★Death Is Not The End
If I Had A Pair Of Wings: Jamaican Doo Wop, Vol. 1
Repressed by popular demand! Lauren Laverne's comp of the week on BBC Radio 6 Music w/c 11th Jan.
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. II
The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
My Greatest Revenge: Flamenco Recordings, 1904-1938
Death Is Not The End presents a collection of haunted, brooding flamenco recordings taken from the early 1900s through to the late 1930s.
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. I
The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
Waiting for Your Return: A Shidaiqu Anthology 1927-1952, Pt. II
Tip! Shidaiqu literally means “songs of the era”, a term used to describe a hybrid musical genre that first began permeating through the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in the late 1920s. Blending western pop, jazz, blues and Hollywood-inspired film soundtracks with traditional Chinese elements, the shidaiqu represented a musical and cultural merging that would go on to shape a golden age of Chinese popular song & film in the pre-communism interwar period. Waiting for Your Return brings together a…
All Bad Boy & All Good Girl - Manchester Street Soul Soundtapes, 1988-1996
*200 copies limited edition* A mixtape pulling together extracts from soundsystem tapes out of Manchester's storied street soul scene of the late 1980s to mid-1990s. Featuring DIY cassette recordings of sounds such as Broadway, Stereo Dan & Soul Control playing live at dances and blues parties in south & central Manchester from 1988 through to 1996.
River of Revenge: Brazilian Country Music 1929-1961, Vol. 2
The second volume in Death Is Not The End's survey of a form of Brazilian country music known as música caipira ("hillbilly music") - a stripped-back forerunner to música sertaneja, the Brazilian equivalent to US country & western which in it's contemporary form has come to dominate the domestic music industry in recent decades. This collection covers some of the earliest recordings made by the pioneering folklorist Cornélio Pires at the end of the 1920s, through to records from the 30s, 40s & 5…
I'm Always Crying
Another brilliant bit of excavation from Death Is Not The End, a label rapidly becoming a crate-digging collective par excellence. Think Honest Jon’s with a particular focus on early-to-mid-20th-century folk musics of all strains. This particular release focuses on the career of Dolores Jiménez Alcántara, stage-name Nina de la Puebla, who was a prime exponent of the Flamenco and Andalusian Copla songbooks. As the fourteen songs here demonstrate, powerful alto was dexterous enough to encompass th…
Longing For The Shadow: Ryūkōka Recordings, 1921-1939
*In process of stocking* Emerging during the early stages of the recording industry in Japan, the ryūkōka style adopted western classical, blues & jazz elements into traditional and classical Japanese music.This collection of 1920s & 30s ryūkōka recordings follows on from the Kouta Katsutaro tape we put out a couple of years back, and further captures the hauntingly unique sound of a cultural merging that was starting to reflect itself via popular song, ahead of the widespread influence of weste…
River of Revenge: Brazilian Country Music 1929-1961, Vol. 1
Tip! Death Is Not The End present the first volume in a survey of a form of Brazilian country music known as música caipira ("hillbilly music") - a stripped-back forerunner to música sertaneja, the Brazilian equivalent to US country & western which in it's contemporary form has come to dominate the domestic music industry in recent decades. This collection covers some of the earliest recordings made by the pioneering folklorist Cornélio Pires at the end of the 1920s, through to records from the…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. II
The second part in a collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces, cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 2
Tip! Back in the early '90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced "a pause for the cause", I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That's something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing t…
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 3
The third volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: …
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 2
The second volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern:…
I Had the Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz and Hard-Bop in Post War London, Vol. 1
Another luminous compilation from London's Death is Not the End, this time examining the city's modern jazz and hard-bop scenes from the end of the 1940s until the early '60s.
Lamkin: Versions & Variants Across the Northern Hemisphere
Death is Not the End teams up with folklorist Derek Piotr once more for this bumper archive of North American folk music, this time focusing on every version they could find of the ballad 'Lamkin'. It's a fascinating study that displays how a standard was able to shift and evolve as it moved from person to person over the decades.
Come, Let Us Sing
What shall we sing? Folklorist Derek Piotr presents the third and final installation in the Bare family trilogy, this time highlighting lesser-known and garbled versions of local folk tunes, and again braiding the past with the present by incorporating his own contemporary fieldwork of the Bare's living descendants.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 1
Tip! *In process of stocking* "Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced “a pause for the cause”, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent …
London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 2
*2022 Stock.* Talk about a time capsule. While the obvious nostalgists out there scour and share their cassette eight packs, desperately converting the mixes they contain to digital files before the inevitable unspooling renders the original recordings obsolete, here comes Death Is Not The End - a record label that lends its name to (well, hosts) a show on NTS Radio - with the ultimate trip back to a time many weren't lucky enough to live through. As the name suggests, this is literally a collec…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. I
Tip! *In process of stocking* A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965... Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and…