Folk /
That’s how I got to Memphis (and other Egyptian love songs)
While there has been plenty of precedent, regarding Alvarius B’s fascination with the down and out of Anglo/American cultural refuse, That’s How I Got To Memphis is certainly his most realized collection of paying homage to it. The fact that this whole album is a collection of covers that have invaded AB’s current musical obsessions is testament to the timeless nature of the original artists songwriting prowess. Imagine Joe Meek coming back from the dead to produce a country western and northern…
Open Today
Kumio Kurachi is a Japanese singer-songwriter who has been active since the 1980's. This is his 11th solo album and only the second to be released outside of Japan following Sound of Turning Earth (2018) on bison.
İstanbul Sokakları
“The psych band’s latest release weaves field recordings into tracks that confront the realities of modern Turkey.”
Sing Nightingale
Tip! Two musicians, two different folk music traditions, two soundscapes hundreds of miles apart and one nightingale song. Nightingale melodies inspired this intoxicating folk album by Slovakian flautist Michaela Antalová and Norwegian double bassist Adrian Myhr. The Oslo-based duo’s album follows their meditative 2021 debut Zvony (Bells), which featured harmonium, field recordings of crickets and a Slovak male choir. Sing Nightingale is a translation of ‘Zaspievaj Slavicku’, a traditional Slova…
One Evening and Other Folk Songs
Infinite-Sum Game is a curated selection of my solo piano performance in Palermo on May 13th, 2023, at Sala Perriera in the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa. I have the deepest gratitude first and foremost to Lelio Giannetto and Valeria, as well as Gabri, Luca, Yuki, Angela, Curva Minore, SIO, and the greater Sicilian musical community. It's a great honor to have been embraced by the community in Palermo, to be able to spend so much time there, and to collaborate with so many artists who have become…
Words And Music
Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Margo Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture;and the collected Demos;to the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry”, Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, featuring 16 previously unreleased recordings…
Compathía
While the "acoustic based project[ions]" of Six Organs of Admittance have been pigeonholed by some as a chance-operated celestial jam unit, the group has always been about songs, and nowhere is this more apparent than on their fourth full length album, an eight-song cycle that mixes the strengths of Ben Chasny's acoustic and electric guitar with his knack for placing this on top of disparate and subtle atmospheric backgrounds. The live favorite (and rare single) "Somewhere Between" has been redo…
Net of Atoms
Net of Atoms is a new album by Otis Jordan, drawing closely from the previous two albums for Them There - Dodger Point (2020) and Restless Guests (2022) - Jordan delivers his most ambitious and well articulated full length work to date, perfectly rounding off a trio of releases for the label.
Idiosyncratics And Swallows Wings
Mega rare UK private album (99 copies originally pressed in 1969) by singer/songwriter Jeremy Harmer, featuring David Costa of psych-folk band Trees on guitar. Melancholic, introspective psych-folk with chamber/ baroque feel. Guitar, flute, viola, bass, drums…
Jeremy Harmer started singing and playing at school and university, where his circle of friends included aspiring folk musicians like Nick Drake and pre-Trees David Costa. Jeremy has a long history as a singer/songwriter and performer, alo…
Sir John Alot Of Merrie Englandes Musyk Thyng & Ye Grene Knyghte
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 stock* This is the third solo album by acoustic guitar wizard John Renbourn. The first half (side A of the LP) is lined with carefully arranged medieval tunes, while the second half (side B of the LP) features improvised and free-spirited performances. This is a masterpiece that tips its hat to John's inquisitiveness for contemporary elements already in 1968. A must-listen for g…
Basket of Light
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 stock* Third album released in 1969 by Pentangle, who led the British fark/trad scene with Fairport Convention. A historical masterpiece, crystallising at a high level an ensemble of master British acoustic guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, highly jazz-based musicianship, and the vocals of the red-hot, transparent Jackie. Definitive release in paper jacket, SHM-CD, 4 bon…
Hometown To Come
Hometown to Come, the second full-length album by Minhwi Lee. The eight tracks were written over a period of seven years after Lee's first album and loosely form a single story, contemplating how people who have lost their hometown can return.
“What I had imagined from the title, Hometown to Come, was something forever delayed yet constantly approaching; however, upon repeated listens, it takes on a different meaning—a promise of hospitality being realized every day. Even if our places to meet d…
Tim Hardin 2
Limited LP, Deluxe 180-gram reissue including original artwork & credits.. The second album by folk artist Tim Hardin, released in 1967, Tim Hardin 2 contains his most popular and much-covered composition “If I Were a Carpenter,” most notably recorded by Bobby Darin, whose version peaked at #8 in the US and #9 in the UK in 1966. While not as prolific as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, or Neil Young, the prototypical folk-rocker Tim Hardin remains one of the greatest singer/songwriters, as much for his ma…
Genesis
Enchanting and sunny 1969 psych folk by San Francisco teenage sisters Wendy & Bonnie Flower. A cult album that would later inspire bands like Stereolab, with dreamy vocal harmonies as the main attraction, laced with Brazilian splashes and soft-rock strains. Pure timeless psychedelic pop perfection, awash in serenity and haunting reverie floating in the ether above airy soundscapes that convey a sophistication that belies the artists' tender age: 15 and 18. Alongside them are top-notch musicians …
The Hygrades
Sleeve Records & Dig This Way teamed back to bring to light the history and the tracks of this iconic early 70' Psychedelic Afro-funk East Nigeria group. The Hygrades's album will include all 4 rare 45"s united in a single LP with an insert of their story told by a true Uchenna narrator.
Sun Also Rises
* 2024 LP Reissue * Released in 1970 on the british cult label The Village Thing (owned by singer/songwriter Ian A. Anderson), the sole album by couple Anne and Graham Hemingway is a superb acid folk manifesto. Coming all the way from Cardiff, the duo has been described as a mystical, magical hippie small family. Alongside classic guitars, they played dulcimer, glockenspiel, vibes, bells, kazoo and small percussion, joined throughout by label-mate John Turner (bowed and finger-picked string bass…
Bayawan
"Bayawan" is the common name for Muqam music used by the Dolan people. Bayawan, or Dolan Muqam, is a unique form of folk music and one of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. Generally speaking, Muqam is a form of large-scale suites which include songs, dances, and instrumental sections, in which the development of music often features a significant degree of improvisation. The Muqam of the Uyghurs is characterized by its diversity of musical styles. Apart fro…
Mehrpouya Sitar
*2024 reissue* This - somehow - mythological album from one of Iran’s top sitarist lurches between traditional Eastern forms and more modern Western styles, blending the two into a fascinating fusion of cultures and flavours. Similar to the work of Indian rare groove master Ananda Shankar, the record brings to life the ultimate marriage of funky drums, lush horns, wah-wah guitars and Eastern harmonies. A necessary re-discovery !
Relics Of Our Life
*300 copies limited release* "Sometimes it’s hard to resist the feeling that there was a crucial turn in life out of which everything else flowed. Maybe in our more reasonable frames of mind we can dismiss that thought and take our plans and intentions very seriously. But, there’s often a lurking conviction that, like the oak from the acorn or the movie from its opening scene, it is already all there. In the first moment of Relics of Our Life, anything could happen, anything could come next. But…
The Handover
Tip! "There is, and has been, a prevailing orthodoxy permeating the Egyptian musical hierarchy that would render this spectacular piece as scandalous. But let us remember that over the past 100 years, Said Darwish, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Halim El Dabh, Ahmad Adaweya, and the modern Mahraganat movement have all experienced their fair share of scandal and opposition. Music must always be pushed forward – it may not always succeed as revelatory, but in this particular case, it does. Much like the ven…