions]' under the name Six Organs of Admittance. The resulting five-song LP is a masterpiece of diverse elements using acoustic and electric guitars, a detuned violin, organ, electronics and koto. The material covers a lot of ground: there's an acid folk duet, an epic, three-part space suite, and two short concrète-like pieces that entice hid…
How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life
2009 reprint, originally published in 2000. John Fahey is feared and revered around the world as a guitar player and composer. His inventions for acoustic and electric strings are the stuff of legend. Since he began recording in Maryland in the late 1950s, Mr. Fahey's access to the unknown tongue has been made manifest on over 30 albums, and his presence has unsettled audiences from here to Tasmania. He has served as a spiritual model for guitarists as disparate as Leo Kottke and Thurston Moore.…
Icarus
This 1972 classic captures saxophonist Paul Winter and his ensemble at the height of their improvisational powers. Winter was one of the first artists to incorporate such exotic instruments as the sitar and tabla into his music and the result was memorable chamber jazz-folk played in the wonderfully experimental, post-hippie way only Winter and his merry band could. The title track, one of guitarist Ralph Towner's compositions, became famous for its pensive melody and soaring soprano sax. "Whole…
School Of The Flower
Ben Chasny (COMETS ON FIRE) might beat you if you call his solo work folk music. Hypnotic, mesmerizing, full of rough edges & elliptical turns round & round. First studio record from the highly prolific Chasny, joined by free-jazz sensation CHRIS CORSANO on drums & absolutely no computers. Chasny says "I see my music as being much more from the underground class of '92 than this folk scene...it has the same rock to folk quotient as Zep 3...Rock is the new folk & folk fucked rock without the reac…
The Visitor
Breathing in, breathing out. Tide comes in, tide goes out. The sun rises and it also sets: beginnings and endings. These are the first impressions given by The Visitor: a build-up and break-down. One seamless, 38-minute piece of music that completely engages its listeners. An extremely thoughtful piece that even a year later, still retains all of the qualities it had upon first listen. This record made me realize the full potential music can have when someone who actually gives a damn does somet…
Whiskey Leaves
The duo of Aiko Kogo & Anthony Guerra 1st made their presence known on a micro-edition CD-R from New Zealand's Pseudoarcana. Guerra sets the pace w/ layers of makeshift percussion & guitar. Kogo also plays ukelele, but it's her voice that is the real focal point on the album. This is fractured pop perfection.
Maison Rose
She had been part of a traditional "antique folk" movement in France in the late 60's & recorded 8 albums w/musicians from this scene before this last album, recorded in '76. Certainly, the avant garde edge lurking beneath the simple folkiness puts in mind the explorations of Brigitte Fontaine w/her sometime musical voyager Areski. Her music has its own deeply ethereal quality, & the album itself has its own magic spell to cast that renders comparison w/other albums unimportant in the end.
Home
in just a few short years multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer and all round renaissance man Peter Broderick has shot from being a darling of the underground to something far more substantial. Constantly touring, Peter has accrued fans far and wide with his alluring folk songs and gorgeous post-classical compositions, but all this had to start somewhere.A few years ago Peter was kind enough to send Type a package of all his material prior to writing ‘Float’. This came in …
All My Life (I Love You)
Two of Skip's rare post-Oar studio excursions; 'All My Life (I Love You),' from '72, is Spence's boisterous take on Badfinger/Raspberries-style power pop, while 'Land Of The Sun,' recorded in '96 with the X Files in mind, sounds like nothing else under the sun, and finds Skip sonorously intoning a poem atop a psychedelic bed of sound.
Lace Heart
Already sold out, few copis available. Gorgeous double vinyl reissue of what still stands as one of Christina Carter’s finest moments, originally issued in an edition of 300 copies on her own Many Breaths Press. Six love songs comprised of elliptical bell like guitar phrases, barely there, sometimes even coaxing silence, set behind the extended vowel sounds of voice. Soft gentle performances here, like this whole record was cut very very late at night or in the early hours of the morning. An unh…
Dark Noontide
Back in stock! Limited edition vinyl issue. The fourth album from Ben Chasny and one of his most complete, 'Dark Noontide' sees the guitarist exploring the Eastern themes approached in his earlier work and also delving further into the dark drone and unsettling ambience of his debut. Indeed, sidestepping some of the more upbeat solo-guitar moments of 'Dust & Chimes', Chasny manages to create an opium fuelled moonlit Middle Eastern haven in the comfort of your front room; you can almost smell the…
Sleeping And Hiding
Limited to 500, hand numbered. Originally recorded in 2005 and intended as the third and final chapter in the series which included the beautiful albums "Last Light" and "Empty City", Dais Records is proud to release the latest album from Ghost Ambient composer Tor Lundvall: "Sleeping and Hiding". Dark and beautiful soundtracks for afternoon daydreams and moonlit forest walks.