Folk /
Marwa
Unique recording by dhrupad singer Marianne Svašek, a former pupil of legendary Hindustani musicians Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, Uday Bhawalkar, and Zia Fariduddin Dagar. The album consist of one track, a lengthy alap sung by Svašek––accompanied only by two tanpuras––in a complex and mysterious raga of twilight and sunset: Raga Marwa. Comes in a digisleeve featuring liner notes by Joep Bor, professor emeritus at Leiden University and author of The Raga Guide.
L'Orchestre National Mauritanien
Lost recordings that defined the modern sound of the Sahara.This album contains the first recordings of modern music from the Sahara and mark the birth of the genre that is known in the West as "Desert Blues" or "Desert Rock". Ahl Nana changed the folk music of the Sahara to modern, cosmopolitan music by using Western instruments like the electric guitar. They paved the way for artists like Ali Farka Touré, Tinariwen, Mdou Moctar or Bombino. Although the group is still active today, they only re…
Barzakh
*2023 stock* "This album marks the beginning of an ongoing and fruitful relationship between Tunisian oud master/composer Anouar Brahem and the ECM label. From the exhilarating solo “Raf Raf,” we know we are in the presence of someone whose sense of touch, rhythm, melody, and atmosphere speaks straight to the heart from the mind of a visionary. This first track puts us into a time and place where only melody speaks, and the sands of time flow like blood in an infinitely chambered heart. The titl…
Där Ska Barnet Vara
New album from Blod recorded during the second half of 2022 by Gustaf Dicksson. Där Ska Barnet Vara is a continuation of the themes explored on Pilgrimssånger and contains nine more songs dealing with faith in different forms, with a strong presence of death. Compared to Pilgrimssånger, the sound is slightly more lo-fi and fucked up and the approach is somewhat looser and more desperate, but here are some of the strongest and most fragile and heartfelt Blod songs to date. Additional players on t…
Shirk
*Edition of 300* Shirk is the new AOR flavored free improvisation solo album by Sam Shalabi featuring Eric Chenaux and Nadah El-Shazly where Synth Pop and Sound Poetry fester. Sam Shalabi is an Egyptian-Canadian composer, improviser and guitarist living between Montreal and Cairo. Starting out during the late 70s punk era, his work has evolved into an experimental synthesis of modern Arabic Music that incorporates free improvisation, traditional Arabic music, noise, classical, text, and jazz. Ot…
In My Own Time
Tip! *50th annyversary deluxe edition* Recorded over a six month period in 1970/71 at Bearsville, In My Own Time was Karen Dalton's only fully planned and realized studio album. The material was carefully selected and crafted for her by producer/musician Harvey Brooks, the Renaissance man of rock-jazz who played bass on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Miles’ Bitches Brew. It features ten songs that reflected Dalton's incredible ability to break just about anybodys heart – from her spectral evoc…
Ghost Notes From The Stone Vessel
This album is an intimate and historical dive into the work of Laurence Vanay. The titles on this album were carefully chosen by her daughter, Marine Thibault, in order to help us rediscover the sensitive repertoire of a little-known artist who was nevertheless at the forefront of her era.
The Berlin Session
Tears are in the eyes of Xabiib Sharaabi, nicknamed the Somali King of Pop when he entered the stage of Berlin’s HKW. It is a mix of nostalghia, pain and joy. Like many Somalis he had been deprived overnight of both glamour and friends, the war in his homeland had sent him into exile. The glamorous discos and beachfront stages Mogadishu had once been famous for, had disappeared as the city was bombed to the ground. The King of Somali pop found himself stranded in Sweden, others like the members …
L'Envol
*In process of stocking. 300 copies limited edition* In his youth days, Gontran lived on the road. He describes himself as a member of the alternative hippie generation, not of those who claimed wanted to change the world, but of those who actually took an alternate way of living. He travelled, took any jobs available to make some money to live wherever he was, and wrote beautiful songs accompaining himself on guitar. From time to time, when the stars aligned, when there was the chance, he would…
Istehlal
Zehra is proud to present the debut album Istehlal by the Mohamad Zatari Trio, consisting of musicians from Syria, Iran and India. The trio merges traditional Middle Eastern sounds with contemporary vibes incl. interpretations of Hossein Alizadeh and Riad Al-Sunbati classics.
Perú Selvático - Sonic Expedition Into The Peruvian Amazon 1972-1986
Tip! *In process of stocking* Less than a hundred miles inland from the capital city of Lima lies the great Peruvian jungle, an untamed land of impenetrable forests and endless winding rivers. In its isolated cities, cut off from the fashions of the capital, a unique style of music began to develop, inspired equally by the sounds of the surrounding forests, the roll of the mighty Amazon and Ucayali Rivers, and the rhythms of cumbia picked up from distant stations on transistor radios. With the a…
Up In Air
"After a near decade of solo and collaborative projects, Up in Air is Ben Pritchard's most confident foray into songwriting yet, nestling lopsided experimentation into a bed of lowslung blues and reflective folk." Featuring collaborators Sholto Dobie on self-built organs, and bassist Otto Willberg.
Faro Annie
*2022 stock* This is John Renbourn’s fifth and most blues influenced album, backed by the Pentangle rhythm section of Terry Cox and Danny Thompson. The singer/guitarist often takes a folk-rock approach, and often investigates American folk songs, on ‘Faro Annie’, beginning with the traditional “White House Blues”, a song about the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley. Next is “Buffalo Skinners” another traditional piece made famous by Woody Guthrie. Then there is “Country Blues”, a p…
Sharav
*In process of stocking* Akuphone is proud to present the Jerusalem-based improvisational trio Leviot and its hypnotizing debut album. Leviot (Hebrew for “Lionesses”) is the brainchild of the multifaceted musician and composer Yael Lavie. She is accompanied by classically trained percussionist and music teacher Cnaan Canetti, and synth enthusiast Yishay Seroussi. The project is a result of Lavie’s explorations beyond the restraints of classical kanun and her fascination for electronic sounds and…
It's My Story
*2022 stock* Oregon's fathers of freak-folk/folk psych pioneers The Tree People have, incredibly, made another album once again. Responsible for two awesome works in the late '70s and early '80s, here they are now with a new album and they sound exactly as they did 30 years ago. This could be their best work ever. Mellow, tender freak-folk with acoustic guitar, double bass, recorder, flute and percussion. Eleven new tracks, plus a new version of "Space Heater" from their 1979 debut. Includes a b…
Sonatina For Maria
*2022 stock* Taking in a range of styles, the album illustrates Al-Munzer’s skill in composition and arrangement that saw him become one of the busiest arrangers of Lebanon’s 1980s pop scene. The record goes deeper into the Western rhythm Al-Munzer explored at the beginning of his career and brought to his Middle Eastern fusion productions, with the synthesizer still taking centre stage, and the electric guitar, bass and drums ever more present.
When Al-Munzer entered Copenhagen’s Sun Studio in …
It's OK To Be Happy (1999-2001)
Early and mostly previously unreleased recordings from Dundedin's The Strange Girls, a band that initially consisted of Clayton Noone, Kaaterama "Motty" Morehu and Jon Arcus. The Strange Girls existed on and off from 1999 up until Motty's passing in 2019 and left behind a peculiar trail of gems scattered around on a myriad of limited lathe cuts, cassettes and CDrs. It's OK To Be Happy focuses on the trio era - Jon Arcus left the band in 2002 - and starts at the very beginning with 'Satan', the f…
Dombra Solo
Tip! *In process of stocking* "This album has its genesis in a precious reel-to-reel tape recording which we discovered in a radio station. It is unfortunate that the tape itself does not contain information on the date of recording, which we roughly speculate to be around the late-1980s to the early-1990s. The recording in this album has two parts. The first is Daulet Halek’s interpretation of folk tunes from other ethnic minority groups, including the Tatars, the Mongols, the Sibe, and the Ky…
Region, Music, and Practice Vol.1
"It is not only an album, but also a complete documentary of an event. We combine cassette and CD into one album so that one may review the unusual art project from different aspects. It also includes a precious booklet about everything said on the talks. Each track in the album is heard for the first time. For the project, Lao Dan and Mamer created brand new works. Mamer even began a new band named Mask. One remarkable song that didn’t be recorded is Water Flows sang by Wu Tiao Ren’s Mao Tao in…
There Is No Hunger in Your Shame
Tip! Builenradar is the new moniker under which Belgian visual artist and musician Wouter Vanhaelemeesch performs his damaged post-apocalyptic bikerfolk. Previously known as Urpf Lanze, he’s been producing trance-like guitar boogie that takes inspiration from disparate influences since the early 2010s. Builenradar plays in a self-developed unorthodox style with a resophonic guitar on his lap and a voice ranging from messy grunts to eerie whistling and absent murmurs. Once, after Vanhaelemeesch o…