Folk /
Teodros Makonnen With His Organ
Some recordings can foreshadow the future in ways that are hard to grasp in the moment, and Teodros Makonnen With His Organ (Teodros Makonnen ከኦርጋኑ ጋር) is one of them. Known as Teddy Mak, Teodros Makonnen helped define the digital sound of Ethiopian music that emerged from the 1980s onward, not only as a keyboard player but also as a producer, songwriter, performer, and sound designer. Although electronic instruments and digital production are now taken for granted in Ethiopian music, the early …
Kel Tamasheq
Studio album from Bamako-based Tuareg band Amanar de Kidal. "Kel Tamasheq” is years in the making, a self produced DIY album, recorded in the small studios of the Malian capital over the past few years.
Carrying on in the tradition of assouf, the Northern Malian style of Tuareg guitar popularized by artists like Tinariwen, Amanar pushes the sound forward into tight upbeat groove and kinetic rhythms, reflecting the rich diversity of Mali and the energy of the capital. The band takes its name from…
Raynol Overlook
Will DeLee got started with fingerpicking guitar almost a decade ago, following the usual path of Fahey, Basho, etc. before veering off hard in his own unique directions on both the 6- and 12-string guitar as well as the ronroco and charango, the latter a South American stringed instrument originally made from armadillo shells.
Similar to Eric Arn and other folks in the guitar realm, William DeLee leans at times to the more neo-classical and cleaner side of acoustic guitar playing. But like Arn,…
Stone Angel
“Stone Angel” is the self-titled album by the English folk group Stone Angel, released in 1971 on Seashell record. The group hailed from the rural counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, and the album deeply reflects that setting: deeply rooted traditional English folk, but with a psychedelic touch typical of the era. Simple acoustic arrangements (guitar, dulcimer, female vocals),intimate and pastoral atmospheres, featuring ballads and ancient melodies, a slight ‘acid folk’ vein, similar to bands such …
You Should’nt Try To Barrow Other People’s Skin.
Lucas Gunn is a Portland Oregon based guitarist, previously playing in bands Rock ‘n’ Roll Soldiers, The Blimp from Eugene, OR and the Lavender Flu with his brother Chris Gunn. You Should’nt try to barrow other People’s skin. [sic] was recorded professionally with quality vintage microphones, while a few tracks were self-recorded. Each song was recorded live in the studio - no overdubs, no edits - giving the album a raw, authentic edge. All songs were recorded analog to 2-Track tape or 4-Track …
Routine
Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalists Jason Dungan and Johan Carøe didn’t set out to make an album. Instead, as the title ‘Routine’ suggests, they found their way there through a process of habitual making and listening, developing an intuitive musical language to reflect the dreamlike meanderings and creative play of life's quiet moments. ‘Routine’ blends pop orientated sounds, Avant-garde minimalism, folk and new age with the emotive depth of film-score. Their meeting was not entirely coinci…
Adormidera
“If stained glass windows could sing they would sound like Josephine Foster, and her interpretations of the songs of Víctor Herrero are as artful and finely detailed as motes of dust falling through shafts of light in the libraries of your childhood, engrossing in their restraint. Josephine's naked voice an echoing truth in repose against the existential question mark of Víctor’s guitar. In a world that can feel bewildering and relentless, this music is shelter. Adormidera is the sound of a hypn…
Ethio Rock'n'Roll
On Ethio Rock'n'Roll, DJ Mitmitta stitches together police and army bands, street‑level orchestras and fuzz‑drenched combos from 70s and 80s Ethiopia and Eritrea, tracing a raw, ecstatic lineage where brass, krar and wah‑wah guitar collide.
Sing forever
An unceremonious release of some old songs strewn across the past few years, played and recorded into a lounge room in Annandale, Gadigal land. Marking a time of playing around lots with jasper (when time was easier to wrangle) and hopefully making room for new songs to come visit! we are singing forever. Sounds from budapest train, typewriter, guitars, an old fan favourite, kata, jasper, laughter.
Heavy Water
Magic Tuber Stringband probes the undercurrents of the landscapes around them. Highly skilled players and writers, the trio are leaders within the burgeoning avant composition world utilizing folk instrumentation. Their music appears to weave in and out of the fabric of their surroundings, reflecting their time spent living across the Southeast and studying its regional folk traditions and natural histories. The ensemble continues to stretch the parameters of acoustic instrumental expression wit…
Chelsea Girl
She is beautiful. And in a world where so much can easily be possessed on a whim or for a promise, she is not comparable. She has a clear, pure ring, a trueness, like an arrow that has hit an inner mark and can’t be wedged loose. Her voice and her manner, that stretch farther into the past than perhaps she realizes, may set the new style: an existential pop style that is as earthy as Mary Travers (Peter, Paul & Mary) yet more elegant, more isolated. Her name is Nico. I don’t know where she was b…
Fuente Y Caudal
Originally released in 1973, Fuente y Caudal is widely regarded as one of the most important recordings in the history of flamenco guitar. The album captures Paco de Lucía at the height of his early creative period, combining traditional flamenco forms with his own modern harmonic ideas and dazzling virtuosity.
The album includes the legendary rumba “Entre Dos Aguas,” a groundbreaking instrumental that became Paco de Lucía’s signature piece and helped introduce flamenco guitar to a global audien…
Ethiopian Musics 1971
Taking a slight deviation from the widely celebrated path through experimental sounds that has largely defined their efforts over the years, the venerable Sub Rosa returns with rare and essential dive into the world of ethnomusicology with ‘Ethiopian Musics 1971’, their third release dedicated to the recordings of Ragnar Johnson and the second devoted to the groundbreaking recordings he made in Ethiopia with Ralph Harrisson during the summer of 1971. Belonging to a larger body of recordings dedi…
Ghost and More Ghosts
Kit darlings Love Is Yes (Dax Niesten and Sander van der Toorn) return with a particle scattering follow-up to their celebrated, self-titled debut. While the Dutch duo's serenely motorik guitar, levitational synths and airy vocals are still present, 'Ghost and More Ghosts' sees the pair take a sideways step into the nether realm - tugging gamelan metallophones, organs and vocoders with them through the fermented portal as they disintegrate completely. A melancholy magic trick occurs when these a…
The Pain of Separation: Turkish Gazels, 1926-1935
A collection of spellbinding, melismatic vocal improvisations taken from 78s cut between the mid 1920s to mid '30s - a period defined by the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire’s partition, the Greco-Turkish War and the compulsory population exchange that followed. This same period also represented a time of intense efforts, following the establishment of the Republic, to westernise the new nation's music - coupled with a ban on traditional music education in schools, and later a complete ban on bro…
Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb: Gospel Quartet Singing in Jefferson County, Alabama
"Jefferson County is the heartland of black American a cappella gospel quartet singing. For more than [a century] black quartets have thrived in Birmingham and Bessemer, and they have provided immeasurable spiritual uplift and musical enjoyment to a large portion of the local population. The tenacious survival of black quartet traditions in Birmingham and Bessemer preserves a cultural and historical continuity that informs and enriches many lives. The older singers share a sense of brotherhood, …
Blood Blood Song
"Blood Blood Song continues East of the Valley Blues’ streak of sublime, future-forward acoustic fantasias. For years, the Toronto-based duo, comprised of brothers Kevin and Patrick Cahill, has excelled at an earthy and pensive brand of instrumental music inspired by notions of folk music as a global, rather than regional, idiom.While the duo’s elegant and unassuming virtuosity easily distinguishes East of the Valley Blues from its contemporaries of would-be Bashos and fledgling Faheys, it is th…
Bury Me In A Corner Of The Yard
Death Is Not The End issue a 14-track tape of vintage and archival Cajun ft. tracks from Segura Brothers, Amede Ardoin, Blind Uncle Gaspard, Sydney Landry & more.
Curse You, Foreign Lands
A 14-track tape pulling together rural Greek demotika recordings from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. Soaring pentatonic improvisations, odd-metered rhythms, and vocal performances oscillate between heartbreaking laments and ecstatic celebrations.
Yashlik
Maqom Soul, a newly founded Uzbek label dedicated to reviving rare and overlooked music from Central Asia, proudly announces its debut release: a vinyl reissue of the seminal album by the Uyghur vocal-instrumental ensemble Yashlik, originally recorded and released in 1978.
Founded in 1974 as part of the Uyghur Music and Drama Theater in Almaty, Yashlik (which translates from Uyghur as Youth) quickly emerged as a groundbreaking force in the regional music scene. Though born out of a theatrical s…