Folk /
Large As Life and Twice As Natural
Reissued by Fledg'ling in 2005. First released in 1968, Large As Life And Twice As Natural is a tremendous acoustic-folk-blues-jazz masterpiece. As always with Davy Graham, the music seems to defy categorization. Perhaps the simplest description would be "great." On Large As Life And Twice As Natural, Davy is joined by the legendary Harold McNair on flute, Dick Heckstall-Smith on saxophone, Jon Hiseman on drums (both from Colosseum) and Danny Thompson (from Pentangle) on double bass. For this …
Concerning The Entrance Into Eternity
Beautiful new collaborative work from Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch between Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem and American filmmaker & guitarist Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch's previous collaborations with Wissem have not prepared the eager listener for the expressivity and emotional depth of his playing on these duets. Respectful of one another's space the pair weave layers of melody and waves of feedback while acoustic guitar and lute wrap together with a subtle depth expemplifying an austere u…
1934-1935
More than seventy years since his death in 1937, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan retains his reputation as one of the greatest singers India ever produced. Possessed of an elastic, honied voice that poured out like mercury, he influenced generations of singers including Mohammed Rafi, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and Pandit Pran Nath. Born at the end of the 19th century to a family of musicians that extended back in time for centuries, his art was formed in the culture of the courts of the maharajas under Briti…
Portrait Of A Prodigy: His Early Years, 1940s-50s
LP version. The music on this release consists of the earliest recordings by flautist T.R. Mahalingam, a legendary figure in the Carnatic music of South India, one of the world's great musical traditions. Mahalingam, known as "Mali" to his legions of fans and admirers, was a musician who revered these traditions yet opened new realms, raising the flute to levels of voice-like expressivity. Portrait Of A Prodigy: His Early Years, 1940-50s reissues, for the first time, recordings from the mid-…
Venus in Cancer
The 1969 guitar classic, remastered from the original tapes in gatefold sleeve. "Robbie Basho released Venus in Cancer in 1969 on the Blue Thumb label. After five albums for the Takoma label in the '60s, Basho had cemented his reputation alongside John Fahey and Leo Kottke as one of the most brilliant guitarists of his generation. His wide range of musical influences from around the globe set him apart from other blues-based players, incorporating Arabic, Himalayan and Indian themes; Japan…
Twilight Peaks
LP version. "My mentor for mind liberty and overall follow-your-heart, and guitar maestro Robbie Basho has a new album. Well, not exactly, he’s been dead for 25 years, but about a month ago, the Smeraldina Rima label had reissued his brilliant 1984 release Twilight Peaks album.Little known upon its release on cassette only, TP quickly vanished into the great amnesia of the world, the reissue does a great justice to one of his truly great albums.The sound is full of reverb, huge like the mountain…
Il Miele Dei Pianeti Le Isole Le Api
After a series of albums that were quite similar in their general style, one can sense something is afoot with this one. This would be a transitional album, however it would be the next one where Claudio Rocchi really started to throw a 'U-turn' at his fans, to use his own words. Here Rocchi, helped by members of the band Aktuala, would begin to pull the mystical, improvisational drone-folk back from the edges of space and reassert a more deliberate song structure here and there. We still have t…
Morning And Sunrise
At some point all great explorers, from Amundsen to Kishan Singh Rawat, come to an opening up and cast their minds across a big space. A clearing, a promontory, a look out from a place no one's been before. Jakob Olausson ventured deep on Moonlight Farm, his debut for De Stijl in the winter of 2005. His singular expression returns on Morning and Sunrise, an explorer's codex, a gaze through to what's more important and less seen. The path yet traveled and the sun arcing over it. Morning and Sunri…
Freakedelic
Jewel of transcendental future music arising from the Jooklo's universe. Including some deep synthesizer's lines, charming flutes, ethnic winds and tenor saxophone's shimmers, besides a multitude of scattered shamanic percussions (bells, gongs, bongos, etc). This epic psychedelic free-form session dipped in a mystic vortex was recorded on a night of March 2008, and it's been resting in space until now. Ultra-limited run with silkscreened covers with metallic effects.
Chair Beside A Window
The grainy, haunted beauty of Jandek's early work went through many phases, never quite as varied and multi-faceted as the material on his 4th album, Chair Beside A Window released in 1982. The relatively wide range of Chair Beside A Window gives insight into the influences on the seemingly impenetrable Jandek sound. Hearing the blown-out harmonica bluster of 'You Think You Know How To Score' it's hard not to imagine it as the Jandek equivalent of a Dylan phase, however insanely translated.…
Country Stash
By necessity, any conversation about the music of Matt Valentine (MV) and Erika Elder (EE) is eventually going to touch on their prolific output. The Vermont duo's constant production has simply become one of its defining facts. In addition to a steady stream of studio albums for Ecstatic Peace!, MV & EE have continued to release small-batch recordings on their own Child of Microtones label, including a Dick's Picks-style series of live recordings on the offshoot Heroine Celestial Agriculture su…
s/t
REISSUE on 180gm vinyl! Originally released in 1969, COSTA's 2nd album is one of the finest releases to come out of Brazil's Tropicalia movement. Feat. songwriting & vocal help from 2 of the original Tropicalismos, CAETANO VELOSO & GILBERTO GIL, she flows effortlessly between shredding psychedelia & smooth bossa nova. An essential record for anyone that appreciates the far reaches of Brazilian popular music. Incl. the classic trks "Baby" * "Não Identificado." Such a pleasant surpise to se…
Dreams
Dreams is a reissue of Chris Forsyth's second solo album. In 2009 Forsyth pressed up 100 LPs for a European tour and created quite an uproar of approval by the heads who managed to score a copy. Now available again, Dreams rightfully shows Forsyth at the creme of American guitarists who blend masterful skill of country/blues with sometimes violent aggression or mind-bending arrangements. Dreams was recorded and mixed between 2007 and 2009 and catches Forsyth in the studio layering acoustic and e…
In Search Of Light
In Search of Light is the full-length follow-up to the well-received Fountain (RS 057CD), Danny Paul Grody's debut solo release. Many listeners no doubt recognize Grody from his work in San Francisco-based groups Tarentel and The Drift. As a solo artist, he produces wistful, poignant music culled principally from acoustic guitar and synthesizer. Grody's work recalls aspects of the post-Takoma school in that fingerpicked, cyclical melodies make up the crux of many of his recordings. However,…
Quite a way away
To say that the last few years of Gareth Dickson’s life have been tumultuous would be an understatement. In 2007 he fell in love with a girl from South America, packed up a few essentials from his life in Scotland, and moved to the Argentinian countryside. It didn’t turn all fairy tale at that point, however. While there he was shot at, attacked by dogs, and was involved in a very close call when the passenger plane he took to a little town in the Andes was forced down after an engine cau…
The Resurrection And Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock
Michael Chapman, one of the finest acoustic guitar innovators borne of the late '70s UK folk scene, was in Philadelphia early 2010, paying tribute to his good friend, the late Jack Rose, a mighty six-string alchemist in his own right, and a youngster wholly inspired by Chapman's critical recordings. While sharing in the good light of friendship backstage, we asked Michael if he'd ever recorded an LP of purely improvised guitar music. It seemed feasible, as the current state of acou…
The Master Musicians Of India
Seminal recording (originally released in 1964) by the two men most responsible for opening the West to Indian music. Master of the sitar, Ravi Shankar (age 91) is, of course, famous for his legendary influence on the Beatles, but this recording was made for the American jazz label Prestige prior to their meeting. Perhaps lesser intertwined with the pop music world, Ali Akbar-Khan is nonetheless one of India’s greatest musicians, and the world’s best sarod player. Shankar and Khan play to…
Al Doum & The Faryds
**very last copies** Awesome private release LP, stunning overall quality, artwork by Troglosound "Equally stirring and equally necessary for mental health are those spectacular cave recordings contained within the grooved wares of Al Doum & the Faryds’ self-titled debut LP. Released on the Italian El Guscio Records (elguscio.it), this fucking righteously Out There declaration comes on like a lobotomized Xhol Caravan meets Shiva’s Tongue meets one of those low low grade reggae recording bands li…
Alone Together #1 – Obelisk / Tholos
A new 7" by Christina Carter which serves as the opening ceremony for our new 7" series of solo performances 'Alone Together'. A loan voice, the tangled bells, the caw of a crow, a plane passing overhead… A fortuitous overlapping of sound moments, trapped in amber by Christina for us to bear witness. Much like her early CDRs 'Hand & Mind' or 'Human As Guitar', 'Obelisk/Tholos' is an act of white witchcraft, a healing spell that defines time with the merest of tools: bells, voice, a microp…
Poisson
Work of this quality tends to be the product of a self-contained and selfconcsious tradition, even if a hermetic one. And in this case I fancy I can hear the flowering of a Northern/Midlands sensibilty that setms orignally from the A Band, Youngs and Wickham-Smith, and Ashtray Navigations. It is informed by ecstatic jazz but its roots are in pragmatic sonic experimentalism of a determindedly autochthonous kind. You can almost smell the witch trials in this, and I urge you all to catch a h…