Biggest Tip! ** 250 copies. Deluxe LP comes complete with a 20pp booklet * The long-anticipated LP of folk songs from Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region — one of the worst affected by Russia’s invasion. - The Black Sea folklore of Mykolaiv is a women’s history in song: neglected by folklorists and ethnologists for the area’s late settlement and mixed ethnic composition. This LP corrects that oversight. 

Collected over the last decade by the young musician and ethnographer, Tetiano Chukno, these recordings date from across the last century, shared between villages in the Mykolaiv region on cassette tape but never further. The songs are still sung today. - Songs of Winter, Songs of Weddings, and songs of resistance, of recruitment for the army, of baking bread, of caning honey-based alcohol, and of the rituals around the loss of a girl’s virginity. - Polyphony is the main music feature of the song of Mykolaiv, usually with a soprano voice ending each verse an octave above the melody, which is usually sung by the bass or middle voice in a three-part harmony.

Older people remember traditional wedding rituals relatively well, and it’s a common complaint that weddings aren’t as fun as they used to be.  The vinyl LP comes complete with a 20pp booklet containing the Ukrainian original lyrics written out for the first time, alongside an English translation overseen by the poet Stephen Watts. - All proceeds from this release will be sent direct to the singers in Ukraine.

purge.xxx is a label founded and by the artist and curator Stanley Schtinter, recently featured in The Wire Magazine and defined by its ‘disregard of the music industry, self-promotion and prevailing cultural norms’, and celebrated for its ability to ‘elevate distinct works and the obscure artists behind them’.