Folk /
The river session
Recorded live at City Hall in Glasgow in 1974, this is an extraordinary set drawing from the 2 albums of the period: "LA Turnaround" & "Santa Barbara Honeymoon"
Camber Sands Sunday
Recorded live at Camber Sands Holiday Park, England on May 14, 2006. Featuring RICHARD YOUNGS (bass guitar) & ALEX NEILSON (drums)"At this 2006 concert, we have Jandek with a sympathetic rhythm section, and like a rhythm section that would back, say, a Lightnin’ Hopkins or a John Lee Hooker, they adapt themselves to the artist’s flow and provide a kind of pillowy environment or canvas on which he can do his thing. To give you an analogy from the free jazz world, some of the recent Jandek p…
We Are All One, In the Sun: A Tribute To Robbie Basho
In Robbie Basho's lifetime he set out to champion the steel string guitar as an expressive and dignified concert instrument. His guitar playing was first brought to light in 1965, when John Fahey released Basho's debut The Seal Of The Blue Lotus on Fahey's own Takoma Records. Armed with a unique and powerful singing voice, his 6 & 12 string guitar and a collection of special guitar tunings that he created (even originating a unique chart titled 'The Esoteric Doctrine of Color and Mood,' denoting…
Too Long In This Condition
Young Scotsman Alasdair Roberts is an old hand at songcraft -- and not just his own, but the songs of the ancients, the near-ancients and their friends. Over the past decade that he's been singing music in his own name (after graduating from the Appendix Out youth brigade), he's made a habit out of recording songs of his own and traditional songs with an equal amount of investment and urgency. After all, it's all music, always deserving of everything we have to give. Following 2009's de…
Ragged And Right
LP edition: Link Wray became the thematic soundtrack for a 2008 JACK ROSE tour with D. CHARLES SPEER & THE HELIX. Jack got so excited by the vibes emanating from these songs that he thought to break with his usual acoustic approach & enlist the Speer band to join in some unhinged & unrepentant fun in the studio. Recorded using an all live, no overdub approach, a gleaming bottle of Buffalo Trace helped shepherd them through the night. Feat. the original Helix lineup in peak form & lap steel & Ros…
What A Beautiful Place
CD edition, lavishly packaged: In the last couple of years there's been no shortage of lost folk albums re-appearing for the world to enjoy once more, and the wonderful Numero Group label (which is fast becoming one of our most loved imprints...) has managed to find another. Hailing from the bleak northern city of Halifax, Catherine Howe was initially trained at drama school, gaining a brief stint in Doctor Who ('The Underwater Menace' for all you Whovians out there, wink wink) among othe…
Blue Afternoon
Blue Afternoon, released in 1969, was Tim Buckley's first self-produced record and his debut for Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa's Straight record label. This was Buckley's fourth album after Tim Buckley, Goodbye and Hello, and Happy Sad. Blue Afternoon used the same group of musicians as Happy Sad, with the inclusion of drummer Jimmy Madison. Several tracks on Blue Afternoon are songs Buckley had intended to record on earlier albums but had not completed. "Chase the Blues Away" and "Happy Tim…
Say God
The 2xLP version comes in an old-style tip-on gatefold jacket with 8” x 10” insert and MP3 download coupon. In recent years, Higgs has released a number of solo outings that can only be described as the ultimate in isolation, worlds away from the hypnotic, communal rock of his band, Lungfish. Higgs follows up the 2007 album/book release Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot with his new double album Say God. Say God is an album of gospel songs and poems as presently received by this Daniel Higgs. Recorded …
Volume One
The MONKS OF MALASPINA debut release is a phantastical psychedelic mystery musical filled with dark woods wonder and honey comb clouds over sparkling fjords from deep within the mountains of Canada's British Columbia. Highway 101 ends here, or like this new record, begins. Members of the band call up roots from First Nation relations with Jesuit missionaries co-mingled with a diverse offspring from a free love commune started in the 1970's. Most of the music on this record is gloriousl…
Rainy Day Raga
Peter Walker was the quintessential psych-folk guitar player to come out of the '60s. Revered by Timothy Leary, who had him program the music for his TURN-ONS, Walker was one of the first to take the Indian tradition of ragas and channel them through the guitar into a sound that is pure heaven. His exotic, state-of-the-art finger-picking transcends description and has influenced such artists as Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance.Vanguard Records originally released the record in 1966, …
Secrets from the Storm
With Secrets From The Storm, NYC-based singer and guitarist Peg Simone has put a remarkable avant-garde spin on the blues, collaborating with writer Holly Anderson and fellow Table Of The Elements star Jonathan Kane, who assists on the epic opening cut 'Levee/1927', a radical and poetic take on the original ('When The Levee Breaks') by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. This is quite some opening, shaping an incredible twenty-two minutes over which Kane adds his guitar and kick drum, leaving y…
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
another gem, a wonderful collection of obscure solo acoustic guitar tunes from the mid 60s up to the dawn of the 80s -- beautiful work from a slew of players we've never heard of -- but we'd put right up there with Fahey and Basho in the way they reach from the back porch to the cosmos with just their fingers and some strings! One thing we love about this set, and the Numero Group releases to date, is how deep they dig and what beauty they unearth, somehow with impeccable sound quality. S…
From The Ground
Very special vinyl edition cut at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin, includes a bonus track and a hidden locked groove, together with new artwork. limited copies!* The sister of office favourite Peter Broderick, Heather Woods Broderick steps into the limelight with this hugely impressive solo debut. On 'From The Ground', Heather is ably assisted by her multi-talented sibling, who records, produces and contributes various instrumental elements to the songs. These two are regular collaborato…
Excavated Shellac: Strings
Excavated Shellac is an incredible resource for rare international 78rpm recordings. With each post, shellac excavator Jonathan Ward takes great care to ensure that the transfer is as clean as possible. His blog posts always go the extra mile in placing the music within a larger cultural and historical context (on the side, JW is a professional writer and researcher). With the motto "good music is best when it's shared", JW has done just that for upwards of 100 songs that might otherwise go unhe…
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
Restocked, few available..."If the pentagrams and moccasins and ponchos of the now nearly bygone “freak folk” era made listening to Fairport Convention cool again, Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh’s self-titled collaboration serves as a reminder that British longhairs of the ’60s were nerds, nerds, nerds. Cellist Espvall, best known for her work with Espers, and Batoh, the guitarist of Japanese psych band Ghost, deploy an arsenal of exotic stringed instruments. They play earnest cover…
Strings
Fourteen outstanding performances from the four corners of the world played on stringed instruments and recorded and released on 78rpm records circa 1920-1950. This vinyl LP features fiddles, shamisen, charango, Paraguyan harp, Indian vina, Lebanese oud, Persian violin, Vietnamese moon guitar, and more. Compiled by Jonathan Ward, all tracks are previously unreissued, carefully transferred and mastered and presented with detailed liner notes. Vinyl-only release,
The Cloud of Unknowing
For fans of acoustic guitar music, James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing is a gift that's long overdue. Blackshaw's fourth album gracefully glides over the same sonic ground that his contemporaries generally tread with reverential obedience or dilettante tactics. Growing into his prodigious own at the relatively young age of 25, Blackshaw has finessed his 12-string acoustic guitar into a veritable solo symphony that's as schooled in uncommon beauty as it is in complex 20th century composition…
People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Songs of Disaster 1913-193
“In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds.” – Tom Waits, from the Introduction Songs of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by black and white performers from the dawn of American roots recording are here, assembled together for the first time. Whether they doc…
Lost Prayers
Originally released in a tiny pressing of just 200 CD-Rs by Digitalis Industries, this early James Blackshaw release is brought back in print by the Tompkins Square label, who on the back of last year's 'Cloud Of Unknowing' are intent upon reintroducing the guitarist' back-catalogue to his growing legion of fans (of whom there is almost certainly more than 200). 'Lost Prayers And Motionless Dances' is a single thirty-five minute composition, opening with droning harmonium passages and only…
Sunshrine
With a mindblowing track gracing this weeks phenomenal ‘Gold Leaf Branches’ compilation, James Blackshaw's brilliant "Sunshrine" album is finally being made available on cd. At only 23 years of age, Blackshaw has already mustered up enough talent on the guitar to put many more renowned acts to shame. His gorgeous finger picked melodies on 12-string guitar are incredibly affecting and a stark contrast to the ragas and ragtimes of peer Jack Rose. Instead of concentrating on replicating a sp…