Folk & Traditional / All styles

After two albums 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 full-lenght, 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 o…

**500 copies** "Fifty years after her elegantly enchanting debut LP, Ask Me No Questions, was issued by John Peel's Dandelion label, Bridget St. John releases her first live vinyl. About time! In the intervening decades, Ms. St. John issued four gorgeous LPs during the 1970s, then had a quiet spell after moving to the U.S. In the '90s a sequence of crucial archival recordings on John Tobler's Road Goes on Forever label, as well as Nigel Cross's peerless Shagrat imprint started appearing. She beg…

**300 copies ** "Every so often, the cosmos graces us with a chanteuse in possession of otherworldly inflections. Can you remember the first time Vashti Bunyan’s lilting voice kissed your ears? Or the moment when you knew that you needed Linda Perhacs’ Parallelograms to resonate inside your home? Did you feel a lightness in your heart when Elisa Randazzo brought Bridget St John back into the fold? Have you ever sat spellbound in the presence of a Meg Baird performance? Did the hair on your arms …

**600 copies** Belgium's psychedelic blues folk master Ignatz returns with his band for a second album on Ultra Eczema. These are songs to get lost in and confused by. Tripped-out blues folk that sounds like Les Rallizes Dénudés feedback in 100% Egyptian cotton. Ignatz is the alter ego of Bram Devens. He has been releasing albums since 2005 on Kraak, Feeding Tube and Fonal Records. Previously only playing solo, now he plays and records with De Stervende Honden, which includes Erik Heestermans on…

**2019 stock, reduced price** Drums of Passion was the first album released by Babatunde Olatunji in 1960. Olatunji was a drummer, social activist and musician, born in Ajindo, Nigeria. In this album he has recaptured some of his early impressions in drum beats and giving them new zest. The African drum rhythms are not only musical melodies and songs but also ways of communication. For instance, the first track Akiwowo was the name of a train conductor who shouted his humorous cry against the fa…

The guitarist and singer-songwriter Mike Cooper was a key figure in the British blues boom of the late 1960s. Born in Reading in 1942, Cooper began playing guitar as a teen in local skiffle groups. After seeing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee perform in 1961, Cooper caught the blues bug and began to play the harmonica and formed The Blues Committee, supporting John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Alexis Korner and Long John Baldry, while Cooper was also performing solo. Acquiring a lap steel gu…

"Transcendental. I’ve never heard a voice like Sandy Denny’s. She started out with the band Strawbs, which she left when she realized they weren’t particularly folk enough for her, and joined Fairport Convention, where her, and many others, would make folk-rock history. Quite honestly, since I wasn’t around for this generation of folk, the only songs I like by Fairport Convention, are Sandy Denny’s songs. Her voice is simply breathtaking in its beauty and power, dynamic range, etc. Practically 4…

Osharaku is a traditional Japanese form of musical entertainment, featuring mainly voice, shamisen and percussion, with a repertoire of folk and popular songs, performed by farmers and fishermen for local audiences. This compilation, compiled by Riyo Mountains, is the fourth release in the EM Records / Riyo Mountains Japanese folk series. These recordings feature legendary Osharaku masters, recorded in their homes, brilliantly capturing the casual warmth and vitality characteristic of the style.…

...Ethnic Music Classics: 1925-48. Restocked. Outernational Records is pleased to announce the fourth volume of this legendary series, now available on vinyl. This series of archival 78 transfers was originally released in 1995 on CD only. This volume from Central Asia has to be one of the most revelatory volumes yet presented. Concentrating on a singular geographic region, this volume unearths some of the rarest recorded artifacts of music from the Central Asian countries of Mongolia, Uzbekista…

Tashi Dorji is a celebrated free-form / improvisational guitarist. Born and raised in Bhutan, but transplanted to Ashville, NC in the early 2000’s. He is a musical force that is in a caliber of his own. The amount of originality in his playing could have only been summoned when one is forced to confront limitations and raise a big middle finger to the ‘status quo’. He is known to focus his attention heavily on tonal qualities over melody. Mellow harmonics that integrate interference of seemingly…

Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Umm Kulthum's (Oum Kalthoum) The Twinkling Star, originally released in 1961. Kalthoum is a legendary Egyptian vocalist and one of the biggest celebrities of the 20th century Arab world. She was dubbed "the voice of Egypt" and "Egypt's fourth pyramid", and is considered a national treasure. This 1961 album originally released on Parlophone is one of the finest examples of her vocal ability and a beautiful example of mid-20th century Egyptian popu…

Long acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential acoustic guitarists to emerge from the British folk scene, the late John Renbourn is best known to the wider world for his membership of Pentangle, the genre-busting band that he was instrumental in bringing together in 1967. Pentangle’s recordings are widely available, most recently with Cherry Red’s 2017 highly-acclaimed box set Pentangle: The Albums. in 1966. Housed in a clamshell box that boasts replica album sleeves, some very ra…

**2019 stock** Amelia Cuni was born in Milan and lived in India for more than ten years learning dhrupad singing from renowned masters (i.e. R. Fahimuddin Dagar and Bidur Mallik, Pt. Dilip Chandra Vedi). She also studied kathak dance and pakhawaj drumming. She received a three year scholarship from the Indian government. Since 1987, she performs internationally and since 1992, she is based in Berlin. Her music is featured on several solo CDs and collaborations. She has recorded for radio and TV …

Incredible archival LP collecting lullabies recorded at different times and from several countries, co-published by the prestigious Museum of Ethnography of Geneva and swiss renowned Mental Groove Records. All the lullabies presented here come from records published with a copy kept in the Archives internationales de Musique Populaire of the Meg. Lullabies xist in almost every culture in the world: while they relate to the world of childhood, they also evoke the privileged relationship establis…

Skip Spence leaves his hotel. Its a cold day in Nashville, climbing to only 43 F in the afternoon. It may be Sunday, but on this day a 22-year-old musician is working at Columbia Recording Studios. Over the past few days, hes recorded a slew of new songs and today will be no different. On December 7, 1968, Skip Spence will record no less than 8 different songs. He has only 3 more days left to finish the album. It's been fast and furious and its also been tough, recording every instrument on ever…

The late Deben Bhattacharya was a noted Bengali record producer, ethnomusicologist, poet, documentarian, radio producer, and all around renaissance man. Having moved from Northern India to London as a young man, Bhattacharya began working for the BBC as a radio producer. In 1955, having worked all possible angles to securing funding Bhattacharya traveled to India to record musicians. The success of this trip allowed him to travel again soon after to the countries of the Middle East. With recordi…

In the world of American folk music, Jean Ritchie was a truly unique presence. Most of the younger artists of the folk revival of the '50s and '60s were middle class urbanites and liberal arts college students who helped "rediscover" the older traditional artists of the South. Though these two groups intermingled at concerts and the younger artists idolized the "true" folk artists, Jean Ritchie was an anomaly in that she fit equally in each crowd. Born in Viper, Kentucky in 1922, Jean was born i…

Originally released on  Folkways Records, in 1959. Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 13,000 islands including Java, the world's most populous island, and Bali, is as diverse as it is large. Having been a crucial stop on international trade routes since as early as the 7th century the influences on Indonesian musical traditions are deep and wide. Music Of Indonesia, recorded in 1950, is one of the earliest western documents of this rich tradition. Featuring sounds ranging from beautiful Bali…

Recorded over a six month period in 1970/71 at Bearsville, In My Own Time was Karen Dalton's only fully planned and realized studio album. The material was carefully selected and crafted for her by producer/musician Harvey Brooks, the Renaissance man of rock-jazz who played bass on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Miles’ Bitches Brew. It features ten songs that reflected Dalton's incredible ability to break just about anybodys heart – from her spectral evocation of Joe Tates “One Night of Love”,…

180-gram vinyl, Tip-on cover. Originally released on John Fahey's Takoma Records in 1965, The Seal Of The Blue Lotus is the debut album from American guitar soli legend Robbie Basho. In college Basho immersed himself in the study of Asian art and culture, even changing his last name to that of the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, and his music shows a much greater Eastern influence than contemporaries like John Fahey and Peter Lang. Basho was particularly entranced by the raga form which is apparent …

Recorded in 1968, as the Incredible String Band popularity was peaking, the band by this point had more or less stabilized to quartet form with Williamson, Heron and Licorice being joined by Heron’s then-girlfriend, Rose Simpson, on violin and percussion. They were touring a lot at this point throughout Europe and the U.S., which I assume is how they fell in with the Scientologists, but that particular tragedy doesn’t have any noticeable effect on this album (!)Along with having very developed a…

Wee Tam and The Big Huge were originally released in 1968 as both a double LP in the UK, and individually as two separate albums in the US. They mark a creative high point for the Incredible String Band that is only matched by their other 1968 masterpiece, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. Produced, as always, by the legendary Joe Boyd, these albums feature some of the band’s best, and most accessible song writing. While Hangman’s and The 5000 Spirits… may have been considered more revolutionary…

Beginning as a duo in Edinburg, Scotland, acoustic musicians Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer sought to stretch the boundaries of contemporary folk music from the start. Composing much of their own material rather than relying solely on the hidebound traditional repertoire, they were spotted by Elektra Records' Joe Boyd while playing in the Crown Bar and, duly impressed, he signed them to the label. After adding additional guitarist Mike Heron, they traveled to London's Sound Techniques Studio …

A rare blend of eloquent lyrical craft and explorative musicianship, the songs of Tiny Ruins are etched into the memories of crowds and critics worldwide. Traversing influences that cross genre and era, the artistry of Hollie Fullbrook and her band spans delicate folk, lustrous dream pop and ebullient psychedelia. Building on the sparse arrangements and 'a novelist's eye for detail' (Uncut) cultivated over the past several years, the group's greatly anticipated third album Olympic Girls is reple…

Sweet and sublime recordings from Elementary school group in Northern Niger from the 1980s. All-girl group accompanied by their instructor on the acoustic guitar, recalling Guinean folk and early Ali Farka Touré.  Troupe École Tudu takes their name from a small neighborhood of Agadez, Niger. In 1985, the city hosted a musical competition between various schools. École Tudu, lacking a choir, sought out a young Tuareg guitarist Kader “Barmo” Balla to create a new style of music. The guitar was new…

After a long hibernation, Anoema Recordings is back with a fantastic split LP of fresh Finnish music. This time we bring joy to the world via six beautiful acoustic six string exercises by two Turku-based masters of guitar: Niko Karlsson and Topias Tiheäsalo. Niko plays both guitar and banjo and has a background in pop, folk and various types of experimental music. He is probably best known for his 2017 solo album Valosta valoon on American Feeding Tube Records. Topias has studied classic…

The 1969 guitar classic, remastered from the original tapes. With new reflections by Will Ackerman, Max Ochs, Steffan Basho-Junghans, and Pete Townshend. "Robbie Basho released Venus in Cancer in 1969 on the Blue Thumb label. After five albums for the Takoma label in the '60s, Basho had cemented his reputation alongside John Fahey and Leo Kottke as one of the most brilliant guitarists of his generation. His wide range of musical influences from around the globe set him apart from other blues-bas…

Chuck Johnson's pedal steel guitar debut delivers a group of pieces for ambient meditation. Recorded in a single two-week session during late 2015, and subsequently arranged/constructed/treated in the studio in spring of 2016, Balsams is awash in layers of tonal perfection. The album constantly evolves while maintaining a unified approach across both sides. Balsams is a record that lives outside genre and time, one that continues to develop with each successive deep listen. A unique expansion in…

Anthony Pasquarosa focuses the third eye back to 1910 to conjure a lysergic spaghetti Western experience. Expect to be transported to another realm where gunshots, galloping horses and psychedelic gunslingers mark the terrain. Pasquarosa reveals himself to be a master stylist and his third full length for VDSQ shows the widescreen breadth of his cinematic vision. Abbandonato Da Dio Nazione is expansively packaged with hand drawn artwork from the guitarist himself. Western's have never sounded li…

Torrent is the first recording of Alex Mincek’s music since his 2011 self-titled debut on Carrier Records and launches Sound American’s Young Composer Portrait (YCP) series, which introduces emerging artists by releasing music from the span of their career alongside a series of interviews and essays that contextualize the ways in which their history, aesthetic, and sound thinking have informed their work to date.     Torrent is being released as a deluxe art object meant to give the listener a m…

Sound American and Canary Records collaborate for The Widow's Joy: Eastern European Immigrant Dances in America 1925-1930, the first release of Sound American Records. Canary Records curator Ian Nagoski has crafted the ultimate Lemko party record as a labor of love for the forgotten music of the Austro-Hungarian diaspora in the midwest region of the United States. The Widow's Joy with a cover by Mississippi Records' E. Isaacson features the music that helped immigrant coal workers and laborers f…

Limited edition reissue of this legendary LP, issued onFolkways Records back in 1962. A magical collection of Kentucky's own Roscoe Holcomb, one of the most legendary figures of Appalachian Music and a huge influence on the '60s folk scene, and Wade Ward, a Virginia fiddle and clawhammer banjo player who's style has been often imitated. Playing banjo, guitar, and singing in that beautiful high lonesome sound, Roscoe Holcomb covers the first side of this LP, in his wild and raw style. Wade Ward h…

Limited-edition LP with full-size insert of text and photographs by compiler Laurent Jeanneau. Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) is China's biggest province. The musical landscape here is one of the world's richest. The Uyghur and the Kazakh are the two main ethnicities represented on these recordings made by Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding in June of 2009. The Kazakh (nomadic) and Uyghur (agricultural) have multiple linguistic ties. Much of this music shares many influences from the Arab world, Tur…

Much of the discussion around unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) is directed toward its capabilities of surveillance and attack. However for those living in areas of conflict, it is the engine sound of the drones that has devastating psychological effects. Military drones fly at high altitudes and are more easily heard than seen. Even the origin of the word "drone" is rooted in sound, and comes from the sound of the male honeybee. The sound of drones in areas of conflict creates soundscapes of te…

Tompkins Square is very proud to announce the signing of Welsh multi-instrumentalist, Gwenifer Raymond. Hailing from Cardiff and now residing in Brighton in the South of England, Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight. Tompkins Square released her debut 7" on Record Store Day. Praise via The Wire, BBC, MOJO, UNCUT and more. In her own words .... 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…

An eight-CD box set that brings together the body of music the singer-songwriter recorded between 1966 and 1972. This set includes all seven of Buckley's studio albums from that era, as well as Works In Progress, the 1999's compilation of his 1967/68 recordings. Covering Tim Buckley's brilliant transition from folk to jazz styled material, the Tim Buckley Complete Album Collection (not exactly true as he did two more studio albums after leaving Elektra) gathers Buckley's best material with remas…

2016 remastered edition, blue color vinyl edition of 500 copies. "Death Chants is John Fahey's second album, following the brilliantly apocryphal Blind Joe Death. As massive as that earlier work was, it represented only a tentative first step towards the fields of hodologic splendor that our hero would go on to create. Death Chants represents a much more fully realized syncretism of the modernist and primitive poles between which John Fahey wobbled. It is also the first album he deigned to relea…

2016 remastered edition, clear vinyl edition of 500 copies. "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…

2016 remastered edition, green color vinyl edition of 500 copies.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…

2016 remastered edition, gold color vinyl edition of 500 copies. Originally released in 1967. The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death is John Fahey's classic fifth album from the mid-1960s and is one of his most influential. This album has an amazing variety of styles, moods, and influences, and John has a compositional and playing style that is totally unique. "A strange man, John Fahey, with an unusual set of guitar styles. This album, originally released on Riverboat Records and later reissued…