Folk & Traditional / All styles

**300 copies** "A new reissue of this masterpiece by The Left Outsides, originally issued on cassette in 2015, then first put to vinyl in 2017, as the long-format follow-up to the classic The Shape of Things to Come LP. The current edition is demarcated by a glossy cover and metallic gold printing. Its music remains as timeless a gust of dark autumnal wind as any you'll ever hear. Some of the music here was written as part of the soundtrack to Gus Alavrez's 2009 noir-pastoral short, Stand and De…

* 2020 stock. Last Copies * Originally found on Jansch’s final album of the same name, The Black Swan is featured here on a 7” single, flanked by an early demo. The two songs are at parallels; where the demo shows the bare bones of the track (working title: ’Space Highway’), the finished article is something altogether more orchestral, with Helena Espvall’s (then of Espers) soaring cello providing a foil for Jansch’s supremely melodic refrain. Fans will surely be intrigued to see the process inv…

The extraordinary creative partnership of New Haven, CT duo Kath Bloom and Loren Connors has haunted psych-folk fans since the early 80s. Kath taught herself guitar during shifts as a janitor at a New Haven cemetery, while Loren’s free-form idiosyncratic style had been developing since the late 60s. Between 1981 and 1984, the duo recorded two live and four studio albums, mostly self-released in tiny quantities.Early on, their music mixed folk and blues traditionals with a handful of Kath’s vulne…

2009 reprint, originally published in 2000. The publication of How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life did a great deal to spread the word of John Fahey's literary talents, though sadly only a year before he died. Vampire Vultures is an unexpected gift and should ease the grief of those who thought they would never hear anything from John Fahey again. Originally a project of his own conception, it was to be an epic work that would expand on many of the characters and experiences he introduced in B…

Duelling blues, simultaneously piquant and distorted, from one of Death Is Not The End’s few extant acts, following the label string of compilation pearls Back for third servings after an eponymous debut and ‘Fayet’ in 2017, Torontonian siblings Kevin and Patrick Cahill pick out bittersweet, wayward blues on these 2020 recordings made in their home city and out by the lakes in Kirkfield. We’re not sure if they’re twins, but the Cahills appear to work at near subconscious, telepathic levels of fa…

A then obsessed teenaged devotee of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke at a time when Punk and New Wave were ascendant, Russell Potter harnessed a similar DIY ethos to his own ends by starting his own label & self-publishing his first record, 'A Stone’s Throw’, while a freshman enrolled at Goddard College in Vermont in 1979. Assembled at the legendary Boddie Records in Potter’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and sprinkled liberally with references to his heroes, from the initial record label…

North Carolina-native Jenks Miller is a bit too otherworldly to ever be pegged as a regional musician. Still, he seems to have the South in his bones. Not the false sheen associated with the so-called “new South,” mind you—with its tech startups and gallery spaces colonizing the re-purposed red brick warehouses; the hip speakeasies and fussy artisanal coffeehouses dotting the once somnolent and segregated main streets; the hikers and bikers streaming over the muddy tobacco roads. Not that place,…

three lobed recordings is extremely excited to be involved with divide by zero records in the release of tennessee & other stories…, Hans Chew’s debut solo album. while chew is best known as the honky-tonk pianist and auxiliary vocalist behind brooklyn’s psychedelic americana outfit d. charles speer & the helix (including his lead vocal turns on both “life insurance” off distillation, and “bar-abbas blues” off the “in madagascar” 7”), his skill as a piano player has also previously been on promi…

Chickens were puzzling to early chemists and remain so. Despite a diet low in calcium, eggs laid by chickens contain a huge amount of calcium. Chickens, in that sense, are the only alchemists with proof that they are able to transmute an element; Wooden Wand’s 'Clipper Ship' album reminds me of that fowl alchemy, where the sum of songs’ parts add up to some impossible, elegant germination that cannot be reduced. Drones and lush arpeggiated codas spin out in concentric fractal patterns; the finge…

**2021 stock** Reissue of Van Zandt's first two albums in a 5" hardbook bound double disc set. "Townes Van Zandt was a one-of-a-kind artist who blazed a new trail for singer/songwriters, conjuring a sound that combined elements of country and folk with his own artful melodic sensibility, matched with lyrics that were personal, poetic, and impressionistic while remaining firmly down to earth. A new breed of Texas singer/songwriters followed Van Zandt's example, and it's all but impossible to imag…

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…

Steve Gunn's prodigious talent for fusing traditional American song structures with a raga influence is almost criminally unheralded. Gunn's songcraft is so strong and his playing style so effortlessly beautiful that folks should be shouting his name from every tall building and mountaintop. It is with such high esteem for the man's work that Three Lobed Recordings is humbled by the association and thrilled to announce the release of Boerum Palace by Steve Gunn. Without any doubt, Boerum Palace …

s of Honest Jon's Something Is Wrong: Vintage Recordings From East Africa CD compilation -- selections from an HMV run of more than 400 78s -- recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid‐1930s to the mid‐1950s. Part 1 encompasses this material circa 1938-1946, entitled Bellyachers, Listen: Songs From East Africa, 1938-46. Three main types of performance are featured (not forgetting a lovely early Kenyan big‐band calypso, as if straight from the pen of Lord Kitchener). Most are minstrelsy, w…

"Welcome to the second album we've done with string maestro, Joseph Allred. Unlike O Meadowlark (FTR 451LP), this one features a smattering of Joseph's vocals, although his main thrust is still glistening instrumentals. The title song is a goddamn sad one, sung with reedy elegance, dealing with a kidnapped dog that serves as a stand-in for all earthly beings, full of both frailty and resilience. Another vocal track, 'The Crown' (which inspired the cover art), stems from a long conversation Josep…

"Viewed from the American sub-underground (aka our headquarters), the Finnish scene always looks like a haven of freaks. Surely there are lots of dull rock, pop, and rap outfits from this chilly and heavily forested country, but they don't get exported, so we don't have to hear them. The Finnish bands we've known and loved are psych, prog, hardcore, free jazz, and post-form monsters of all shapes and sizes. A new name to add to the list of Deadly Finns (thanks, Eno) is Niko Karlsson. Well, not e…

**250 copies** The second volume of Water and Rock Music by British guitarist Jon Collin is another solid gambol in the outdoors. For much of this it sounds almost as though Mr. Collin is wearing a pair of hip waders and is up to his ass in a stream, casting for notes the way Hemingway casted for trout. His string bending recalls Loren Connors at points, but he has a manual approach to filigree Loren has never displayed. Notes bend and hover, but they also flutter, and the combination of sounds …

Mindblowing!!!!!! Originally released in 1979, "Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12" was Robbie Basho's 15th record, and his magnum opus of solo guitar. It is the culmination of his life's effort to usher guitar music into a new artistic paradigm, and to "establish the steel string as a concert instrument indigenous to America."This album represents Basho’s most technically fine guitar work. In both composition and performance, the album is enormously complex and yet conveys an effort…

**Edition 200** Reissue of a cassette that Colby released on his own Laughable Recordings label in 2014. Mr. Nathan is based up in Maine, where he recorded Sophie Dickinson's Cucucanady LP (FTR 177LP). Greg is from Maine as well, and the pair got together for this session in late 2013, with Ralph White sitting in on one track. The sonics recall everyone from early Neil to something that sounds more like a small cabal of stoned American ex-pats singing for their scalps in Denmark in the summer of…

Limited repress, last copies! LP reissue of Land And Sea's limited 2016 tape documenting a performance by guitarists Michael Morley and Bill Orcutt at the L&S gallery in Oakland."... Once regrettable antics were permanently affixed to the rearview mirror, the pair chauffeured across the bay to Land And Sea, the cozy gallery on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland and sobered up on vegan cocktail wieners and gummie vitamins. You may doubt, you may scoff -- have fun with it, champion, seriously -- but on J…

** 2021 Stock ** The duo of Tasos Stamou and Thodoris Ziarkas bring back the improvisational element to the old Greek rebetiko style and expand it towards other avant-garde musical genres. Acoustic hacked South Mediterranean tunes and noises. Thodoris Ziarkas: parlour guitar. Tasos Stamou: Greek bouzouki & Turkish baglama saz, vocals.

Discrepant presents another unique document of Kink Gong's electronic deconstructions this time stepping away from his usual South East Asia area of expertise and releasing some of his first re-interpretations and field recordings made in the late 90's in Tanzania, Africa. 'December 1999, Tanzania. I had an appointment with James Stephenson an American friend from the 90s in NYC, he used to skip the American winter every year to be with the Hadzas bushmen and other Tanzanians tribes in Tanzania.…

Vin Du Select Qualitite's resident mystic Anthony Pasquarosa conjures up the holiday spirits with an alchemically enchanted collection of Christmas classics. Utilizing his unique 12-string acoustic guitar sensibilities, Pasquarosa's versions of all-time favorites such as Frosty the Snowman and White Christmas take on an added dimension and shine, a frosted winter glow that sets the mood for warmly introspective holiday moments. Throughout the record, crackling fireplace sounds run alongside the …

** 2021 Stock. Includes a 12 page color booklet with rare photographs, full lyrics, and extensive notes ** Marika "Politissa" Frantzeskopoulou was a Greek singer from Constantinople, reknowned for her precise, fluid and graceful performances and depth of feeling. Backed by some of the best musicians of the era on lyra, violin, oud, kanonaki and guitar, Marika’s repertoire and techniques drew from Byzantine and Ottoman musical traditions. She possessed an ability to devastate her audience through…

Hiski Salomaa began his life in 1891 in Kangasniemi in the Southern Savonia region of Finland, emigrating to the USA after the death of his mother in 1909 - travelling via Hanko, to Hull, Liverpool, Ellis Island, Manhattan, and finally to a Finnish American community in the South Range of Michigan. After taking to writing and performing songs as a young boy, Salomaa saw a demand amongst the growing Finnish immigrant set for music performed in their own language, and indeed in the Finnglish diale…

** Edition of 60 ** Keijo plays Woodie Guthrie's songs. Recorded between April 2019 and October 2020. All instruments, effects & voice by Keijo.

More than a band, the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare was a collective dedicated to the study and revaluation of Neapolitan and Mediterranean musical traditions, with multi-vocal parts and acoustic guitars, flutes, percussions and all kinds of ancient folk instruments. Their founder, spiritual guide and executive producer was Roberto De Simone, main author of musical research and arrangements. The foundation dates back to the second half of the '60s, but it was only in 1971 that the first  hom…

An instantly captivating, all-original acoustic album of great depth and incredible maturity, the debut album (1971) by acoustic guitarist and songwriter, Steve Tilston. As for the making of the album: 'It was Ralph McTell who very kindly contacted Ian Anderson of Village Thing on my behalf,' Tilston explained. 'I followed it up and secured a meeting with Ian and a gig at the Troubadour Folk Club. I'd met Ralph through Wizz Jones at Les Cousins in Soho, and he'd been very complimentary abo…

Peter Walker was the quintessential psych-folk guitar player to come out of the '60s. Revered by Timothy Leary, who had him program the music for his Turn-Ons, Walker was one of the first to take the Indian tradition of ragas and channel them through the guitar into a sound that is pure heaven. His exotic, state-of-the-art finger-picking transcends description and has influenced such artists as Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance.Vanguard Records originally released the record in 1966, showca…

Hariprasad became 80 the this year. A good moment for this unique solo album of the world legend bansuri master form India. Hariprasad Chaurasia is an Indian virtuoso flautist in the Hindustani tradition, born 1 July 1938 in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. 'Ajanma' takes a unique place in the discography of the North Indian flute legend. The recording was captured in a small 16th century Church in Rhoon, Netherlands in June 2014, which is well known for the character and quality of it's acousti…

Flat Baroque and Berserk was the first record of Harper’s to go into the charts. Peter Jenner was assigned by EMI Records to produce the recording – the two have been good friends ever since. EMI Studios, Abbey Road was at that time the most advanced studio in Europe, and over the next ten years Roy Harper was to record in near-perfect conditions. Over those years, the studio buzzed with four separate Beatles, some Stones, The Pink Floyd, Cliff and the Shadows, Gracie Fields, three of four music…

This is where it all began, with a slim volume of poems and psychedelic ditties set to music, backed by a simple Revox machine, and transformed by instrumental turns that display British cult hero Roy Harper's deft guitar work. "Girlie," "Big Fat Aeroplane," and "Legend," while steeped in traditional folk idioms, show hints of Harper's unique songwriting style. His caustic wit and passion are already evident in the wordplay of this 1966 debut. "Forever" is as pretty a love song as you are likely…

Robbie Basho was one of the big three American acoustic guitar innovators, John Fahey and Leo Kottke being the other two. Basho was the least commercially successful of the three, but his influence and reputation has steadily grown since his untimely death in 1986 at the age of 45. And with good reason; for Basho's deeply spiritual approach, intellectual rigor, and formal explorations (among his goals was the creation of a raga system for American music), present a deeply compelling, multi-facet…

“I don’t call a lot of my stuff far out,” Basho explained. “I just call it a different level of feeling. It’s far in, as far as I’m concerned...I spent years on the road singing folk songs that had no meaning. It dawned on me music is supposed to say something. Music is supposed to do something.” This is a Basho vocal album – his singing, which John Fahey described as “strangely compelling”, came straight from the heart and soul with no regard for restraint, phrasing or timing. Thankfully, he wa…

Double CD version. Includes booklet. Sub Rosa present Music From Yemen Arabia: Sanaani, Laheji, Adeni And Samar a reissue of both Music From Yemen Arabia: Samar and Music From Yemen Arabia: Sanaani, Laheji, Adeni, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer. These songs originate from the city of Sanaa, the sheikdom of Lahej and the port of Aden. These songs originate from the city of Sanaa, the sheikdom of Lahej and the port of Aden. Samar is the delicious, luxury time when people gather f…

At Pioneer Works' documents a 2019 performance from Tuareg band Les Filles De Illighadad (the daughters of Illighadad). Their music is a smart blend of Tuareg's desert guitar sound that originated from young men in exile in Libya and Algeria in the 1970s, and tende, a form of folk music that was traditionally dominated by women. The band was founded in Illighadad, a commune in Niger, by vocalist and performer Fatou Seidi Ghali, one of the only Tuareg women who plays guitar, and vocalist Alamnou …

Dal:um is a musical duo based in Seoul, who challenges the sonic possibilities of Korea's most well-known traditional string instruments: the gayageum and geomungo. Ethereal and otherworldly, Dal:um create a compelling soundworld that treasures subtle dynamics and the space between the notes. Two musicians. Two weighty acoustic stringed instruments. A dialogue between traditional and experimental practices. Dal:um was founded in 2018 by Ha Suyean (gayageum) and Hwang Hyeyoung (geomungo). Suyean …

** 2021 Stock ** Sandy Bull, who died in 2001 at the age of 60, was part of the early blues/folk scene of the early 60s, friends with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and both Roger MGuinn and Jim McGuinn. His own guitar and banjo style was quite distinct, featuring improvisation dubbed "psychedelic folk" by critics. This CD spans the years from 1963-1972. Includes the epic 21 minute 'Blend' recorded in one take with jazz drummer Billy Higgins.

2LP version, in deluxe gatefold sleeve with 2 booklets of photos and notes. This is the third in Honest Jon's series of albums exploring the earliest 78s held in the EMI Hayes Archive. Honest Jon's has spent the last two years delving through more than 150,000 78 records in the temperature-controlled steel vaults of EMI's Archive in Hayes, Middlesex. Following studious compilations of West African and Iraqi music of the 1920s, the latest release in the Honest Jon's Hayes Archive series is a spar…

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is a virtuoso percussionist known for playing traditional Persian instruments such as the tombak and daf. After developing more than thirty new striking techniques and progressing to be one of the most prominent players in Iran, Mortazavi travelled to Germany, eventually settling in Berlin to record and perform regular concerts the world over. His acclaimed performances have taken in venues such as Berlin Philharmonie and Sydney Opera House. In recent years, he has been e…

With Secrets From The Storm, NYC-based singer and guitarist Peg Simone has put a remarkable avant-garde spin on the blues, collaborating with writer Holly Anderson and fellow Table Of The Elements star Jonathan Kane, who assists on the epic opening cut 'Levee/1927', a radical and poetic take on the original ('When The Levee Breaks') by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. This is quite some opening, shaping an incredible twenty-two minutes over which Kane adds his guitar and kick drum, leaving y…