Folk & Traditional / All styles

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…

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…

First vinyl reissue of this Indian classical masterpiece recorded by Shrimati Kalyani Roy in the late 1960s. Undoubtedly one of the most talented sitar players in the history of the instrument. She is considered as one the finest female players in a field that was dominated by her male counterparts. On these recordings, a two-volume set, she is accompanied by Manick Das (tabla) and Namita Chatterjee (tambura). Recorded in Japan on September 20th, 1974. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (V 2011LP) come as two se…

*2026 stock* The Brockas are... and that’s the point where you stop, the point where the futility of trying to break down with anymeasure of sobriety becomes impossible as sober is the last thing that comes to mind when you hear their freeform psychedelia. Breaking down the gatekeepers, rebelling against what you got, putting on a show right now. It’s Dadaist Punk in its sense of mischief and how it feeds this disruptive sense of never telling a straight story, not least being the claim they mak…

*2026 stock* Sasebo unveil Ça C’est Bon, a bold and captivating new record built on atmosphere, rhythm and effortless attitude. With a title that translates simply to “That’s Good,” the album embraces pleasure without overthinking it—music that feels immediate, sensual and alive. Across Ça C’est Bon, Sasebo create a world where sophistication meets spontaneity. The record moves with confidence, balancing infectious momentum with moments of intimacy and reflection. Its songs are shaped by a keen …

** Limited edition LP comes with a two sided insert of photos and liner notes with extended track descriptions by Laurent Jeanneau ** Other-worldly Canon singing from Mien (Yao) hill tribes in China, Vietnam, and Laos. Raw, ethereal, and cosmic – for fans of Bulgarian choir and Javanese Court Gamelan & Sundanese styles of vocal ascension. Although their name comes from a pejorative Chinese expression that means “dog” or “savage" – stemming from a legend that they were founded by a dog who saved …

Across the Horizon Vol. 1, a new double-vinyl compilation featuring Various Artists, invites listeners on an immersive journey through sound, atmosphere, and emotion.

2008 release **

Agua Larga offers an immersion into the Afro-Ecuadorian culture of the province of Esmeraldas. The authors have captured how music is part of the daily life of the inhabitants, and how it interacts with the other sound elements that surround it. The musical material is thus accompanied by stories, poems and scenes of everyday life captured on the spot, far from aseptic studios, in public spaces, on river banks or by the sea. The guiding theme is water ("agua" in Spanish), in all its forms. It wa…

We invite you to enter the strange and enchanting world of Nino Gvilia, where nothing is quite what it seems. These two ep's (presented on one disc in March 2024) draw you deep into her dreamlike sound-world of hushed late night atmospherics and surreal songwriting. Born in Poti, near Lake Paliastomi in Georgia, Nino Gvilia is a singer-songwriter whose lyrics offer up meditations on what it is to be human in the 21st Century, and aim to carry us beyond into ecology and the politics of the non-hu…

On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the ‘70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony’s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to …

Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Margo Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture;and the collected Demos;to the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry”, Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, featuring 16 previously unreleased recordings…

"Bayawan" is the common name for Muqam music used by the Dolan people. Bayawan, or Dolan Muqam, is a unique form of folk music and one of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. Generally speaking, Muqam is a form of large-scale suites which include songs, dances, and instrumental sections, in which the development of music often features a significant degree of improvisation. The Muqam of the Uyghurs is characterized by its diversity of musical styles. Apart fro…

Sometimes records reflect life with an unsettling precision, your own breath sticking to a mirror, confounding or transforming reality. J.H. Guraj, real name Dominique Vaccaro, is back with ‘The Flip Side’, an accomplished work of grace and sprawling elegance documenting struggle and a near-death experience that summons ghosts of Western primitive masters, rollicking free folk, minimalist orchestrations, weeping guitars and smooth psychedelics.  Time stopped for J.H. Guraj in 2021 following a br…

* CD digipak with 12 page booklet of liner notes with many never before seen photographs.  * Sublime Frequencies finally unleashes its essential compilation from 1970s Egypt, produced and compiled by Hisham Mayet. Modal instrumental tracks from Baligh Hamdi -- one of the most important Arabic composers of the 20th Century (writing for legends Umm Kalthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sabah, Warda, and many others). Features his legendary group the Diamond Orchestra with Omar Khorshid on guitar, Magdi al-H…

A landmark of 1970s Turkish psychedelic funk, Zafer Dilek’s Oyun Havaları returns to vinyl 50 years after its original 1976 release on the legendary Yonca Müzik label.

At long last, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela reissue this seminal, hugely influential album on their Just Dream imprint, the legendary recording from 1968 India of Pandit Pran Nath titled 'Ragas Of Morning & Night'.  The original studio session was produced in New Delhi, February 1968, by Jimi Hendrix associate Alan Douglas, it features recordings of "Raga Todi" and "Darbari", which showcase Pran Nath at his prime. Pran Nath's exquisite control between microscopically fine degrees of pitch ca…

Over the better half of a decade, Time is Away, the London-based duo of Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, have made tender and heartfelt transmissions through countless mixes, sound works, live appearances and radio. Exploring deeply human themes of memory, persistence and resistance using an assemblage of source material, the duo’s unique mode of storytelling culminates in Ballads, a new suite of songs and, significantly, their first officially licensed compilation. From the opening notes of Horvi…

"In North Africa, a ziara is a spiritual ceremony where people come to exorcise demons, purify their bodies and loudly reaffirm their attachment to God, the prophet and the deities who claim to embody him. On this occasion, there are uncontrolled outbursts from the audience, but this has nothing to do with Roman orgies, as it lacks ostensible debauchery, aphrodisiacs or saturnalia - it is merely a blurring of the line between the religious and the superstitious. In a shrill parable, cries erupt …

Tip! Hot on the heals of their spectacular self-titled debut album, The Handover is back with their second long form composition, New Old Medicine. Aly Eissa (oud), Ayman Asfour (violin), and Jonas Cambien (vintage organ/synth) have been cutting their teeth on the international touring circuit for the past two years, landing from town to town in their seductive spaceship to blow people's minds and then dematerialize into the void. An outline for a new piece began to emerge along the route and la…

** Limited edition LP release includes a four panel insert of notes and photos from the recording session ** Field recordings of Lobi traditional xylophone (gyil) music recorded by Hisham Mayet on location in Ghana's Upper West Region, West Africa in 2019. Featuring Aaron Bebe Sukura, considered one of the gyil's master musicians from this area.  Long form trance music with acoustic instruments sounding like several minimalist orchestras getting to maximalist sonic peaks.  The gyil music of the …

Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén on the donso n'goni, the hunters' harp of the Wassoulou region of Mali, which he learned there in the 1970s and later taught to Don Cherry. His first solo recording on the instrument.

Dewa Alit, master of radical Balinese gamelan, returns to Black Truffle with Baur Bentur. Genetic (2020, BT063) introduced international listeners to the magical sound-world of Alit’s Gamelan Salukat, who perform on instruments tuned to a unique scale derived from modified versions of two traditional Balinese scales. The two pieces heard on Chasing the Phantom (2022, BT093) further demonstrated his radical fusion of tradition and experimentation, with passages where unorthodox techniques make th…

On Steve Gunn, Steve Gunn’s 2007 debut captures a formative solo voice in raw, spacious focus. Recorded on four‑track in a Brooklyn apartment, its instrumental pieces drift between American primitive guitar, meditative drone and free improvisation - unvarnished home recordings whose patience, tonal richness and exploratory nerve already point toward a singular guitar language.

After two LPs and over half a decade spent toiling in the margins of the American Songbook, Bill Orcutt returns to original composition and the blues with his latest LP, Odds Against Tomorrow. Taking its title from Robert Wise's 1959 film noir, Odds Against Tomorrow retrofits familiar folk / blues forms to the unique sound of Orcutt's guitar and the result crackles with a freshness and authority that nostalgic retreads cannot deliver. Odds Against Tomorrow is more than an expansion of the territ…

Lost recordings that defined the modern sound of the Sahara.This album contains the first recordings of modern music from the Sahara and mark the birth of the genre that is known in the West as "Desert Blues" or "Desert Rock". Ahl Nana changed the folk music of the Sahara to modern, cosmopolitan music by using Western instruments like the electric guitar. They paved the way for artists like Ali Farka Touré, Tinariwen, Mdou Moctar or Bombino. Although the group is still active today, they only re…

On October 2 1958, after over 60 years of colonial rule, Guineans voted overwhelmingly for their independence, and Guinea was declared a Republic with Sékou Touré as President. Guinea was the first of West Africa’s Francophone colonies to gain independence. To free Guinea from its colonial legacy, president Touré sought to restore dignity to his nation and give cause for Guineans to take pride in their culture, history and newfound freedom. To achieve this, he instructed his government to implem…

Some recorded acoustic improvisations from musician/ ultra music nerd /library assistant /underground legend Nicklas Sørensen. Originally self released on bandcamp doing a transitional period in the artists life last year, now finally released on cassette. Soft and introverted hymns with quiet sounds of domestic life humming in the background.

Long before Spotify algorithmically ruined discovery, Joshua Burkett was wandering the New England underground with nothing but a guitar and enough patience to make tar smells feel like déjà vu. This compilation LP is your time machine back to when "knew someone who knew someone" was the only distribution network you needed.

*100 copies limited edition* Children of the forest play emotionally resonant hymns to the human experience. Coaster Pine offer 11 musical haiku each as contorted and beautiful as nature itself.

Remastered vinyl reissue of this 1990 Bill Laswell / Richard Horowitz production of local Gnawa musicians, recorded in the Medina of Marrakesh. According to Allmusic.com "a must for fans of both African and Middle Eastern music” and voted one of the "10 essential Gnawa albums” by Songlines. The Gnawa are an ethnic minorityin today’s Morocco, descendents of slaves from West Africa who were brought to Morocco in the 16th century and who (although they quickly converted to Islam) nevertheless broug…

Huge Tip! Recorded 67 years ago, reissued in Shirley Collins's 90th year in this universe. 'Sweet England' along with its sister album 'False True Lovers', was recorded in the spring of 1958 when I was twenty-two years old. I had been living for the previous two years in London with Alan Lomax, the American folklorist, working for him as editorial assistant on his book The Folk Songs of North America and on his field recordings from America, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. The tracks that make u…

Strut presents Nigeria 80, the next essential chapter in the legendary Nigeria 70 series, diving deep into the explosive sound world of 1980s Nigeria.

Originally self-released by James Blackshaw on Bandcamp in February 2026, Fractures On The Horizon comprises two compositions totaling nearly 40 minutes of music. The title track — a sweeping 25-minute piece performed in an open tuning — finds Blackshaw at his most commanding, weaving hammered arpeggios and resonant melody into something at once technically staggering and deeply felt. “...the 25-minute title song might be his most boldly beautiful composition yet, a bravura performance for guita…

*2026 repress* Comes with new cover art. Disc is translucent colored vinyl with the image of Okinawa's ocean.A charming set of double transformations on this 7 inch. “Kajyadhi Fu Bushi” is a traditional Ryukyu minyo (Okinawa folk song), a joyous celebratory classic which is usually sung at weddings, with lyrics describing how “beautiful buds unfold”, using the distinctive Ryukyu/Okinanwa pentatonic scale. Typically performed by a small ensemble of a singer accompanied by sanshin, the Okinawan pr…

A long time ago, during the messy death rattle of guitar music in the early 21st c., the NME once declared a young Conor Kiley “the future of rock and roll”. The hyperbole of this statement has proven unsurprisingly ironic; not because Kiley remains an obscure artist, but that now, nearly two decades on, it's obvious that rock never had the future the journalists and industry bigwigs of the late aughts had deluded themselves into thinking it did. So, what happened to all those promising young ta…

Already sold out, few copis available. Gorgeous double vinyl reissue of what still stands as one of Christina Carter’s finest moments, originally issued in an edition of 300 copies on her own Many Breaths Press. Six love songs comprised of elliptical bell like guitar phrases, barely there, sometimes even coaxing silence, set behind the extended vowel sounds of voice. Soft gentle performances here, like this whole record was cut very very late at night or in the early hours of the morning. An unh…

It has been seven years since Audika last issued an album of Arthur Russell material. The wait ends this summer with Corn, nine tracks Russell recorded in 1982 and 1983. In collaboration with Russell’s partner Tom Lee, Audika’s Steve Knutson compiled Corn from Arthur’s original, completed 1/4” tape masters. Russell himself compiled this material on three separate test pressings—labeled El Dinosaur, Indian Ocean, and Untitled, respectively — in 1985. Russell fans know something of the Corn sound …

Michael George Henry (aka Ras Michael and, for this lone release, Dadawah) was born in 1943 in Saint Mary Parish, in northeastern Jamaica. Henry was raised in a Rastafari community when the religious movement was still in its infancy and marginalized within Jamaica. It was there that he began performing Nyahbinghi, the Rastafarian devotional music that combines the influences of African drumming and Black gospel. Henry found himself in Kingston in the late 1950s where he worked for Coxsone Dodd …

2024 small repress! Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey's room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey's final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat. Cloaked in the language of dogma, this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Del…