New Arrivals
Redlight
"Portland, Oregon's Grails are another new band that fall into the developed post-everything niche sparked off by the likes of Godspeed at the end of the last millenium. Made up with members of Jacki-o-Motherf*cker and Holy Sons, their sound takes in the quiet/loud formula but peppers it with dense layers of Violin, Piano and twilight instrumentation. The band have already sparked off the interest of the Swans' Michael Gira and Neurosis guitarist/vocalist and label co-owner Steve Von Till - thou…
Captain Wedderburn's Courtship / The Dowie Dens O Yarrow
A split single to be listened and heard (and more importantly, bought) with the compilation Whar the Pig Gaed on the Spree. Tradition-minded singers Alasdair Roberts, Karine Polwart, and Drew Wright do the honors. A-side: "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" performed by Alasdair Roberts and Karine Polwart B-side: "The Dowie Dens o Yarrow" performed by Drew Wright
Luck In The Valley
Like all pre-war recordings and all of Rose's releases, this album was recorded live. It was not created using overdubs but rather by recording a few 'takes' and selecting the best performance out of those. Rose stated, 'I wanted the songs to have an immediacy and spontaneity as they were being recorded. All the musicians chosen for the record know how to play the songs without overworking the material, but at the same time creating memorable accompaniments on the spot.' Several of the so…
Texas Blues Working
Featuring the 6 tracks from the original release, along with an additional brand new amazing track. The original edition on tape received some fantastic reviews, so its great to finally have this out on CD, as it really is a superb recording. which came out around one of Christina's most amazingly active recording periods, self releasing fantastic discs like Masque Femine, Two Nights Film and A Blossom Fell as well as Kranky releasing Original Darkness in 2008. Texas Blues Working feature…
Ragged And Right
This slab of gripping sound was brought about by Jack Rose's exuberant love of lowdown music. Inspired by the Mordicai Jones/Link Wray 3 Track Shack sessions, the idea for this collaboration was germinated while Rose was traveling through the heartland on a tour with D. Charles Speer & the Helix in spring 2008. Musicians used to the road are familiar with the phenomenon wherein a certain tape or recording becomes the thematic soundtrack to the tour at hand. In this case, daily doses of 'Scorpio …
Alan Lomax In Haiti
Harte Recordings, together with the estate of Alan Lomax, and in collaboration with The Library Of Congress and the The Association for Cultural Equity, present Alan Lomax In Haiti -- a chronicle of Lomax's 1936 Haitian recording expedition for the Library. This 10-CD box-set, in the modern tradition of those lovingly created by Revenant and Dust-To-Digital, is curated from over 50 hours of field recordings by the pre-eminent Haitian scholar, Gage Averill. Besides the CDs, the set contain…
Catch My Shoe
"Vinyl version of the 25th classic release from Dutch pioneers, The Ex. Absolutely essential."
Maidenstone E.P.
"A previous member of the band UN, Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa) is now one of the epicenters and key collaborators of the North American free-folk movement, along with such luminaries as Jack Rose, Charalambides, Ben Chasny and the Jewelled Antler Collective. With her hypnotic, echoey church bell chanting, Burke possesses a power-filled vocal sound that harkens back not only to those other polar queens of disaffected freakout psychedelia Nico and Barbara Manning, but she is also akin to and i…
Open Strings: Early Virtuoso Recordings From The Middle East, An
Spectacoular 4LP box on Honest Jon's called Open Strings which features 2 LP's of 78's from the MIddle East circa the 20's (we're talking Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Turkey) and 2 LP's of more contemporary folks who are clearly inspired by such greatness. Thems being the likes of Richard Bishop (no longer calling him a sir as I don't believe the queen has chinned him with her sword), MV/EE, Ricky Tomlinson, Steffen Basho Junghans, Six Organs of Admitance, Micah Blue Smaldone, Michael Flower, Charlie Parr…
Drop on Down in Florida: Field Recordings of African American Tr
Based on four years of fieldwork throughout the state, the Florida Folklife Program released the two-album, 27-track LP Drop on Down in Florida: Recent Field Recordings of Afro-American Traditional Music in 1981. The album was intended to highlight African American music traditions for a statewide public audience, particularly blues and sacred traditions. When the Folklife Program sought the opportunity to produce an expanded reissue of the album that would include previously unissued field…
Sarod recital / live in Peshawar
Three beautiful extended ragas recorded last year in Peshawar: "Asad Qizilbash is the only Sarod player in Pakistan since 1992, keeping this traditional instrument and its music alive. Asad was born in 1963 to the famous violinist K.H. Qizilbash, who was responsible for closing the gap between western and eastern classical music. After attending a concert performed by his future Master, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Asad decided to devote himself to the instrument. Today, Asad Qizilbash has the honour t…
The Glass Bead Game
James Blackshaw once made Michael Gira cry. Not by sucker-punching the poor guy. It was something much simpler: Blackshaw reduced the former Swan frontman — a menacing presence even as he eclipses AARP eligibility — to tears through nothing but a finger-picked acoustic and minimal, melancholic chords. It's easy to understand why. As Gira wrote in a press release celebrating Blackshaw's signing to his Young God imprint, the widely-acclaimed 12-string maestro writes "absolutely beautiful and spell…
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…
Refuse This Gift
The third album Refuse This Gift from Bear Claw is one of two records that ended up being part of a double whammy of releases from Sickroom Records just recently for me. Paired up, at least in my mind, with the excellent Conformists record (which you can find a couple posts below) Bear Claw gives a bit more of a traditional spin on the Chicago math/noise-rock sound compared to their label mates. With their third album Refuse This Gift the band hasn’t deviated all that much from their pr…
FRKWYS Vol. 9
LP version: for the ninth volume of FRKWYS, a music and film series pairing contemporary artists with those that may have preceded them in style and/or approach, Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras meet The Congos in Jamaica.
Rosa De Sangue
Digital version in a heavy mini LP style cover with exact reproduction of the original artwork, and a full color foldout mini poster insert with new liner notes by Lula Cortes. Edition of 1000 copies." "First ever reissue of this Brazilian private press monster rarity. Originally custom pressed in 1980, Rosa De Sangue is the closing chapter of the amazing Recife psychedelic movement that flourished and centered around the work of Lula Cortes, beginning in 1973 with the release of Satwa, and the …
Politico/Zytol Automation
De Stijl's excavation of The Parasites Of The Western World turns up the lead single for their second album in the form of an exact reissue. Originally released circa 1980-81, 'Politico' opened the B-side to Substrata with a rippin' new wave roller full of glam stomp, proggy arrangement and punky attitude. The synth-fueled instrumental B-side was exclusive to the single, and as tradition dictates, far more interesting, featuring Terry Censky and Patrick Burke in an ebullient symphony of s…
Infant
last copies, Toy-psychedelia, what a precocious three-year-old might come up with if (s)he had a penchant for the Canterbury scene. Fun to listen to, not sure about the ultimate value. Beautiful cloth cover
Chance Meeting (Reissue / Special Edition)
United Jnana is pleased to reissue the debut album from Nurse With Wound, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, originally released on United Dairies in 1979. This special edition CD features a digipack with the original artwork restored and an expanded booklet with archival material chosen by Steven Stapleton. The disc has been remastered from the original analog tapes and features bonus material. Chance Meeting enjoys a reputation as one of the most singular…
The Atrocity Exhibition
Amazing experimental film with music by Jim Thirwell (Foetus). J.G. Ballard once said that the Atrocity Exhibition had been considered his only ‘unfilmable’ novel. Until Jonathan Weiss' feature adaptation of this infamous work of experimental fiction, a film which Ballard calls, ‘a poetic masterpiece’. Of all the films made of Ballard's fiction, only The Atrocity Exhibition contains a full length DVD commentary by the author himself. Less a commentary than a philosophical discourse on the nature…