Folk /
Man on a Water Buffalo
For reasons unknowable, certain places in certain eras become hotbeds of music, fertile in their growth and flowering of musical talent. Thailand in the 1970s was such a place, and Dao Bandon is one of the enduring greats of that era. Born in the farm country of the Isan region, Bandon came from a poor family and was a monk during his teens, two great influences which shaped him, with his farm roots grounding the earthy heart of his lyrics, and his years of monastic chanting lending a unique res…
Patience
“I keep thinking about this idea that once you think you’re on the path, you’ve lost the path,” says New York musician Devin Shaffer, explaining the ethos behind Patience, her first studio album. “There is no certainty, there is no knowing. It’s all about surrender.” Written between 2021 and 2023 and Shaffer’s move from Chicago to New York City, Patience mirrors life’s highs and lows on the search for spiritual meaning, purpose, and connection. For the first time, Shaffer leads a group of sensit…
Gagaku Suites
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 …
Barry Dransfield
*2025 stock* In 1972, Barry Dransfield recorded his debut solo album. Just called “Barry Dransfield”, the album is a real delight from start to finish. It features an array of traditional songs arranged by Barry, some original ones and some fantastic covers from people like Michael Hurley (“The werewolf”) and David Ackles (“Be my friend”). Sadly, the album was deleted just after nine months from his initial release, because it was released on Folk Mill, a Polydor sublabel created to enter the fo…
Sum Variations
We are delighted to welcome American singer and folk artist Joesphine Foster to Nyahh Records!! This wonderful and strange recording features Victor Herrero , Paz Lenchantin, Michael Zerang and musicians from the village of Joujouka, Morocco. This latest release has Josephine digging deep into her archives. Raw and wonderful field recordings from Morocco and Spain. Enjoy!!
Japanese Traditional Music: Koto • Shamisen (Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 1941)
2025 restock. The World Arbiter label presents 1941 recordings of the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai -- masters of the koto and shamisen, heard with excerpts from theater and songs performed by many artists born in the Meiji period. They represent the earliest examples of ancient classical traditions. In the late 1930s, Japanese musicologists and experts completed years of work on a project to record their country's musical cultures, starting with ritualized shamanic traditions of the palace's gagaku, …
Japanese Traditional Music: Songs Of People At Work And Play
The fifth and final volume of World Arbiter's Japanese Traditional Music marks the completion of the label's excavation and restoration of 60 10" 78RPM discs of Japanese traditional music, bringing a great body of lost music to light and offering in full a legacy that has been almost entirely unavailable until now, even in Japan. The original set was manufactured in 1941 by a company now called the Japan Foundation, and was intended to be presented exclusively to libraries (though the Japan Foun…
Via Lattea
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…
Life Is A Constant Journey Home
Originally released in 1968. Jerry Moore was working as a folksinger in Greenwich Village when ESP-Disk' artist Randy Burns brought him to the label's attention. Recorded in August 1967 at Impact Studios, NYC, the soulful Life Is a Constant Journey Home (also issued at one point as Ballad of Birmingham, acknowledging its most famous and important song) is so legendary that we'll just let the press quotation below describe it. But please also consider this: that's a heckuva band Mr. Moore's backe…
Excavated Shellac: Reeds
Reed instruments are capable of some of the most impassioned music on the planet, all due to the malleability of the reeds, themselves—historically made of plant tissue – which vibrate when air hits them. The origin of most reed instruments is steeped in rural, pastoral culture. Many insistent, loud, often joyful, reed instruments have always been played outdoors as traditional accompaniment for dancing and celebrations.
This compelling album is the second volume in the Excavated Shellac release…
Tender Revolutions
Expansive and ambitious, Tender Revolutions is the latest from Vietnam-born, Portland-based multimedia artist Dao Strom. A fluid album, existing between genres—part ambient folk, part sound collage, part spoken word, part post rock—it blurs the line between the work of an experimental composer and the work of an accomplished singer-songwriter. Instruments slip in and out (guitar, piano, synthesizer, strings, drums, percussion) amid field recordings and samples, all anchored by Strom’s singular v…
Puritan
Chris Brokaw is the consummate underground rock musician. In a career spanning thirty-plus years he has been in countless bands (Come, Codeine, Charnel Ground, The Lemonheads, to name a few) has been a sideman with everyone from Thurston Moore to GG Allin, pounded countless stages on nonstop tours, and played on over seventy recordings, including lp's, ep's, cassettes and soundtracks. 'Puritan' is his tenth solo lp and it's a killer.
From the hypnotic repetition on the extended instrumental outr…
Lam Phaen Motorsai Tham Saep: The Best of Lam Phaen Sister No. 1
2025 stock The best of Khwanta Fasawang, the heart and soulful Sister No. 1 of 1980s Lam Phaen, queen of the cassette era. She was chosen, from over a thousand demo tapes, by legendary producer and songwriter Doi Inthanon, who wanted to create a new, streetwise dance style of molam(*) music. The Lam Phaen genre was the result, and Khwanta Fasawang was the singer he chose to be its representative. Combining earlier musical trajectories with electronic elements and lyrics dealing with drinking and…
Bump Lam Phloen: Essential Hongthong Dao-udon
2025 stock How can we explain the power of music? How can songs delivered in a language which we don't understand move us so? This collection contains the very best songs from Hongthong Dao-udon, one of the great Thai singers of the "third generation" of Molam singers, one of the artists who succeeded in fusing Molam with Luk Thung, thus triggering a new generation of singers; in fact she was the first to sing both genres from the beginning of her career, considering herself to be situated happi…
A Fraying Space
2025 stock Imagine being a punk rocker before there were any others, or a hippie whose message of peace was infused with a sardonic whimsy. That’s what it must have been like to be Pip Proud, in Sydney in the late 1960s, railing against the media and its hypocrisies, making a music that cut through all lies. — David Nichols Pip Proud, sui generis, could be considered an Australian outsider, with his untutored and uninhibited singing style, his primal guitar playing, his resolutely personal visio…
Anxthelic Onghesont
Dervish-like guitar spirals by Ghent-based musician Benoît Monsieurs, following two excellent releases on Kraak under his Venediktos Tempelboom moniker. Ecstatic music that takes cue from psychedelism, modern and ancient - from Hildegard von Bingen to Vincent le Masne et Bertrand Porquet. Splendid stuff.
Unlike France, Belgian underground scenes never ceased to be consistent since the early 1970's and onwards, constituting vast, sprawling networks, that reaches present days via very active label…
Papa's Ear
2025 stockJust over a decade ago, Japanese indie-pop duo Tenniscoats recorded »Papa's Ear« (2012) and »Tan-Tan Therapy« (2007), two albums made with musical and production help from Swedish post-rock/folk trio Tape. Originally released on Häpna, they are beautiful documents of the exploratory music made by a close-knit collective of musicians, fully at ease with each other, playing songs written by Tenniscoats and arranging them in gentle and generous ways. Released during a particularly product…
Joshua / Same Day Walking
Though packaged together, Joshua and Same Day Walking chart distinct worlds. Recorded in northern California and produced by Robby Moncrieff (Dirty Projectors, Zach Hill), Joshua is woolier and warmer, evoking haze, humidity, and overgrown Spanish moss. Meanwhile, Same Day Walking — recorded in Iceland and produced by Moncrieff alongside two-time GRAMMY-winning composer / sound designer Sam Slater (Joker, Chernobyl) — is, appropriate for its icier climes, windswept and beholden to the vast empti…
Seeds
Alan James Eastwood's glorious Seeds is a certified folk-funk lost-classic. But who was Alan James Eastwood? He had never hit the big time and commercial success eluded him. By the mid-1970s, his musical career was pretty much over and he was almost unknown except among deep heads, amongst whom he would gain cult status.
Original copies of the 1971 vinyl release of Seeds exchange hands for high sums, if you can find one. This expanded 2LP contains an extra record, collecting 9 rare non-album sin…
A L'Entrée Du Temps Clair
Veronique Chalot’s A L'entrèe du Temps Clair, released in 1982, is a luminous exploration of early French folk traditions. Backed by Italian musicians and employing instruments such as hurdy-gurdy, bouzouki, and bagpipes, Chalot’s distinctive voice and delicate arrangements breathe new life into ancient ballads, fusing medieval atmospheres with timeless musical sensitivity.