Folk & Traditional / All styles

"Enid Valu normally relies on lenses and light to express herself. Known to create stunning visuals, to capture sonic worlds with her preferred instrument (the camera), the US-born, Munich-based photographer and video artist has been working with various bands, shooting concerts, creating music videos, visualizing what she hears. However, now that she’s become an indispensable part of the local scene, she for once ditches the cam and steps up to the mic instead – appearing as featured vocalist o…

Warm Currency is a new project by Sydney-based friends, artists and musicians MP Hopkins and Mary MacDougall. Mary began working with MP Hopkins and Christopher Schueler in 2008 as Vincent Over the Sink morphed into The Bowles. Returns was recorded in Mary’s home during 2020-2021 and is their first release since 2012’s The Bowles EP (Kye). Quietly intense folk music, song-poems, and concrète collages built from seemingly simple and delicate arrangements for guitar, keyboards, voice and tape.

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.

After "Afro Exotique - Adventures In The Leftfield, Africa 1972-88" was enthusiastically embraced by heads, collectors and core Africa Seven enthusiasts alike, we dived back down into the vaults, and hope we've come up with another volume of listenable esoterica from roughly the same period. "The Quest", courtesy of fleeting 1978 leftfield supergroup Afro Cult Foundation (featuring Joni Haastrup, Remi Kabaka and friends) sets the tone-bar high and sideways, with 4.50 mins of atmospheric, effecte…

Dom Flemons presents Black Cowboys pays tribute to the music, culture, and the complex history of the golden era of the Wild West. In this single volume of music, the first of its kind, Flemons explores and re-analyzes this important part of our American identity. The songs and poems featured on the album take the listener on an illuminating journey from the trails to the rails of the Old West. This century-old story follows the footsteps of the thousands of African American pioneers who helped …

After being an integral part of the Manchester and Glasgow underground scenes, Leo Robinson announces his debut solo album under his own name: The Temple will be released 27th October on Prah Recordings. A baroque epic set in the mundane settings of contemporary Northern England, its narrative reflects a spiritual or psychoanalytic journey. Ten songs dealing in intricate string-tinged folk, and produced with a sense of up-close intimacy and structural freedom that frequently blindsides the liste…

Astroturf Noise exists at the intersection of free improvisation, effects-heavy noise music, and American roots music.

Freeform, pigeon-hole dodging, stylistic merry-go-round, restless, weird and addictive - the long anticipated return of Nina Harker!

2024 stock. This recording presents in its entirety the “Invocation to the Goddess Yeshiki Mamo,” performed by Buddhist monks (lamas) from the Nyingmapa Monastery of Dehra Dun in India with the authorization of the private secretariat of the Dalai Lama. The monks, who represent one of the oldest Buddhist sects to be established in Tibet in the 8th century, are trained to produce vocal sounds at a very low pitch, believing the disembodied sounds to be the nearest to the divine. The liner notes pr…

*2024 stock* Sufi, or Sufism, is often defined as "Islamic mysticism.” Sufism exists in both Sunni and Shia Islam. It is not a distinct sect, rather it is an association or fraternity for the achievement of religious enthusiasm and ecstasy by means of exercise undertaken in common. This 1959 recording is of a Rifa' Ceremony performed in South Africa. The Rifa’ association was originally found mainly in the Middle East eventually spreading to Malaysia and Africa.

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…

This album features Fairport Convention's 1974 live recording from their USA tour, making its debut on vinyl. The band, founded in 1967 by Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings, and Shaun Frater, evolved through lineup changes, with Sandy Denny steering them towards traditional British music. Liege & Lief marked the inclusion of fiddler Dave Swarbrick. By 1974, Dave Pegg replaced Hutchings. This vinyl release captures a pivotal moment in the band's history during their USA tour.

Occasionally, you find music outside the commercial mainstream, outside of everything – the music of visionaries, eccentrics, inventors, loners, the keepers of secrets, the path-finders. Moondog, Daphne Oram, Harry Partch are from this mould. And so too is Lori Vambe.

Reissue of the 2008 Sub Pop single, the first OM recording featuring Emil Amos on drums. Limited pressing.

The return of P.G. Six’s deep acoustic focus, a devotional style honed from childhood ongoing. Pat Gubler’s salad years of playing the harp pay off after a one a few decades – here, he plays his Triplett Celtic model with pristine fingerwork and heavy soul. Evoking worlds, generations and future waves radiated from the folk tradition, Murmurs & Whispers finds P.G. at an apex of his special talent for earthly sounds with transcendent aspirations.

CD. Remastered edition: John Fahey has made a habit of recording a new album of Christmas music every five or six years, but The New Possibility, which was originally released in 1968, is still his best. One of the best and most influential acoustic guitarists of his generation, John Fahey's music fused past and present, borrowing from the traditions of blues and folk music and filtering them through a modern musical viewpoint. Some of Fahey's most striking (and most popular) work appeared on a …

Nailed as John Fahey’s ‘non-Christian religious album’, where he ‘found’ Eastern religion and kick-started the New Age movement, Fahey said, in 1990, that it was his greatest guitar record. Considering the often-puzzling self-mythologizing that accompanied earlier albums, Fahey’s sleeve dedication to “my guru, Swami Satchidananda” and booklet extolling the virtues of Yogaville West, “a growing spiritual community in the beautiful mountains of Lake County, Northern California” were shockingly unt…

Originally released in 1964, Dance of Death offers a glimpse of an artist in transformation. More than half the album's titles draw from the traditional blues and country repertoire Fahey had spent his teen years and young adulthood collecting, listening to, and learning to play, yet the recordings proved once and for all that his interests lay in musical transfigurations rather than preservation -- John Fahey was not afraid to use these old tunes as raw material.

2016 remastered edition. "For several years major labels had been issuing records in both mono and stereo formats. By 1967 Takoma was doing well enough financially to justify the recording of John Fahey's first and second albums for the burgeoning stereo market. Thus Vol.1: Blind Joe Death, as the record would be titled henceforth, was recorded for the third time and it is probably this release that most people are familiar with today. For the new version Fahey recorded all but one song on the a…

The debt that modern guitarist composers owe to the late Robbie Basho can hardly be overstated. Though Fahey invented the genre and Kottke proved its marketability, it was Basho's technique, vision, and self-image that resonated most strongly with Will Ackerman and the so-called New Age guitar movement he founded. It's a crime Basho's music hasn't been available on record for many years. Now older guitar fans can welcome back an old friend and newer ones can learn where it all came from on this …

Drawing his name from a Japanese poet, his musical style from eastern raga sounds and his sartorial style from American Indians, Robbie Basho was eclectic and eccentric. He was also one of the most gifted and original acoustic guitarists that the John Fahey/Leo Kottke/William Ackerman axis produced. Recording for Fahey's Takoma Records, and being cited by Ackerman as a principal influence on the founding of Windam Hill Records, never produced the kind of fame and acclaim that Basho's prodigious …

The making of Congo Funk!, our long-awaited journey to the musical heart of the African continent, took the Analog Africa Team on two journeys to Kinshasa and one to Brazzaville. Selected meticulously from around 2000 songs and boiled down to 14, this compilation aims to showcase the many facets of the funky, hypnotic and schizophrenic tunes emanating from the two Congolese capitals nestled on the banks of the Congo River. On its south shore, the city of Kinshasa – capital of Democratic Republic…

Moroccan Jajouka master Bachir Attar meets American experimental musician Elliot Shrap for a live jam of drum machines and traditional Moroccan instruments in 1990. Bachir Attar's career spans five decades and represents the transcendental sounds of Jajouka, a small Moroccan village situated between Fes and Tangier, known for its unique mystical sound. Fans include William Burroughs and The Rolling Stones with which Bachir recorded with in 1989. A year later Attar collaborated with the prolific …

Hive Mind Records are absolutely thrilled to have worked with Honiunhoni to bring you a vinyl version of Jingul by Ustad Noor Bakhsh. The album contains 6 exclusive solo tracks unavailable anywhere else. This is the debut solo release of Benju maestro, Ustad Noor Bakhsh, from the Makran Coast of Balochistan. The album is named 'Jingul', after a bird that often frequents Noor's house, and whose songs inspired the last track on this release — an original by Noor. The album was recorded live on loc…

Big Big Tip! Danielle Boutet’s Pièces is a mysterious artifact of Quebecois marginalia, self-released in 1985. Moving from languid ennui to high drama, Pièces is a dreamy gestalt, an album that borders Chanson, spoken-word, jazz noir, and minimalism, conjured from the chasm between acoustic and electronic realms. Pièces allows us a window into the highly intimate songcraft and compositional skill of an artist who longed to linger not in the public eye, but in relation with others and the world a…

*100 copies limited edition* Jem Finer  is an artist, musician and composer. Since studying computer science in the 1970s, he has worked in a variety of fields, including photography, film, experimental and popular music and installation. His 1000 year long musical composition, Longplayer, represents a convergence of many of his concerns, particularly those relating to systems, sustainability, long-durational processes and extremes of scale in both time and space. Recent music includes the relea…

*70 copies limited edition* An oaken prism clothed in precious gems of labyrinthine fingerpicking totems inscribed with carvings of ancestral druids (John Fahey, Robbie Basho...). Let the ripe fruits of the quivering arrow melt from the Lithuanian bow.

*2023 stock* Norma Tanega’s I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971 is a comprehensive survey of the pioneering folk artist’s two commercially released studio albums, an unreleased album, and a trove of unheard demos. Before playing a pivotal part in folk music’s cultural crossover in the ‘60s, Tanega was a curious little girl born at the very end of the ‘30s to a multicultural Navy family in Long Beach, California. Her parents often brought her to Los Angeles for piano lessons, and e…

*300 copies limited edition* Inner Roads and Outer Paths is Herefordshire born Vic Mars’ third release on Clay Pipe Music. It follows last years ‘The Soundtrack To The Hospice’ commissioned by Gideon Coe for BBC 6 Music, and 2015s critically acclaimed ‘The Land and the Garden’. Inspired by in part by Alfred Watkins words and photographs of Herefordshire, the record also harks back to a period in Vic’s youth spent exploring the abandoned houses and factories on the fringes of his home town; the i…

Tip! First reissue of these cult 1974 recordings of a Mayan brass band playing funeral dirges and popular songs in its distinctive extended harmonic and rhythmic style. The members of the San Lucas Band lived in the mountain village of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, playing local events of both religious and social nature. The pride of their town since 1922, the band represented a fast disappearing musical tradition when these recordings were originally released in 1975. Their unique sound deriv…

"Love, kindness and sincerity characterized his life and his work. He was a man, a rebel and a poet, all at the same time. He served art through his poetic and musical virtuosity, and through his art, he served the struggle of his people for survival: Imi d-luleɣ d aqbayli, isem-iw imenɣi (in Kabyle since since he was born Kabyle: “They call me struggle”). After many brushes with death, he always came back with more vigorous, courageous and sensitive to the world. He was a legend in his lifetime…

Fadela is an internationally renowned artist from Oran (Algeria) who began her musical career in the 1980s alongside Boutaiba S'ghir, Khaled and avant-garde producer Rachid Baba Ahmed. With her powerful, haunting voice, Fadela has brought a new dimension to raï music, skilfully blending traditional sounds with modern influences. Her songs are infused with emotion and passion, telling stories of love, pain and resilience. Over the years, she has released several successful albums, reaching millio…

Except from Rachid Taha, who allowed himself a few forays into the teeming, vibrant heaths of techno, no raï singer other than Cheb Malik has ever ventured into this terrain known for its abundance of sound. If you know about Malik Adouane's ancestry, this is hardly surprising. Born in Librecourt, near Lens, he comes from a union between an Italo-Celtic mother who instilled Western sounds into his ears and a father, a former miner born in Biskra (north-east Algeria), a palm grove near the desert…

More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White speak to each other across great distances with the intuition and fellowship that can only be found over years in each other’s company. With fewer distractions, appreciative of the freedom to play with new sounds and spaces, they carve The Forest In Me from unbelievably thin air.

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…

Borrowed Tongue is the debut solo album by Korean singer-songwriter Minhwi Lee. It’s a mysterious, strangely compelling thing, an album of rare poetry, and remarkably self-assured. Originally released in November 2016, the album made waves, winning best folk album of 2016 at the 14th Korean Music Awards. Its eight songs, written and predominantly arranged by Lee, don’t reveal their secrets easily, or at first blush; rather, they take their time slowly to unfurl in her listeners’ worlds. There ar…

Legendary is a word too often used when writing about musicians. Takeshi Terauchi is no myth, more an elemental force and surely a nominee for the status of Living National Treasure – a first for a rock musician in Japan. While not exactly well known in the West, he has received praise over the years from artists as diverse as the Ventures and Jello BiafraYou don’t want to mess with Terry, as he is commonly known. An 8th Dan of the Wado school of Karate and a Zen master of the Zuiganji temple, h…

*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…

In the early 1960s, two of the best talents in the Indonesian music scene, songwriter and band leader Adi Karso, known for his hits "Papaya Cha-Cha-Cha" and "Balonku" and Gambus musician Munif Bahasuan teamed up to form Orkes Melayu (Malay Orchestra) Kelana Ria. Between 1961 and 1964, Kelana Ria recorded 48 songs that were spread over four records, Kafilah, Yam El Shamah, Ya Mahmud, and Ya Hamidah, which become the primary sources for this compilation. These four albums changed the trajectory of…

*2022 stock* Underground musician Carioca left behind his electrical past in Progressive Rock in order to search for new expressions in Brazilian music. His first album is a fully acoustic, instrospective voyage into the world’s greatest Rainforest, featuring 12-string guitar, mandolin, zither, tabla, flute and self-made percussion instruments. Carioca is the term used to describe those who originate from Rio de Janeiro. But, in fact, there’s only one Carioca in the music scene in Brazil: Ronald…