Folk & Traditional / All styles

For this latest album Caledonian folk impresario Alasdair Roberts teams up with expected collaborators like Alex Neilson (whose drumming and percussion work has illuminated many a free-folk record over recent years, a few of which Roberts has been involved with) and more unusual contributors such as Niko-Matti Ahti of Fonal's Kiila. Perhaps more than ever, Roberts' music invites comparisons to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, traveling sufficiently far from the trad songwriting fold to be thought of as 'a…

2026 repress on vinyl; Deluxe 3LP box version with an 8-page, large-format lyric booklet and printed inner sleeves. For various reasons Have One On Me, Joanna Newsom's new triple-album defies the notion of fast-turnaround appraisals. Apart from sheer abundance of music here, it's also very dense and scrupulously laboured over, not only by Newsom herself but a select band of fellow musicians and arrangers - not to mention ace mixing engineers Jim O'Rourke, and Noah Georgeson (best known for his w…

Ben Chasny (COMETS ON FIRE) might beat you if you call his solo work folk music. Hypnotic, mesmerizing, full of rough edges & elliptical turns round & round. First studio record from the highly prolific Chasny, joined by free-jazz sensation CHRIS CORSANO on drums & absolutely no computers. Chasny says "I see my music as being much more from the underground class of '92 than this folk scene...it has the same rock to folk quotient as Zep 3...Rock is the new folk & folk fucked rock without the reac…

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…

Psychedelic and acid-tinged country-folk by fearless women, 1951-1979, compiled with Hackney's Stranger Than Paradise: Connie Converse, Annette Peacock, Linda Perhacs, Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, Brigitte Fontaine, Bobbie Gentry.

For the very first time on vinyl a mandatory compilation with both rarities and unreleased tracks, showcasing their second line up! At the end of January 1971, lead vocalist Linda Hoyle and organist Lynton Naiff left Affinity. Instead of going separate ways, the other three members recruited vocalist Vivienne McAuliffe (Principal Edwards Magic Theatre) and ex-Tornados keyboardist Dave Watts. Reminiscent at times of Sandy Denny, Vivienne's voice was a natural addiction to the new incarnation of t…

A Lost Transmission from the British Psychedelic Underground

An acid-folk masterpiece finally revealed! When two worlds collide, here's where the legacy of Tim Hollier begins. Released on United Artists in 1968, this long overdue reissue is a definitive statement of the master genius who walked among giants yet remained mysteriously obscured by time's passage. Guest on the opening night of a Beckenham folk club run by his friend David Bowie, Hollier moved through the same London folk circuit that nurtured Paul Simon, Al Stewart, and Nick Drake. Yet while …

John Coltrane died at age 40, and in retrospect it seems as if the intensity of activity in his last years, the sheer torrent of notes, was an attempt at purging the music from his soul before it was too late. The guitarist Jack Rose died at 38, in 2009, and listening back to his catalog one has a similar notion. Like Coltrane, Jack Rose’s last years were marked by a shimmering intensity, an outpouring of his spirit, onto audiences and records. I believe Jack Rose felt the duty of preservation b…

Jack Rose was a practitioner of his own unique brand of modern Appalachia, a master of the steel string, whether finger picking or playing with a slide, Rose can coax amazing sounds from a guitar, and all by his lonesome create lush steel string guitarscapes, that range from haunting and mysterious to folky and familiar. This lp originally released in 2008 gathers up three long live tracks, all quite different. The first is a track from Kensington Blues, a big favorite around here, recorded…

Back in the day, a new Jack Rose record was always cause for celebration around here. Along with James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Richard Bishop and a few others, Rose was one of the new modern masters of the steel string guitar, helping to reinvent and redefine neo-Appalachia or modern folk or whatever you want to call it.Dr. Ragtime from 2008, features more of Rose's gorgeous steel string beauty, gossamer sheets of buzzing shimmer, droning ragas, traditional bluegrass, slippery slide, melancholy …

Turkey’s first stereo LP. A foundational recording of Anatolian psychedelia. Audio transferred from the original analog master tapes, mastered and lacquer cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, London, and pressed on 180g heavyweight black vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands. Released by the legendary Yonca Müzik label in 1973 as Turkey’s first stereo LP, Türküz Türkü Çağırırız! now returns as the first official reissue. The album captures Mazhar Alanson and Fuat Güner at a pivotal moment …

*200 copies limited edition* After a string of acclaimed albums, Maxine Funke should need little introduction. With Leitmotiv, she surprises us once again, this time with five quiet, soft yet haunting pieces that slowly reveal themselves. Her distinctive voice almost whispers its way through keyboard tones and field recordings, moving somewhere between silence and melody, intimacy and unease. While having a dip into a more experimental bath, Funke remains deeply connected to her folk tradition. …

Time to unearth another Kraut obscurity, sought-after by collectors worldwide since his inclusion on the legendary NWW list. Franz De Byl's second album, released by Thorofon in 1971, was actually his debut as a solo performer, an eccentric collection of freaky acoustic folk songs with bluesy elements and an extra satirical, political twist (not unlike Floh De Cologne). Weird sounds and compulsive chanting from this master of the acoustic guitar, one of the most curious characters to ever emerge…

O.P.M.C. (Oldest Professional Music Company, as they were living in the famous Amsterdam Red Light District in those days) centered around Barrie Webb and Teun van der Slikke with different line ups during their existence. Other musicians in their recordings feature Frank van Tijn (drums), Peter van der Sande (bass, cello, elctric guitar, keyboards - plus he also did arrangements and production) and Onny Lopulalan (lead guitar), some of them having served in other interesting Dutch bands such as…

Akuphone and The Cambodian Vintage Music Archive proudly present the first-ever retrospective dedicated to So Savoeun—one of the radiant voices that defined Phnom Penh’s golden age of sound in the 1960s and 1970s. In those vibrant years, the city pulsed with music: rock bands, crooners, and traditional ensembles blended East and West, shaping a uniquely Cambodian pop that shimmered with hope and modernity. Amid this flourishing scene, So Savoeun’s voice stood out—silken yet powerful, intimate ye…

The Italian guitarist Maurizio Abate is a rare breed - an experimental musician from Europe working within, and expanding the American tradition of Guitar Soli, an idiom first pioneered by John Fahey.  Abate initially emerged within a diverse series of collaborative released over a decade ago, but, as the years passed, a love for his instrument, with inspiration provided by Fahey’s indication of its potential for application as a one man orchestra, prompted to him to embark on a pursuit of solo …

Tip! Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century. The recordings partly reflect …

Maya Ongaku has always been searching for what exists just beyond the edge of perception. Since forming in the seaside towns surrounding Enoshima, the trio has followed a path guided less by intention than intuition, allowing songs, ideas, and experiences to emerge through a process they describe as 自然発生 (shizen hassei), spontaneous occurrence. Nothing Space Music is the deepest expression of that philosophy to date. Written in the aftermath of several years of international touring, the album e…

Half-speed master edition of Townes Van Zandt's 1969 second album, cut at StarDelta by Lewis Hopkin. Folk and country songwriting at its most intimate, from 'Be Here To Love Me' to 'Tecumseh Valley', with new clarity and depth.

Nico's first solo album, from 1967, after her time with the Velvet Underground, with songs by Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, John Cale, Bob Dylan and Tim Hardin.

Tip! This is raw, unfiltered ceremonial gong ensemble music recorded on location by Laurent Jeanneau in Ratanakiri, Cambodia’s northeastern province, bordering Laos and Vietnam. Along with Mondolkiri to the south, it was once home to many of the country’s ethnic minority communities. During the colonial period, the French failed to establish full control over the region. After independence, the Khmer state also struggled to govern it, while Khmer Rouge rebels hid in its forests in the 1960s amid…

Tip! Mekong Shellac is an extremely rare collection of classical and popular styles of Khmer music from the 1930s to the 1950s. Restored from the few original remaining copies, this compilation reveals a remarkable world of early 20th-century Cambodian folk music previously lost in time through war, cultural shifts, and modernization. These recordings were selected for their distinctive musical qualities, the physical condition of the 78 rpm records from which they were sourced, and the circumst…

A first-time vinyl & cassette release for pioneering Bengali ethnomusicologist, filmmaker and radio producer Deben Bhattacharya's Bali field recordings, captured in the historic villages of Puri Karangasem, Tegaltamu, and Kayumas Kaja between December 1973 and January 1974. Searingly beautiful and hypnotic, these are some of the finest candid, open-air sonic documents made of gong keybar orchestras accompanying authentic dance-dramas, ceremonial funeral rites and shadow puppetry plays. The 2LP i…

Carrying on from recent archival releases from masters of Indian classical tradition such as Kamalesh Maitra and the Dagar Brothers, Black Truffle is pleased to present a previously unheard recording of a concert by Pakistani vocalist Salamat Ali Khan. Born to a musician family in Hoshiarpur in the northwestern state of Punjab, Khan moved with his family to Lahore in Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India, becoming a child musical prodigy. Khan was a master of the kyhal form of Hindustani cl…

**2LP + Book, limited edition in a custom-made silkscreen printed envelope** Flee is proud to present its new project: Tarantismo: Odissey of an Italian Ritual. Dedicated to Tarantism, this project tells the story of a centuries-old choreo-musical ritual from Southern Italy, mobilizing frenetic rhythms and maniac dances, to exorcise women of a mysterious evil caused by the bite of a spider. Trans-disciplinary, this effort of documentation and artistic re-interpretation of one of Europe’s most my…

**Book only** FLEE is proud to present its new project: Tarantismo: Odissey of an Italian Ritual. Dedicated to Tarantism, this project tells the story of a centuries-old choreo-musical ritual from Southern Italy, mobilizing frenetic rhythms and maniac dances, to exorcise women of a mysterious evil caused by the bite of a spider. Trans-disciplinary, this effort of documentation and artistic re-interpretation of one of Europe’s most mysterious trance phenomenon is comprised of a double LP vinyl co…

The Brussels-based collective re#encounter will release its debut album, Angels and Demons at Play, on September 18, 2026, via W.E.R.F. records. With gnawa grooves, cumbia, griot storytelling, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and ecstatic jazz improvisations, the nine-piece ensemble crafts a distinctive, spiritual, and above all, danceable jazz idiom. At the heart of the album lies trance. Hicham Bilali's gnawa, Kaito Winse's relentless energy, Paula León's cumbia roots, and the spellbinding jazz improvi…

"Širom fashion maximalist avant-garde soundscapes from antique acoustic instruments like the balafon and hurdy gurdy. Their artfully rootless roots music makes an impassioned statement both aesthetically and, more opaquely, politically too.” - Uncut The Slovenian avant-folk trio Širom are back with a sonically and thematically expansive 5th album; a thrilling follow-up to their widely praised 2022 release The Liquified Throne of Simplicity. Navigating almost two dozen instruments (some of which …

Via Lattea is the new recording project of the music and performance research ensemble Enten Hitti. The work takes inspiration from research on the “feminine” and from the matrilineal transmission of life. It is the result of various research trips to the places where the culture of the “sacred female” took shape over 4000 years ago: Cyprus, Crete, Turkey, Ireland, South Africa, Indonesia … The historical and geographical suggestions have been freely reinterpreted and transformed into musical pi…

When I was about eight years old a pretty formative thing happened to me ... my mum bought me a cassette tape of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Being so young I'd had no real interest in music prior to that, but I did have a ‘My First Sony’ cassette player that I used to listen to audiobooks. Anyway, I put the tape in, pressed play, and what I heard blew my little 8 year old mind. I don't know what it was about that wall of sound that so captured me, but I spent many hours hyperactively running around the…

Welsh musician Gwenifer Raymond’s 2018 debut album, You Never Were Much of a Dancer, introduced a new voice on acoustic guitar, receiving 5 stars in The Guardian, big spreads in MOJO and UNCUT, and airplay on multiple BBC programmes. This led to months of touring on the European festival circuit. Her second album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, finds Raymond ranging into unexplored experimental territory, drawing from her Welsh roots.

“On their new record, nykolaes & Daniël Paul explore the pastoral side of folk and 90’s grunge nostalgia, guitars leading the way. Diary shredded to bits, church bells sound the crack of dawn and sometimes you have to wake up, sometimes u don't. Folk in the age of cut and paste, an intimate collage of references, blind inspiration, and intuition. nykolaes & Daniël Paul both bring their own styles to the project, nykolaes’ pro-post-anti-singer-songwriter modernism and Daniël Paul’s intimate, eyes…

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce a second volume of unheard concert performances from legendary Pakistani kyhal singer Salamat Ali Khan, recorded at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie as part of the MetaMusik festival in 1974. Like the first volume, the immaculate recording by Michael Hönig (of krautrock legends Agitation Free) captures Khan performing a single extended raag in the company of Shaukat Hussein Khan on tabla and Hussein Bux Khan on harmonium. In addition to his stunningly inventive…

"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, …

Imagine a virtuoso soprano with an unlimited upper range. Imagine a violin with the lower range of a cello. Imagine an instrument that allows for every nuance, for every slight embellishment, for every dynamic flourishment imaginiable. This album consists of plain piano and plain theramin - no other orchestration. The Theramin, as proved by Clara Rockmore, is capable of soaring song, of delicate melody, of pure expression. Rockmore's performance is a pure joy and a testament to the versatility o…

Across western Algeria, the gasba, a reed flute central to Bedouin folk traditions and ceremonial music, continues to appear in new forms. Once associated primarily with saint festivals and trance rituals, its distinctive hypnotic sound now sits alongside the drum machines, synths and electronic textures of contemporary raï. The recordings collected here come from Oran, the port city of Western Algeria widely regarded as the birthplace of raï. Before raï became an international pop phenomenon, i…

As the first entry in its catalog, Akuphone presents a reissue of Lily Chao’s Chinese Folk Songs, originally released by Four Seas Records in 1968. This edition includes four previously unheard titles and exclusive liner notes containing Lily Chao’s biography and lyric translations. Chao Xiao-Jun aka Lily Chao was born in Taiwan in 1948, while mainland China was rapidly undergoing major changes immediately following the end of the Chinese Civil War. After experiencing hard times in her girlhood,…

First legitimately licensed and remastered vinyl edition of this legendary salsa dura classic from Puerto Rico’s Roberto Y Su Nuevo Montuno, originally released on Rubén Haddock’s Uniart label in 1970. Featuring detailed liner notes that reveal the untold story of the band and their debut album, and rare photos.

Visionaries in Mexico have sought ways to look beyond the stars for millennia. Ancient civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs designed their cities as gigantic star maps, orienting their buildings to mark equinoxes, solstices, and zenith passages. This inquisitive form of meaning-making through art has long been endangered—first by Spanish colonizers; then by the Mexican government’s throttling of artistic expression in the late 20th century; and now by the violent anti-Mexican sentiments of the…