Folk /
Friends of Mine
Jill Cislaghi cut her one and only album in 1977, during her senior year at Regis College in Massachusetts. She recorded solely for friends, family, and as a memento for the members of her graduating class. Friends of Mine describes the loves and tribulations of Cislaghi's life with a mixture of naivetè and wisdom. With nothing more than her voice and (mostly unplugged) guitar, Cislaghi's folk sound is singular and resonant, bold yet humble. Friends of Mine's hopeful yet wintry vision should a…
This Song Was Borne
Allan Fraser & Daisy DeBolt met in the summer of 1969. They had both been working individually on the coffeehouse circuit in their native Canada; over the next five years, as the duo of Fraser & DeBolt, they created a sublime body of work that still sounds remarkably fresh decades later. They recorded two albums for Columbia which garnered rave reviews at the time, but saw little commercial success. Both have since become cult classics in psychedelic folk circles; the first, With Ian Guenther, b…
Music of Xinjiang: Kazakh and Uyghur Music of Central Asia
Limited-edition LP with full-size insert of text and photographs by compiler Laurent Jeanneau. Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) is China's biggest province. The musical landscape here is one of the world's richest. The Uyghur and the Kazakh are the two main ethnicities represented on these recordings made by Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding in June of 2009. The Kazakh (nomadic) and Uyghur (agricultural) have multiple linguistic ties. Much of this music shares many influences from the Arab world, Tur…
Outlier: Recordings from Madagascar
Limited-edition LP with full-size insert of text and photographs by compiler Charles Brooks. This collection is an impeccable and crystalline assortment of beautiful music from the deep southwestern provinces of Menabe and Tulear in Madagascar, recorded and assembled by Charles Brooks. Brooks has made many friends in these lesser-travelled regions since the 1990s. Outlier: Recordings from Madagascar represents a compilation of his encounters from 2011-2012. "Madagascar is an island that wo…
Aria
A very important artist from Naples, Alan Sorrenti released his first album in 1972 on the legendary Harvest label. Aria is an absolute Italian prog classic, with two different sides: the first only contained the long title track, a dreamy psych-suite starting with acoustic guitar and based on the marvelous instrument-like voice of Sorrenti, and exploding in the final part with a memorable violin solo by Jean Luc Ponty. Side 2 was softer, with three tracks, two of which also appeared on …
Bahriye Ciftetellisi
In Istanbul, close to the city center, lies a district not often visited by tourists. It’s called Dolapdere, and it is populated by the Roma of the city, many of whom are originally from Thrace. They supply the music for the city’s weddings, circumcisions, parades and parties. Dolapdere is the home of clarinet virtuoso Cüneyt Sepetçi and the Orchestra Dolapdere—some of the greatest musicians of Istanbul. They specialize in a modern take on classic Turkish Roma (gypsy) music, as well as fol…
Bali 1928, Vol. V: Vocal Music In Dances Drama
Vol. V of the Bali 1928 recordings contains various emergent theatrical dance and dance-opera forms with translations of the dramas' texts. We hear the first recordings of women participating in dance dramas, making this disc a major cultural repatriation of primary Balinese art forms that had been lost for nearly a century. An extensive essay is included as a PDF (accessed by computer) with links to 1930s silent films and a photo library are hosted online by World Arbiter. Some of these …
A Study into 21st Century Drone Acoustics
Much of the discussion around unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) is directed toward its capabilities of surveillance and attack. However for those living in areas of conflict, it is the engine sound of the drones that has devastating psychological effects. Military drones fly at high altitudes and are more easily heard than seen. Even the origin of the word "drone" is rooted in sound, and comes from the sound of the male honeybee. The sound of drones in areas of conflict creates soundscapes of te…
For Letha
Four tracks of instrumental acoustic guitar from the master songwriter. Starting out in London as a devotee of various blues and old time country musicians (Skip James, Dock Boggs, Robert Wilkins, etc) Dan Melchior soon found that slavish impersonation wasn’t the right route for him. After a period of mainly re interpreting traditional material, Melchior found a way to express his own concerns and ideas lyrically, and set about melding them to a backdrop of over driven, buzzsaw rock, with variou…
Bob Frank
Originally released in 1972 on Vanguard Records, Bob Frank’s self titled debut album took elements of Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Ian Tyson and filtered it through a pot-smoked haze infused with Frank’s long-time friend, Memphis guru Jim Dickinson. Dickinson and Frank shared a mutual admiration that ran so deep that on Dickinson’s own 1972 debut album Dixie Fried (released on Atlantic Records) he recorded one of Bob’s songs, ‘Wild Bill Jones.’ Despite the Dickinson/Memphis connection, Bob Frank’s on…
Hexadic II
Several years ago, after tiring of the predictable patterns he sensed himself settling into as a guitar player, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance decided to design a theoretical framework that would force his hands into different positions. Chasny distributed a deck of poker cards in a circular array of sets of six, corresponding to the notes of the guitar. The relative positions of the cards gave Chasny a "tonal field" in which to operate, as well as a set of notes from which to pick, some…
Morning Meditation
Transcendental acoustic guitar mysticism from the VDSQ shaman of Western MA. Anthony Pasquarosa is an artist and musician whose need to create is like a never ending search. He shouts at the audience in HC/Punk bands, pays tribute to early eighties electro punk and late sixties psych, plays old time music and is an excellent player of all stringed instruments.
Currents
Minimal acoustic melodicism from this NYC mainstay. Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legen…
FAT and the Masters of Haha
FAT and the Masters of Haha is a 73-minute release of FAT's recording with the southern Moroccan Berber group Aouad Mia, master rebab player Rais Lahcen Benlamouden, and other Berber singers and percussionists. It was recorded in Agadir, Morocco, in 1991 after development during FAT's numerous visits to Morocco over the previous three years. Aouad Mia's music is improvised but extremely tight and crisp, and combined with FAT, the music ranges from ferocious looped attacks through complex me…
Loneliness, Desire and Revenge
This 8 track acoustic guitar album is a big change for the experimental musician Maurizio Abate. After many years of psychedelic albums in which improvisation was combined with a creative recording process, he composed an entire album based on a more traditional method: acoustic guitar solo.During winter 2014 he organized a series of italian screenings preview of the documentary “ In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey” and that occasion encouraged Maurizio to experience the guitar…
In Quest Of Tense
"Back in '94 there was little sense that a new scene was on the horizon, but there was. Indeed, things were beginning to break out all over. All they needed was a little push. In Quest of Tense was released on CD in '94 (FE 038) and was just what a lot of people needed, even if they didn't know it yet, or didn't quite realize what it was when they heard it. Dredd Foole(aka Dan Ireton) had been roving through the Boston music underground since the early '80s, with a series of bands using the name…
The Complete Recordings
"While Jackson C. Frank's eponymous 1965 album and other material has enjoyed numerous official and unofficial reissues, Jackson C Frank: The Complete Recordings is the first to compile his entire recording career. Released in conjunction with Jim Abbott's book,Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius, The Complete Recordings contains a total of 67 tracks, 24 of which have never appeared before. Every song has been mastered or remastered, a number of them straight from the original, brit…
Bali 1928, Vol. II Tembang Kuna: Songs from an Earlier Time
Vol. II in a five-disc series of 1928 Balinese recordings features Balinese vocal music, the first release of these recordings since they were first pressed to 78 rpm discs in 1929, the only commercially released recordings of music made in Bali before World War II. Originally recorded by a team from the German labels Odeon and Beka on a 1928-29 expedition to Bali and intended for a Balinese public that lacked any discs of its own music, many of these records have been reduced to single r…
Bali 1928, Vol. IV: Music for Temple Festivals and Death Rituals
Vol. IV of the Bali 1928 recordings includes kebyar with sung poetry, gambuh dance-drama, ancient ritual angklung, and solo flute. All lyrics receive English translations in the liner notes, with an extensive text by Edward Herbst included as a PDF (accessed by computer) and hosted online by World Arbiter. Performances by Gamelan Gong Kebyar Belaluan, Denpasar; Gambuh of Sésétan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung Kléntangan of Sidan, Gianyar; Gamelan Angklung of Pemogan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung o…
Bali 1928, Vol. III: Lotring and the Sources of Gamelan Traditio
Vol. III of the complete 1928 Balinese recordings, the first republication since 1928 of lost shellac recordings, opens with the only known recordings of a lost gamelan. Heard in three tracks, Gamelan Semar Pagulingan, an ensemble known as "Gamelan of Love in the Bedchamber," played instruments that no longer exist, originally performed just outside the private residence of a raja during meals, times of leisure, and when the raja was otherwise engaged in pleasure with one of his wives. The…