New Arrivals
Fresh Maggots... Hatched
"There are no weak links on this consistent album, which is thoroughly recommended." - The Tapestry Of Delights
Everything Falls Apart
“In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Something’s leaving me. Parts of me. Everything falls apart.” - Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Éthiopiques 13: Ethiopian Groove - The Golden Seventies
*2024 stock* An augmented, improved and remastered edition of the legendary anthology of Ethiopian groove that was issued in the 1990s. This selection is a tribute to the haydays of Ethiopian music and reproduces the final salvos of the musical fireworks before they were brutally extinguished by the dictatorship. 1969-78: this near-decade was undoubtedly the golden age of modern Ethiopian music, with its swinging, thunderous or simply gigantic brasses and historic singers adapting and rearrangin…
Éthiopiques 12: Konso Music And Songs - Kirba Afaa Xonso
*2024 stock* The Ethiopiques series aims to make Westerners discover the missing link in African music. The great Italian musicologist Enrico Castelli has devoted this recording to the Konso, an ethnic group living at the border with Sudan. This panorama of Konso music presents pieces linked to daily agricultural tasks, sacred and ritual songs, as well as recreational songs. The rich instrumentarium includes "hibhara", "maayra" and "luutota" flutes, "kihayta" lyre to accompany songs, "tawna" be…
Éthiopiques 11: The Harp Of King David
*2024 stock* Although commonly know as "King David's harp", the bèguèna is not actually a member of the harp family. It is in fact an oversized lyre with ten strings –usually plucked, sometimes strummed with a plectrum. It is probably the oldest musical instrument played in Ethiopia. One of today's uncontested masters of the bèguèna, Alèmu Aga, sings religious songs, traditional fables and folk tales, as well as his own poems. Meditative, devotional or uplifting sor some, simply "mind blowing" f…
Éthiopiques 10: Tezeta - Ethiopian Blues & Ballads
*2024 stock* Emptiness, melancholy, nostalgia; doom and gloom, morbid musings; heartache or homesickness: such is the stock in trade of the misery and mournful memories expressed by the song Tezeta - Ethiopia's majestic hymn to the blues. Etymologically, the word itself means memory, nostalgia, and several Ethiopian authors have used Tezeta as the title for their memoirs. For Ethiopians, it is the Tezeta genre that seems to capture the essence of the blues.
Propeller Product Prop 4–1
Long traded and coveted, discussed and debated, Propeller Product’s 1981 cassette compilation finally receives a physical release reflecting its original intention and aim. And this is its Boston origin story: a small collective with a DIY artistic bent, Propeller launched in 1981. Founded as a collaborative taking inspiration from Factory Records and the “pay no more” ethos of DischordRecords and CRASS, Propeller offers an unique window into Boston and the American post-punk underground. Led by…
Dragon Man
"Only a decade ago Leong Lau remained a well-hidden Malaysian-Australian treasure, known only to small circles of Australian record collectors. In 2013 we met Leong in person at the Brisbane state library, where after a long and somewhat transcendental ‘conversation’ received his blessings to re-release his music. In 2014, we reissued his sophomore album ‘That Rongeng Sound’ and later in 2021, his sole single ‘Late Night Flyer. In 2024, we are going back to finish the triangle of Leong releases,…
Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned
Perhaps there is no need to introduce this legendary recording, but few people realized that this year it will be 50 years (!) since the band secretly set foot in Hrad Houska and started recording there in the winter of 1974. And Sváťa Karásek shined a light on them.
Take A Picture
Take A Picture is Margo Guryan’s one and done classic — one of record collecting’s real unheralded masterpieces — bright, breezy, lightly psychedelic, and utterly cosmopolitan, recorded in New York City no less. Newly restored by Jessica Thompson from the original two-track safety masters, this beguilingly melodic 1968 pop tour-de-force has never sounded better.
Giorgos Katsaros
Big Tip! Our obsession with underground Greek music continues with 10 ultra-rare recordings of heartbreak and vice from rembetiko legend Giorgos Katsaros. Katsaros, who by some accounts lived to be over 100 years old, carried the old songs of Greece to the Diaspora in the United States, bridging centuries of music in one storied lifetime. Born in 1901 on the Greek island of Amorgos, Katsaros’ was enchanted with the songs he picked up as a kid in the streets of Piraeus and Athens. Encouraged by h…
Live At The Panafrican Festival
Tip! Archie Shepp has many made many Afrocentric statements in his long distinguished career but this meeting with Algerian and Touareg musicians in 1969 ranks among his greatest artistic achievements. The backdrop was the inaugural Pan African Festival Of Culture that took place in Algiers in July 1969 in order to promote solidarity among African nations at a time when many were emerging from the yoke of colonialism and some were still fighting for freedom. Their struggle chimed with the Black …
Spooky Two
"Spooky Two is this British blues-rock band's pièce de résistance. All eight of the tracks compound free-styled rock and loose-fitting guitar playing, resulting in some fantastic raw music … their smooth, relaxed tempos and riffs mirrored bands like Savoy Brown and, at times, even the Yardbirds … Although Spooky Tooth lasted about seven years, their other albums never really contained the same passion or talented collaborating by each individual musician as Spooky Two." - Mike DeGagne
Música Para Teatro 2009-2022
*100 copies limited edition* Wasser Bassin has just released a brief anthology of the work of José Albert Gomes, Música Para Teatro 2009-2022; or, in other words, a road of discontinuous lines, where the contemporaneity of tracks like “Ciúme” is followed by the abstractions of “Quarto Poder”, the meditative atmospheres of “Laudes”, or the glitch of “Needle”. That said, this compendium may sound a little scattered or paradoxical, but the same mind doesn't necessarily have to think the same things…
Conversations Vol. 1
*2024 stock* Conversations Vol. 1 is the eagerly awaited first installment of a two part release by pianist Cooper-Moore and saxophonist Stephen Gauci. This project, with volume two scheduled for release in the near future, was recorded at legendary Sear Sound studio and showcases these two deeply idiosyncratic players as they reach a unique dimension in which separate parts unify to create a breathtakingly astringent whole. The artists combined experience, spanning three generations, presents a…
Shifa - Live In Oslo
*2024 stock* ‘Live in Oslo’ is the sophomore album from Shifa, the outstanding UK trio featuring pianist extraordinaire Pat Thomas, celebrated saxophonist Rachel Musson, and sonic transcendent drummer Mark Sanders. The group derives its name from the Arabic word for healing and the music they make aspires to do just that.
This album follows their acclaimed, Downbeat 4-star debut ‘Shifa Live at Cafe Oto’. Listen to ‘Shifa Live in Oslo’ and discover contemporary master musicians celebrating the mo…
Silenced II - Views From The Auction Block
*2024 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Silenced is a project by Donald Sturge Anthony McKenzie II playing improvised/one take duos with legendary musicians. This second volume features duets with Elliott Sharp, Vernon Reid, and Bill Laswell. “Ramarley Graham is the first tune of Silenced II, and it features Elliott Sharp. It is one of those performances that, when I listen back, I think someone else is playing drums. That’s how great it sounds, to me. It sounds so good; it just has to be someo…
Silenced
*2024 stock* "Look: one take is all it took - nothing fake or by the book. "Silenced" giving voice to choice. A cookbook for the now, shaking and shook.’ -Nels Cline
"In Silenced Don McKenzie has reconnected contemporary improvisational music to one of the most crucial & controversial issues facing us today- the misuse of lethal force by those sworn to Serve & Protect all of us. I am proud to be amongst the artists participating in this remarkable project" - Vernon Reid