Folk & Traditional / All styles

**Limited 50th Anniversary Sky Blue Vinyl Edition** Sweet Child, released in 1968, at the peak of Pentangle's career, is probably the most representative of their work. A sprawling two-record set, half recorded in the studio and half live at the Royal Festival Hall, showcases just how versatile Pentangle was in their unique brand of English folk, jazz, Celtic, blues, and pop styles. Some of the live covers are easily their finest performances. Furry Lewis' "Turn Your Money Green," sung by the de…

2018 Stock. 180 gram audiophile vinyl, Gatefold sleeve. Cruel Sister was an album recorded in 1970 by Folk Rock band Pentangle. All the tracks are versions of traditional songs. Whereas their previous album had been produced by Shel Talmy, and featured quite a heavily produced, commercial sound, Cruel Sister was produced by Bill Leader, noted for his recordings of Folk musicians. The whole of side two of the album is taken up with an extended version of the ballad "Jack Orion", previously record…

Fantome Phonographique present a reissue of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan's self-titled release, originally released on Columbia in 1966. Even though the original recordings are crackly and in low fidelity (but also deeply charming) it seemed necessary to repress this record for its immense historiographic value. These recordings are made available here with new mastering, in as clear fidelity as possible. Fans of Indian classical music will no doubt know the name Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. He founded the…

This LP features 12 tracks that Lightnin' Hopkins recorded Recorded in Houston, Texas in April 1954. Includes edgy electric guitars, jagged rhythms and a playful rhythm section. Comes in glorious American-style cardboard cover, each copy specially manufactured by hand."The session and two bottles of gin were finished and Lightnin' just shuffled away counting his money. We have not seen or heard from him since, but everytime the phone rings we somehow hope we'll hear his voice sayin', 'Man, I …

The second of two albums that Bert wrote in America in the mid 70s, ‘Santa Barbara Honeymoon’ foregrounds some of Bert Jansch’s most charming and addictive melodies. Album highlights include ‘Baby Blue’, ‘Lost and Gone’ and a reworking of Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Blues Run The Game’. It was recorded in America over a two month period and is another departure for Bert Jansch, mixing his familiar style with a more produced sound – utilising backing singers and session players including horns, steel dru…

Classic, highly regarded and sought after acid folk / progressive rock album. Featuring girl singers Clodagh Simonds and Alison Williams, Mellow Candle never achieved commercial success they deserved spawning a legendary psychedelic folk-rock album akin to Fairport Convention or Fotheringay. Touring to support Thin Lizzy (Simonds played on Lizzy's album Shades of a Blue Orphanage) and Horslips, the band had a short lived existence. Clodagh Simonds later went on to play again with Mike Oldfield a…

The story goes that Ian A. Anderson and Gef Lucena were walking the streets of Clifton, trying to come up with a name for their new record label. At the time (the early 70s) Greenwich Village was naturally the mecca destination for any musician worth his 12-string, so the pair had taken to referring to their slice of Bristol as ‘Clifton Village’ (long before this was taken up by estate agents across the land, albeit in a very different fashion). And so The Village Thing was born; home to …

First of a diptych of albums recorded in and influenced by Bert Jansch’s time in America. As the title suggests, this album was something of a contrast to Jansch’s usual style – taking in swathes of Nashville-infused pedal steel to sparkling effect. Produced in part by the Monkees’ Mike Nesmith, whose guidance is much in evidence on this perfectly measured slice of British country-rock.

Double LP version. 55 Historical Recordings Of Traditional Music From Greenland 1905-1987 features historical recordings of traditional Greenlandic music recorded between 1905 (by the British ethnologist William Thalbitzer) to 1987 and collected by the Danish ethnomusicologist Michael Hauser. It was published in Greenland by Ulo. Sub Rosa took the decision to enlarge the distribution of this tribute to traditions and roots of the Inuit culture. This is more than an hour of ultra-rare documents, …

An evening in a Kyoto coffee house from decades past that was living forever anyway, now captured as "vinyl". Formats of our contemporary time that have a long way to go before they outlast the music beneath John Renbourn's fingers.

on 180 gram vinyl. Tombeaux, the much-anticipated new album from Paul Metzger, marks our alchemist's third appearance on Nero's Neptune, following critically-acclaimed contributions to labels like Locust and Honest Jon's. Metzger summons the spirits of musical Appalachian forefathers, guitarist Django Reinhardt and classical sitarist Nikhil Banerjee, among others, weaving a peerless, highly individualistic music that sounds unlike anyone but himself. Metzger's playing doesn't imitate raga struct…

long out of print, few copies spotted of this late 70's dreamy folk album...Veronique Chalot was born in Normandy in the north of France, but it was in Paris that she first became interested in traditional French folk music. In 1974 she landed in Rome where she soon earned a small, but dedicated following. In 1979 she recorded her first studio effort, J'ai vu le loup, for the Italian Materiali Sonori label. Over the past 30+ years she has given hundreds of concerts, presenting her repertoire of …

Double LP version. Unreleased archival recordings as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Around ten years ago, deep into a cozy and hazy night following a concert with my sound brothers Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg in London (as Æthenor), they graciously introduced me to a recording of rudra veena (a kind of noble deeper bass relative to the sitar, in a way) as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Dhrupad, for those who do not know, is a branch of Hindustani cla…

A cosmic, phased-out percussion adventure by Shimshon Miel, a lone-wolf hippie from Tel-Aviv who experimented with hallucinogenic psych-folk, and self-released his only album in 1977. Fortuna Records reissues two of the album's killer cuts for the very first time, alongside a late-night club edit by Kalbata. Expect extra trippy percussion soundscapes layered on top of a thumping bass guitar in wild 70's style stereo action. Kalbata's remix is a straight up voodoo ritual, adding much needed 808 s…

CD version. Unreleased archival recordings as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Around ten years ago, deep into a cozy and hazy night following a concert with my sound brothers Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg in London (as Æthenor), they graciously introduced me to a recording of rudra veena (a kind of noble deeper bass relative to the sitar, in a way) as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. Dhrupad, for those who do not know, is a branch of Hindustani classical …

ESP-Disk present a reissue of Charles Manson's Sings, originally released as Lie: The Love and Terror Cult in 1970. Charles Manson visited New York City in the early '60s with his guitar and his songs in a vain search for recognition. Later, he had better luck in Beverly Hills, where famous musicians let him use their studio to produce this album. He has vocal backup from the women of the "family". During a stay in a San Francisco prison, he met a fellow inmate and gave him the album to rel…

A hallucinogenic splatter-drift audio meltdown through the streets and back alleys of Southeast Asia recorded and assembled by Seattle-based multi-sword-wielding artist Jesse Paul Miller (Factums/Secret Records/Liver & Bacon/Big Tribal Balls). This limited edition LP includes street and folk music, situational ambience, radio excerpts, and psychedelic atmospheres from Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. "We heard them from a distance, bells in the back alleys of Su…

Folk Music of the Sahel: Niger consists of field recordings collected in the Republic of Niger during the course of six expeditions undertaken by Hisham Mayet between 2004 and 2014. This first volume in Sublime Frequencies' new Folk Music of the Sahel series comprises a subjective but spectacular overview of Hausa, Zarma, Fulani, Songhai and Tuareg music culled from Mayet's rich archives. On this lavish double album, Mayet methodically reveals the dazzling range and power of Nigerian music, f…

Crying Bamboos is a translation of the pidgin description of the sound of sacred flutes: "Mambu i cry, i cry, i cry". Sacred flutes are blown to make the cries of spirits by adult men in the Madang region of Papua New Guinea. Pairs of long bamboo male and female flutes are played for ceremonies in the coastal villages near the Ramu River. There are seven male initiation flute cries from Bosmun, four flute cries from Bak: Borai with occasional single garamut percussion and two flute cries from Ka…

Limited to 250 copies. LP with insert.  Fine collection of pre-1950’s songs taken from Chinese 78rpm records. An otherworldly compilation of Chinese operas and folk songs from old scratchy 78RPM records, featuring such legendary early/mid-20th century artists as Mei Lan Fang, Bai Ju Rong, Fong Yim Fun and many more.

A fascinating immersion in the heart of a funeral ceremony live recorded in Bali, where gongs, cymbals, and drums give rhythm to the bewitching atmosphere of this mortuary procession. The international audience’s interest into Balinese music and its gamelan orchestras dates back to the edition of large ethnographic series in the 1950s, 60s and 70s which largely encouraged the discovery of this music beyond Indonesia’s borders. Taking advantage of a more advanced technology compared to the vinyl …

Psalmody, small bells, big cymbals, gongs and drums - this puzzling collage of Tibetan Buddhist rites recordings is hypnotizing. It opens the way to the state of trance. The slight electronic arrangement still reminds that reality is not so far. The two twenty-minute tracks instantly convey an unknown and fascinating universe. Mantra chanting accelerates, horns become more insistent and a mystical atmosphere arises. With Tibetan Buddhism Trip, Akuphone starts exploring ritual and ceremoni…

In 1971, at the age of 25, Pat Ament self-released his debut album, Songs By Pat Ament, in a very limited run for friends and local shops. The album is sparse and moody, conjuring a space not unlike the one that Songs Of Leonard Cohen occupies, featuring Ament on Wurlitzer with a jazz drummer and a guitarist alternating between acoustic and electric. It’s dark and at times forlorn, with meditations on yearning and loss and love. It’s ideal long-night-of-the-soul music. The lyricism evokes …

LP version. "My mentor for mind liberty and overall follow-your-heart, and guitar maestro Robbie Basho has a new album. Well, not exactly, he’s been dead for 25 years, but about a month ago, the Smeraldina Rima label had reissued his brilliant 1984 release Twilight Peaks album.Little known upon its release on cassette only, TP quickly vanished into the great amnesia of the world, the reissue does a great justice to one of his truly great albums.The sound is full of reverb, huge like the mountain…

CD edition. The Italian guitarist Maurizio Abate is a rare breed - an experimental musician from Europe working within, and expanding the American tradition of Guitar Soli, an idiom first pioneered by John Fahey.  Abate initially emerged within a diverse series of collaborative released over a decade ago, but, as the years passed, a love for his instrument, with inspiration provided by Fahey’s indication of its potential for application as a one man orchestra, prompted to him to embark on…

Beverly Glenn-Copeland debut is a folky jazz record that stands out for Beverly’s sublime high vocals. The 11 tracks where recorded with an all-star band consisting of Dough Bush, Don Thompson, Terry Clark, Lenny Breau, Jeremy Steig and Doug Riley. The latter also produced the record. Years later he would release ‘Keyboard Fantasies (1986)’ which is a mixture of digital new age and early expirimental Detroit techno. It shows the versatility of his very underrated talent. About this new re…

Recorded in the height of Robbie Basho's creative career, "Visions of the Country" was originally released in 1978, and has been out of print for nearly 35 years. The album is comprised of technically superb instrumentation (6 & 12 string guitars and piano); majestic compositions; transcendent singing and whistling; and astonishing lyrical, emotional, and spiritual depths. It is with a feeling of tremendous honor and joy that we offer this re-issue, which we hope will please existing Basho devo…

Metqāl Quenāwī, born in 1929 (Luxor, Egypt), also known as Met'qal, Metaqal Kinawi Metaqal, Metaqal Rebab Ensemble, Metkaal Kenawe or Awlad Metqāl, developed an intense artistic career based on rescuing folk traditions from southern Egypt. Recovering the traditions of the Said, the southern region around Luxor, Qena, and Asyut, Metqāl was brought up on the customs of the Fellahin (agricultural laborers who passed on the age-old traditions of Egypt), which were disseminated across the nation by t…

 A deeply innovative musician whose style is credited as the foundation for the minimalist style of American Primitive Guitar, the output of John Fahey is both illustrious, far-reaching in its influence, and difficult to categorize. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Fahey's music frequently leapt between the realms of jazz, folk, world music, blues, country, and avant garde in equal measure, while demonstrating the wide range of flavors to be found in traditional finger-picking guitar techniques…

Limited double vinyl LP pressing housed in a deluxe gatefold Stoughton tip-on jacket. Original artwork by illustrator Heisuke Kitazawa. Includes book with extensive liner notes and bios by Yosuke Kitazawa and Jake Orrall. 2017 collection, the first-ever fully licensed compilation of this music to be released outside Japan. There was something in the air in the urban corners of late ‘60s Japan. Student protests and a rising youth culture gave way to the angura (short for “underground) move…

Purple Translucent double LP edition. Remasterd, sold out at source. Reissue of Current 93's seminal double album from 1992, Thunder Perfect Mind. Newly and perfectly remastered by The Bricoleur, this reissue comes with a new face to the old sleeve designed by Ania Goszczyńska. Comes on transparent purple vinyl and includes a four-page lyric insert. This reissue marks the first time that Thunder Perfect Mind has been available on vinyl since its first pressing in 1992.9.3 on Pitchfork: "Named fo…

Riveting compendium of stark, raw blues by an erstwhile sparring partner of Loren Connors, recently salvaged from an old shoebox of tapes, restored by Taylor Deupree and mastered by Carl Saff. "I would go as far as to say that the few recordings that exist of these Robert Crotty sessions are among the finest and most beautiful blues documents of all time." (Loren Connors). In the years 1978 to 1981, Robert Crotty would show up on Loren Connors’ doorstep in New Haven, Connecticut with his ti…

Matsuli Music presents an album of kora interpretations that astonished John Williams into saying he thought it was “absolutely impossible until I heard Derek Gripper do it”. When Kora maestro Toumani Diabate heard these recordings he disbelievingly asked his host and producer Lucy Duran to confirm that she had actually seen one guitarist play this music on just one guitar. Recorded at an all-night session Gripper’s guitar magically counjures anew a centuries-old ancient African musical heritage…

The world that inspired Spirit of The Golden Juice nearly 50 years ago has moved on. F.J. McMahon moved on with it. Originally pressed in a small quantity and scattered along the California coastline in 1969, F.J. McMahon’s first and only album, Spirit Of The Golden Juice, is a spell-binding blend of singer-songwriter emotion and spiraling guitar accompaniment with a raw, adventurous character all its own. Well-chronicled and loved since its rediscovery, Spirit Of The Golden Juice is an album co…

Music for desert picnics. Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar delves into his more sensitive side with a minimal studio recording of dreamy ballads. Thumping calabash, droning guitars, and vocal overdubs evoke an imagined desert soundscape. All instruments and vocals performed by Mdou only, creating a very personal and auteur sessions. Emotive and introspective, exploring themes of religion, spirituality, and matters of the heart. After his underground success on the pirate mp3 networks of West Africa …

Another addition to Drag City’s curious collection of ‘outsider’ folk records (sitting neatly alongside Gary Higgins in your collection), Ed Askew is an artist I haven’t come across before. After his debut for ESP in 1968, his second album ‘Little Eyes’ was recorded in 1970, but somehow never got past test pressing stage, and as so many records of this era did, was lost for decades. After the 70s Askew seemed to sink into obscurity, but in the early 80s he got his hands on a harpsichord, a tiple…

Double LP version. Includes color insert. Sub Rosa present a reissue of volume one (Mindanoo Mistiru) and two (Gold From Wax) of Ethiopian Urban And Tribal Music, both originally released as two distinct LPs on Lyrichord in 1972. Mindanoo Mistiru and Gold From Wax were recorded by Ragnar Johnson. Ethiopia contains many diverse peoples and many styles of music. It was still an empire in July and August of 1971 when these recordings were made. Over 70 languages and 200 dialects are spoken in Et…

"This year sees an exciting new undertaking from the Strut camp. We’re launching ‘Original Masters,’ a series of essential original LP reissues exploring rare and under-rated African, Latin and Caribbean music classics, curated by leading collector and DJ, Duncan Brooker. If that right there is enough to let you know that you’ll be needing each of these classic LPs, we’re offering a subscription option which guarantees a copy of each of the four 1LP Original Masters releases we have planned for …

The Paris-based Collapsing Market label unveil a gem of found art with Tschashm-e-Del: a radio play recorded in Iran sometime during the '60s by Morteza Hannaneh, co-founder of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra with Parvis Mahmoud, and the grandfather of Collapsing Market co-owner Cyrus Goberville, who discovered the recording on a tape at his home. Without definitive records to go from, Tschashm-e-Del was presumably recorded in the '60s (certainly pre-revolution) and quite possibly broadcast on Ra…

*few copies available* Private Charles Duvelle label, from the archive of Charles Duvelle includes recordings from disques Ocora 1960 to 1974 featuring complete and unedited recordings from master tapes.