What Do You See Everyday?
Another fantastic slab by Virginia-based guitarist Jordan Perry, whose style fuses disparate threads from the American Primitive and avant-garde songbooks into a unique alloy. For this album Primitivism has largely been eclipsed by avant urges. Still, there is one track, 'Days Have Gone By Volume' where Jordan is joined by guitarist Ned Oldham for a piece evoking Fahey in more than its title. But that is the exception. Most of What Do You See Every Day? is filled with abstractions for acoustic g…
Live At Teater Tribunalen
Huge Tip! ** Edition of 300.** The long overdue first proper jazz album on Discreet Music! After years of releasing experimental electronics, drone, and avant-garde sound art, the Swedish label finally documents what's been happening in their own backyard: ferocious, life-elevating free jazz performed by three of Sweden's leading improvisers. Niklas Persson Trio - saxophonist Niklas Persson, double bassist Patric Thorman, and drummer Raymond Strid - started ten years ago on Thorman's initiative.…
Kin
Over the years Sharron Kraus's musical career has pulled her in many directions and seen her collaborate with artists, poets, writers, and researchers, creating soundtracks, podcasts, musical accompaniments, and responses. She is an intuitive improviser, a compelling performer and a weaver of musical spells. The spine supporting this body of work is songwriting, though, and it is to this most natural combination of words and music that she always returns. If prose writing is a tool for analysis …
Tarantism
The fourth release by this Durham NC-based duo is also their second on Feeding Tube. We did their excellent When Sorrows Encompass Me 'Round cassette in 2021 (FTR 378CS), and are delighted to be able to do this new one on 45 RPM vinyl. The players, as always are Courtney Werner on cello and fiddle, with Evan Morgan playing guitars, banjo, pump organ, and shruti box. Tarantism came together in the depths of the Plague in the spring and summer of 2020 while the pair was living on a mountainside ne…
Dragon's Return
LP with obi strip, incl. booklet. Australian composer Oren Ambarchi and Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten present Dragon's Return, a compelling new score for Eduard Grecner's 1967 Slovak cult film of the same name. Released via Viernulvier Records, this collaboration emerged from a live performance at the Videodroom Festival during Film Fest Ghent in October 2024, where the musicians premiered their improvisational soundtrack alongside the restored black-and-white parable. What began as a singu…
Red Amber
Because he is a relentless seeker of strange truths (especially as they relate to music), Nigel Cross was the gent who uncovered the fact that the London-based artist, Jill Tipping, had been a member of a Sunforest-style folk-rock group back in the day . . . Here are some notes from Jill on what's what. It's early '70s London and in a small all-girls grammar school a band is born. There had been an extant group of sixth-formers -- The Folk Group -- who provided musical filling at morning assembl…
Briars On A Dewdrop
Turner Williams Jr is a string-player out of the same Alabama surrealist scene that gave us Rev. Fred Lane & the Say Day Bew gang, Davey Williams & LaDonna Smith’s Trans Museq universe, and the Sweet Wreath madmen (who have been working with Johnny Coley, Silica Gel and others). Some crazy shit has gone on down there, and Mr. Williams soaked it all in before heading up to NYC, where he fell in with some of the Sound @ One scene. Which added another layer to the freak potential of his playing. Af…
Sun Cycle / Elk Jam
Two mind-bending slabs of acoustic and electric guitars, wandering into corners of acid-logic only accessible to bravest explorers. Elkhorn is a duo -- Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner -- from NYC. Their earlier records (Elkhorn on Beyond Is Beyond, The Black River on Debacle) would have blown us away, even if we didn't know Jesse from his work as a film-maker (he directed the Glenn Jones/Jack Rose doc,The Things That We Used to Do) and organizer (he put together the 1,000 Incarnations of the Ros…
Time Machine
Time Machine is a reissue of a 2017 cassette, and represents the first vinyl issued by Wendy Eisenberg, a peripatetic improviser and composer currently based in Amherst. We first heard of Wendy when she was playing with a blasted quartet called Birthing Hips, whose NNA cassette was an instant classic. Since then she's begun a solo career that branches off in a lot of directions simultaneously. She has an album of post-form noise-metal (in trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith) due soon on John Zo…
Le Don Des Larmes
‘Le Don Des Larmes’, will be released on the Amsterdam-based label Knekelhuis at September 12, and was conceived and recorded during her pregnancy — a time of deep transformation. It is a poetic offering to her newborn child, where the cycle of the seasons becomes a metaphor for birth, vulnerability, and renewal. Her sound draws from the lullabies of her Kabyle childhood and the gentle melancholy of Algerian chaabi, carrying their echoes into a world entirely her own.
Léo La Nuit is a Franco-Alg…
The Portrait You Painted Of Me
2025 stock Orange vinyl (US exclusive). Here we have the third solo LP by London's Alison Cotton, following on previous successes, All Quiet at the Ancient Theatre (FTR 424LP, 2019) and Only Darkness Now (FTR 564LP, 2020). And as with each of Cotton's projects it is a stylistic advance as well as another example of her dark signature sound. Alison's work with bands is well documented by recordings with Saloon, 18th Day of May, Trimdon Grange Explosion, and her current, ecstatic folk/psych duo, T…
Hazy Road
2025 stock Hazy Road is the debut album from Bong Wish, the solo project of Palestinian-American artist Mariam Saleh. Former bassist for beloved garage rock band Fat Creeps, Saleh got her start in the Boston music scene of the early 2010s. While living above a music venue, where she was also employed, she was exposed to a myriad of jazz, psych, and experimental music. In turn, Bong Wish incorporates both the high-energy and distortion of garage alongside kaleidoscopic soundscapes, and folds them…
What Strange Flowers Grow In The Shade
2025 stock Tennessee-based string bender, Joseph Allred likes to change things up from album to album. But usually, he does this one element or instrument at a time. On What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade, Joseph adds a whole heck of a lot of elements. And he does so without ever really disguising the identity of his music. The six tracks here were all recorded with different line-ups. 'The Valley' features Chris Davis (Cherry Blossoms) and the Magic Tuber Stringband. 'The Ruins' is a Basho-e…
Branches & Leaves
Don't hold me to it, but by my count this the sixth LP we have done with the splendid Brighton-based musician named Joseph Allred. Initially known as a master of stringed instruments, Joseph has continuously expanded his musical arsenal. When asked about basics regarding Branches & Leaves, he wrote, 'I played harmonium, piano, guitars, glockenspiel, banjo, tambourine, bass drum, and clarinet on this album and did all the vocals myself. I'm glad I got to collaborate with some friends and would li…
Folk Guitar
A very nice return to unadorned acoustic guitar playing by one of the form's masters. Allred's last album for FTR, What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade (FTR 656LP) was more of an imaginary band outing, but Folk Guitar plays it straight. Joseph reports they'd been listening to a lot to pieces by 16th-century composer, John Dowland, and the solo work of Pentangle's John Renbourn while this album was gestating. They also note Hammer Studio horror-film soundtracks as a touchstone for certain tunes…
No New Summers
Nice to hear the first solo LP in a good while by this most excellent guitarist who also runs the superb Scissor Tail label. Dylan writes, 'I made the title track a couple years ago at the beginning of summer. I was thinking about how as you get older you have fewer new experiences. That feeling of excitement for summer fades, after it used to be such a big deal as a kid. Those experiences can only be new and vibrant once. The rest of your life can be spent in nostalgia for them. It's a sad thou…
Muurahaiset
*2025 stock. 300 copies limited edition* At the height of the forest folk boom in 2002, the yearning for more manna for the ears led a group of aficionados to invent a programmable forest folk generator software that would then relentlessly spit out the magic sound. Later, the tapes produced by the software went missing for two decades until rediscovered by J. Lehtisalo, who was one of the concept creators and programmers along with S. Pekkola and V. Puhakka.
Among the missing tapes was Circle’s…
Live / Live
Just a few weeks back in a packed-full railway arch deep in South London, Jemima played their debut show and the moment seemed too good not to capture. Their gently lapping, invertedly melancholic sound is instantly recognisable from the first touch of the strings, although now songs, sketches and fragments from the album are elongate to have further room to breathe. Like finding a place of quiet refuge amidst the increasing urban chaos, these two extended live sets lower the pace for an ephemer…
Den Oändliga Historien
*300 copies limited edition.* Blod, the enigmatic Swedish folk collective, announces the release of Den Oändliga Historian (The Endless Story), a new album that represents both the band's darkest exploration yet and paradoxically their most uplifting work. Recorded during spring 2025 and released on Förlag För Fri Musik (catalog number 033), the album showcases an expanded lineup featuring core members Gustaf Dicksson, Elin Engström, Julia Bjernelind, Magnus Jäverling, and Erik Ridelius, alongs…
Tenshi No Gijinka
Keiji Haino's ritualistic 1995 album features nine untitled pieces of voice and percussion. The Japanese avant-garde master creates meditative spaces through drones, cymbal crashes, and gargled vocals, building esoteric rituals that explore the inner sounds of existence on Tzadik.