Experimental / Folk

There are cult bands and then there's Souled American. In 1988, the Illinois group arguably invented "alternative country" with the album Fe. While the alt-country sound is widely recognized as Southern roots rock with an indie-punk sensibility largely defined by Uncle Tupelo's No Depression released two years later — Souled American's early music feels as if it was formed in a vacuum, inspired by the timestretching space of reggae. But over the course of the following decade, Souled American's …

*300 copies limited edition* In the twilit caverns of Serra de Collserola, a crooked journey begins. The vague contour of the Hierophant emerges in an ash-pale fog. He stretches his arms towards the sky. He opens his mouth, and from it radiates the blinding light of swallowed suns. He howls — he shouts — he roars: words that crackle like fire. Words that unravel worlds. Words that hew, from ancient rock and staves oaken wood, hymns of hypnotic grandeur, liminal laments, and solemn songs of comfo…

On Bridge Variations, the now Stockholm-based English guitarist Jon Collin changes his guitar for a keyed fiddle. Mostly recorded to tape under different bridges around Stockholm during 2021, partly for the sound but also because of their importance to the geographical make-up of the place, the album is like a modern take on traditional Swedish folk music made by an outsider looking in. The sound is pretty much a continuation of the palette explored on 'Dream Sequence, End Of Summer', Collin's c…

Track A1, B3 and B4 are original compositions by Mamer, track B1 is composed by Ashim Dongxeuly, track B5 is a Tatar traditional folk tune, the rest are based on Kazakh traditional folk tunes. Live recording from Mamer's solo performance 'The Imitator Series Ⅵ: Sky' on June 19, 2024 at Old Heaven Books.

In the late 1980s two globetrotting Milanese composers joined forces to produce an acclaimed and prescient record made in equal parts from their own performances and ethnic field recordings, a little in the manner of Eno/Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - but rather more evolved. This 30th anniversary release includes some early pieces, not already available on CD made this way but, mainly, features the entirety of their score for Theodore Carl Dreyer's legendary silent film, Vampyr - perfo…

The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City.  Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…

2024 repress. "Drag City takes great pleasure in introducing to you a remarkable new musical singer, songwriter and all-around talent, Joanna Newsom. Joanna's music has more of an affinity with the folk revival of the 60s, or the bluegrass movement at present, than with most contemporary 'folk' (or 'anti-folk') scenes. Affinities aside, her style could hardly be called bluegrass; nor does it evoke the pastoral tonalities of 60s folk: she sings about whalebones, sleep, grammar, mollusks, accumula…

Returning to the Czech Republic with a reissue of Richter Band’s first album, Smetana (Czech for ‘Cream’), released originally in 1990. Pavel Richter gained a considerable reputation as a guitarist, playing in a number of Czech avant-garde rock groups, including Švehlík, Marno Union and Elektrobus, and became one of foremost figures of the Prague scene which opposed the socialist regime of the 70’s and 80’s. Towards the mid 80’s, he began to focus on calm music and subtle sound structures, playi…

"This collection is a companion piece to my solo album ‘Telyn Rawn’ AMGEN 001 (2020). I have invited some of my favourite musicians to respond to the eighteen improvised pieces on ‘Telyn Rawn’. I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and, that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the ‘Telyn Rawn’ pieces. This album therefore propos…

Groupe Derhane - Imidrane : Issouf, known as Issouf Derhane, was born in the peaceful village of Tidene almost a hundred kilometers northeast of Agadez. From a young age, Issouf was called by the desert winds, which carried him to Libya, a country where he grew up, forged by the trials and unique experiences of life. There, he witnessed the tumult of the civil war, an experience that sharpened his resolve and his understanding of peace. In Libya, he discovered the guitar, an instrument which qui…

*2025 stock* Anybody who has witnessed a live performance of Anna von Hausswolff and band can attest to the extraordinary and commanding nature of the experience. The distinctive music, as captured across five full-length albums, comes to life, shifting from hypnotic and mantra-like moods to thunderous drama, dissonance and cacophony. The musicians master playful dynamics and wield immense power. Across six pieces, Anna von Hausswolff performs sensational renditions of fan-favourites from the tw…

*2025 stock* The 10” is pressed on translucent green vinyl with sleeve art by Belbury Poly's Jim Jupp. It’s released on Seatman’s own label KS Audio in association with Belbury Music. A five track EP of collaborations with folk singer Douglas E. Powell selected from Keith Seatman’s Albums: A Rest Before the Walk and all hold hands and off we go. It opens with a remix of the title track Broken Folk by Ghost Box veterans, Belbury Poly.Melancholic and subtly psychedelic, these songs are redolent of…

"A wonderfully alien patchwork of sounds where the rich colours bleed into each other to create something vivid and unique." - The Quietus

2024 stock. Iran was the first Muslimgauze recording to be released on CD, and therefore occupies a special place in the hearts of Muslimgauze fans. The year was 1988, and Dutch label Staalplaat had recently been introduced to the music of Muslimgauze through their association with Soleilmoon. At the time, Staalplaat was known for their attractively presented cassette releases. “Iran” was their first CD release, and signaled the start of the label’s transition away from the cassette format. Sole…

Written and produced by CS + Kreme.Cello on 'Master of Disguise' by Yuki Nakagawa (Kakuhan).Tarawangsa on 'COTU' by Teguh Permana (Tarawangsawelas).Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker.Photography and design by Will Bankhead.

"About the type of music," Alessandro Bianco wrote me, "I was thinking of a solo banjo country impro experimental protest songs record." I used Alessandro's list as a way to organize my favorite recordings from the last few years, not only the genre or stylistic labels but the order in which he presented them. I made up a rule that the tracks could be used if they fit one or more of the words he used in his description-but only in the order he listed them! In this way I chose tracks that I would…

Guitarist Lee Underwood’s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley’s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music – but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee’s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.

Sunfear returns to Dark Entries with All at Once, her sophomore LP. Sunfear is the project of Turkish multidisciplinary artist Eylül Deniz. Since 2017, Deniz has been working as a composer, performer, and DJ, with a focus on different facets of ambient and experimental music. Deeply steeped in both music theory and history, Deniz explores electroacoustic techniques, utilizing piano, guitar, voice, and synthesizer. Her aim is self-expressive; these experimental tactics are her narrative and world…

Tip! “Sculptures From Under the City Ice is a sort of longing, I think,” Christian Winther says of his third full-length solo record. This statement is cryptic but somehow poignant, poetic, and also a little weird. And so is Sculptures From Under the City Ice. Winther is a highly sought after guitarist and tireless collaborator in the Norwegian avant garde scene. His previous solo release was awarded album of the year by Klassekampen in Norway. He has toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan,…

A meditation on memory, innocence, and the haunted grandeur of the natural world, Unremembered recalls strange and beautiful happenings experienced during a childhood in rural Massachusetts: a houseguest takes sudden leave in the middle of the night; a boy makes a shocking discovery on a riverbank; a girl disappears in woods behind a ranging farm; ghosts appear with messages for the living. Through Bellows's moving words and images and Snider's vivid, fraught, astonishing score, the cycle explor…

Hand-numbered edition of 250. First record of the mysterious duo Two Kings (Ian Humberstone, founder of Folklore Tapes and Malcolm Benzie). Somewhere, lost in another plane of existence, a banished king searches in vain for his kingdom. This is King Herla, a man stricken by the spells of an unruly dwarf king and destined to ride the stormy skies for all eternity. But on All Hallow’s Eve, when the boundaries that separate his world from our own are somewhat porous, our protagonist spies his oppor…

Engelchen literally translates as ‘little angels,' and for many in the febrile, dangerous era of the 1930s in Nazi-occupied Europe, as they wrote letters to arrange their paths out of danger as refugees, these were Ida and Louise Cook. Ida and Louise spent much of their early years in Sunderland, and in adulthood lived in a suburb of London with their parents. They were enormous fans of opera, and led relatively quiet and unfussy lives, Ida working for the civil service as a secretary and Louise…

Following on quickly from Fear, and capitalizing on that album's energy Slow Dazzle is another fiery release by Velvet Underground founder John Cale. This reissue faithfully replicates the original 1975 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180 gram vinyl. Released in March 1975, initially, the album offers a false sense of mellow security: "Mr Wilson", a tribute to Brian, the leader of Cale's beloved Beach Boys starts the album on a much sweeter note than "Fear Is A Man's B…

Recorded quickly between John Cale producing Patti Smith's Horses and his going out on an Italian tour, Helen Of Troy became Cale's third and final studio album for Island Records. This reissue faithfully replicates the original 1975 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180 gram vinyl. Helen Of Troy is a raw, fascinating listen. The title track with its horns and spoken word is one of Cale's best: after the sweet bubblegum of "China Sea", the album gets increasingly strippe…

This reissue faithfully replicates the original 1974 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180 gram vinyl. Fear marked Cale's return to recording in London after the best part of a decade in America. Signing to Island Records, he made fast friends with two key admirers, Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno, who assisted him in returning his music to the rawer sound of his earlier work, as opposed to the lush textures of his previous studio album, Paris 1919. The tense, clipped "Fear…

The Trilogy Tapes welcomes Memotone, the well-known producer from Bristol, with his new album. Throughout "Tollard", Memotone forges a distinct path between plugged-in jazz and experimental abstraction with the use of warm, natural musicianship, unconventional production choices, and rapid cut interstitial sounds.

*In process of stocking* Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker have emerged as one of the most interesting duos in contemporary improvised music. First introduced to Unseen Worlds through their performance on the Philip Corner recording "Extreemizms: early & late", Tarozzi and Walker elevated recent recordings, Eliane Radigue "Occam Ocean 3", Pascal Criton "Infra", and Tarozzi’s own "Mi specchio e rifletto" to greatness. Their finely tuned sound makes even the most adventurous tones compelling. With…

"On Petals, the pair’s haunting folk music comes into sharper focus while broadening their sonic palette. Spoken word meets chanted incantations, gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar is placed alongside spindly piano melodies, the creak of floorboards in the background mirrors the creak of fingerprints dragged across guitar strings. Woven throughout are bursts of tape-recorded radio static that reveal hardly distinguishable voices while MacDougall sings of equally fleeting phenomena. Winds, breez…

This Norwich-based trio hit our radar earlier this year when we caught their third live performance in London. Gipping Through the Ages is their debut release.

"I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths" - Ts'ui Pen The Garden of Forking Paths was compiled for Important Records by guitarist James Blackshaw. Compositions were recorded especially for this collection by Helena Espeval (Espers), James Blackshaw, Jozef van Wissem and Chieko Mori. Beautifully assembled, The Garden Of Forking Paths serves as a singular and particularly unique musical statement. "The story of how this compilation came into being is, unlike many other s…

Tip! MF Tomlinson's second album We Are Still Wild Horses stands partially as a document of the year after ‘the year everything changed’, necessitated as a way out of the "the deep sadness in the winter of 2021". Written in the time when the days were the shortest, it speaks in the language and logic of dreams. In the dramatic sonic landscapes in which these songs unfold; a remarkable journey deep into the self is taking place. Tomlinson says of the album: “At both ends of the album there is an …

"Evohé, the song of the bacchants, is multiple and dangerous, its cult is not based on any catechism. Bacchanalian song is about intrusion, it knows neither beginning nor end, and refuses to take the stage that is set for it. Evohé is thus a permanent discipline of aggression of the ritual by the real. A cult of the dangerous object, of time gnawing at flesh, of redemption through intoxication." French Chanson, Noise, echoes of music from faraway and long ago, modified radio transistors and oth…

Tara Burke (FURSAXA) & cellist Helena Espvall (ESPERS). A beautiful, laboriously created, floating affair of skeletal organ drones, ceremonial singing, & subtly frantic instrumental accompaniment that conjures up a natural woodland romp & stomp.

* 2021 Stock * Musician, composer and one of the most revered figures for today’s younger generation of experimental and alternative Arabic music-scenes, Kamilya Jubran (text, oud & vocals, collaborates with long standing musical partner, composer, accomplished trumpet player and seasoned electronic musician Werner Hasler (trumpet & electronics). In Wa (Arabic for and), their third album together as a duo, Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hasler continue to interrogate their listening and their express…

Isabell Gustafsson-Ny joins Warm Winters Ltd. with Rosenhagtorn, a suite of short pieces for piano, violin and voice. Absorbing in its profound focus on listening, this collection is a striking exploration of these sound sources; their repetitions, harmonics and oscillations. Conceiving of the release as a house, a different song is playing in each room, Gustafsson-Ny was able to explore the rawness and fragility of each instrument with incredible freedom and sensibility. She describes the album…

Tip! * In process of stocking * His desperate need for a torrent, a precipice, a railroad track - no matter what, but instantly - made him appeal for the very last time to the topography of his past. And when, in front of him, a grinding whine came from behind the hump of the side street, swelling to full growth when it had overcome the grade, distending the night, already illuminating the descent with two ovals of yellowish light, about to hurtle downward - then, as if it were a dance, as if th…

Hugely influential and appearing nearly everywhere within Washington D.C.'s contemporary music scene as bandleaders and contributing artistic voices, cellist and vocalist Janel Leppin and guitarist Anthony Pirog have long been creative partners as well as life partners. Their Cuneiform Records debut Where is Home (2012) is considered a crucial modern recording from the region. Following that release, the two have crafted a double-LP opus which crosses genres and mirrors their exploratory and dia…

From the London based imprint, Hegoa, comes one of the most beautiful and striking records we've heard all year, the Basque trio, Carcáscara’s second outing “II”. Issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, its elegant arrangements of tonality, texture, and cascading arpeggiations and drones, sculpt a stunning, acoustic middle ground between a number of Spanish folk traditions, American primitivism, and musical minimalism. A likely strong contender for more than a few year-end lists.

*300 copies limited edition* Maths Balance Volumes follow up their acclaimed 2020 release A Year Closer with a further and sturdier bucket of songs scraped from the dust of being. Haunted, fragile and beautiful, this is music that explores the ghostly zones of its own creation. The loneliness and vulnerability that unfolds with the opening cut Stay lays the way for exploration of sound and song with simple melodic guitar and organ whilst the subsequent Janet’s Song weaves mirror elements alongsi…

*2024 repress* "... The Ohio-based guitarist's artistic leaps in recent years are rivaled only by those of Daniel Bachman, another once-precocious player formerly in the John Fahey / Jack Rose mold who has over the years transcended the idiom to create his own singular, deeply personal music. Rolin's latest LP, the double album The Dreaming Bridge, makes similar strides. For many practitioners of this style, the first and perhaps most challenging feat is to escape the gargantuan shadow of Fahey.…