Folk & Traditional / All styles

Stunningly beautiful, poignant music from Bilād al-Shām -- "the countries of Damascus," known nowadays as Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine -- including performances from the very first recording sessions in the region. The legendary, moody Beirut singer BÅ«lus á¹¢ulbān is here -- some historians have him singing before Egypt's Pasha IbrāhÄ«m Bāshā during his military campaign in Syria, in 1841 -- and ḤasÄ«ba Moshēh, Jewish "nightingale of the Damascene gardens.…

"During the 1800s, various Western stringed instruments came to Burma by means of traders, explorers, and colonizers. These instruments -- the acoustic slide guitar, mandolin, banjo, violin, and zither -- were quickly and ingeniously adapted to the intricacies of Burmese music. The music draws from Burma's rich vocal tradition, and the centuries-old royal repertoire of the Burmese harp and xylophone. Recorded and produced by Rick Heizman. Limited edition of 500 copies." Includes 8-page bl…

**shipping on Friday** First of three double LP versions, housed in a gatefold sleeve. "While Jackson C. Frank's eponymous 1965 album and other material has enjoyed numerous official and unofficial reissues, Jackson C Frank: The Complete Recordings is the first to compile his entire recording career. Released in conjunction with Jim Abbott's book, Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius. Every song has been mastered or remastered, a number of them straight from the original, brittle…

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 …

s, housed in a gatefold sleeve. "Volume 2 contains Jackson's first recordings from 1957, the 'Blues Run The Game' 45 from 1965, his 1968 Peel Sessions and studio recordings from 1970, 1972 and 1974. Contains fourteen songs never before released in any form

Available now for the first time on vinyl, Kensington Blues is the fourth full-length release from Jack Rose and his most diverse outing by far. The album is an inspired mix of styles and sounds, with straight ragtime, heavy 12-string, and that sweet, sweet Weissenborn lap guitar all checking in. Honed during endless touring in 2004, the repertoire here is delivered with maximum authority in a series of first-take performances recorded in early 2005.

A classic and seldom heard LP from Bamako! Not just your average Malian LP, Le Tioko-Tioko features has to be heard to be believed organ, hypnotic guitar and amazing sweet vocals. A truly great LP and must have for fans of Malian music. A faithful reproduction of the original with the addition of liner notes by Florent Mazzoleni. A co-release with Singasongfighter.

Restocked, few copies available / mythologized by Brian Jones' 1968 recordings for Rolling Stones Records, The Master Musicians Of Joujouka have since been the subject of much attention from outside their native Morocco. The first recorded group were the house band at Brion Gysin's 1001 Nights restaurant, Ornette Coleman collaborated with them on Dancing In Your Head, they are featured on William S. Burroughs' Break Through In Grey Room, and Timothy Leary hyperbolically referred to the musicians…

Psych folk drone music by David Colohan lost in the mists of time. Featuring Alison O’Donnell of Mellow Candle fame. 80 copies.

A rousing live album from the Holy Modal Roundersfeaturing songs spanning their careers on both the ESP and Prestige labels. Digitally remastered Booklet with essay by John Kruth. Peter Stampfel(banjo, fiddle, violin, arranger, vocals, electric fiddle); Steve Weber (guitar, arranger, vocals). First live recording, recorded at Chess Mate, in Detroit, 1965. Digitally remastered. Booklet with essay byJohn Kruth.

"This is the third album recorded by Joshua Burkett. The first, Owl Leaves Rustling, was returned to life by Spirit of Orr. Its CDR follow-up, Life Less Lost, was recently retrieved by Golden Lab. Now it is time for Gold Cosmos to once again bask in the sun. Initially released in 2001, Gold Cosmos (a title I always thought sounded like a Robbie Basho bootleg) featured performances by people like Dredd Foole, Matt Valentine, Ben Chasny, Teri Morris, PG Six, Chris Corsano, and Noah Wall, which wa…

Beasts in the Garden is the seventh full length record by Midwest visionaries Spires That In The Sunset Rise. Since 2010, STITSR have operated primarily as a duo consisting of long time members Kathleen Baird and Taralie Peterson. After releasing two lush, string based albums Ancient Patience Wills It Again Part 1 and 2 in 2012 and 2013, STITSR have returned with a definitively new direction inspired greatly by two years of exploring improvisation with members of the free jazz community in Chica…

180-gram vinyl. "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 release entirely under his own name and the one …

Gorgeous 4LP box set presented in two gatefold sleeves inside a heavy card slipcase, with a 12” square, 20 page, saddle stitched booklet on art paper. The set is a 34-song anthology of Early Recordings From Iran painstakingly restored from 78s at Abbey Road studio in London "Ravishingly beautiful, achingly precious songs and instrumentals, ranging from two performances by the Royal Court Orchestra in 1906 — with futuristic, overlapping trumpets and exquisite clarinet improvisation — through to a…

Public service reissue of this impossibly rare and choice title in the Vibra oeuvre, originally issued by the band in 2004 as an edition of 250. Featuring the “classic” lineup (Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley) that made “Queen of Guess” (vhf#77) and “Dabbling With Gravity and Who You Are” (vhf#66), this self-titled double takes a wild ride through the inner-workings of VCO’s stream of consciousness. Many of the tracks (selected from research & dev…

Few copies available, sold out at source - Tuareg drone recordings from Azawad region of the Sahara desert. Music of nostalgia, longing, and revolutionaries, sung by Fadimoutou Wallet Inamoud in her debut recording, a local production from 2008. Sparse rhythms and hand claps punctuate the meditative hypnosis, accompanied by a the signature vocal drone of her group. Lyric translations insert, some of the first ever translated isswat. Comes in beautiful printed and hand glued covers. Edition of 50…

Music of Tanzania is a spectacular collection of field recordings gathered by Laurent Jeanneau between December 1999 and March 2000. This debut volume of Sublime Frequencies' exploration of indigenous Tanzanian music compiles sacred and profane songs and dances of the Hadza, Datoga, and Makonde people. Highlights include stoned ecstatic dancing in a Hadza encampment; a drunken celebration of preteen sexual initiation from a Makonde fishing village; baboon imitations performed on the malimba…

Lahcen was born in 1969 in the village of Tamlalte in the Moroccan High Atlas. Influenced by acoustic music and traditional songs, he started making music at a very young age. Lahcen perfroms his songs on a lothar, an instrument that he made himself, with a wooden handle, a palm soundboard and goatskin. He is regularly accompanied by his brother on percussion.

"The much-revered avant-garde guitarist John Fahey (1939-2001) incorporated influences ranging from folk, blues, and bluegrass to classical music, musique concrete, and noise in his primarily acoustic guitar-based compositions. Considered a legend by many, Fahey released upward of three dozen LPs in his lifetime. Relatively late in life, Fahey extended his so-called 'American Primitive' approach beyond music, and into the creation of a substantial body of paintings. Painting on found post…

"Second Crystalline Roses LP by local Renaissance man, Tony Pasquarosa, is a goddamn monster of readymade acid folk transcendentalism. Since Feeding Tube released the One Man Cult LP back in 2010, Tony has done a wonderful solo guitar album for VDSQ, the insane space-sludge of World Domination (FTR 123LP), the raunch zonk of Gluebag, and various other projects far too numerous to name. On this album, Tony creates a classic late night smoker soundtrack. A brilliant journey into and beyond ego,…

In 1947, '48 and '59, renowned folklorist Alan Lomax went behind the barbed wire into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck -- and, in 1959, a camera -- Lomax documented as best an outsider could the stark and savage conditions of the prison farm, where the black inmates labored "from can't to can't," chopping timber, clearing ground, and picking cotton for the state. They sang as they worked, keeping time with axes or hoes, adapting to their …

Compiled and edited by David Murray.Longing for the Past: The 78 rpm Era in Southeast Asia is the first survey of the 78 rpm record era in Southeast Asia. It is a kaleidoscopic collection featuring 4 CDs with 90 tracks of music spanning six decades (1905-1966), accompanied by a 272-page book with essays and annotations by leading ethnomusicologists that is richly illustrated with more than 250 vintage photographs, record labels, and sleeves. "The consistently amazing Dust-to-Digital label presen…

Taped for broadcast on KSAN-FM, this remarkable 1973 set at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, finds John Fahey, the master of American primitive guitar, at the peak of his mesmerizing powers, performing a series of lengthy medleys that incorporate a wide variety of influences and styles. It's presented here with rare images and background notes. - "There's no shortage of Fahey live material in the hands of collectors, but this 1973 KSAN broadcast is up there with the very best, as t…

Largely unheard, criminally undocumented, but at their core, utterly revolutionary, the recordings of the diverse North American Aboriginal community will finally take their rightful place in our collective history in the form of Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966–1985. An anthology of music that was once near-extinct and off-the-grid is now available for all to hear, in what is, without a doubt, Light In The Attic’s most ambitious and historically signi…

"Musicawi Silt" is the best known Ethiopian song from Addis Ababa's golden era of 1970s pop music. The insistent drive of the rhythm and the mighty blast of the horns - a sublime, angular burst - are unmistakable. Hailu Mergia's concept for the Walias first LP "Tche Belew" was to include compositions by various band members. Since Girma Beyene, a member of the Walias, wrote this addictive song in the mid-70s and the Walias band began including it in their sets, it has spread around the wo…

Realized over a four year period, Sean McCann’s Ten Impressions for Piano & Springs is a document of transition and maturation. Slow moving cloud forms over corporeal landscapes, these impressions whisper of McCann’s imminent & decisive lean towards classical & avant-garde musics, culminating in 2013’s Music for Private Ensemble on his own imprint, Recital. Less a final statement on ambient music, more a meditation on change, discovery and process.

restocked! Folk guitarist and songwriter originally from New York State Kayla Cohen, a.k.a. Itasca, has released several small-press CDrs and cassettes over the past five years. A resident of Los Angeles since 2012, She records at home, taking inspiration from the fringes of the city’s open space and natural land. On Unmoored by the Wind, Cohen achieves new levels of clarity and expansiveness. Where 2012’s Grace Riders on the Road reveled in homemade intimacy, Unmoored by the Wind opens t…

Ishilan n-Tenere is a compilation of recordings of guitar music from three regions of Senegal and Mali -- Fouta Toro, Timbouctou, and the Adrar d'Ifoghas. Each region differs in language and culture, but all have a popular music based on the guitar, and their respective local guitar bands. These bands are almost unknown outside of their homes but have a devoted local following. They play all events, celebratory or political. Their songs are folk anthems, hummed under the breath and chante…

Beautiful sounds in a style we've never heard before – music played on the saung gauk, which is a special leaf-shaped Burmese harp – mixed with some light background percussion and ethereal vocals from Su Wai herself! The notes of the harp have this rhythmic way of progressing – almost like the falling of rain – but the vocals slide more gracefully over the top in waves of lyrics – a strange sort of counterpoint that really creates a lot of presence from the relatively lean elements of t…

For the traveling recording men of the late 1920s, Arkansas offered enticing pickings. The region was thronged with vigorous, idiosyncratic string bands. This album carries the listener from the hillbilly music craze of the '20s to the song-based country music of the late '30s. Scarcely more than a decade, but a period, in music as in all American life, of galvanic change. This CD serves as the soundtrack album to the newly-released photograph book, Making Pictures: Three for a Dime by Ma…

LP version. Remastered edition: John Fahey has made a habit of recording a new album of Christmas music every five or six years, but The New Possibility, which was originally released in 1968, is still his best. One of the best and most influential acoustic guitarists of his generation, John Fahey's music fused past and present, borrowing from the traditions of blues and folk music and filtering them through a modern musical viewpoint. Some of Fahey's most striking (and most popular) work appear…

Open-hearted, fresh, lovely, bumptious recordings of women’s singing, from Rang’ala village in southwest Kenya. ‘Dodo’ is a type of traditional Luo music mostly used for entertainment at weddings, drinking parties and wrestling festivals. Songs in praise of the happy couple, the hardest drinkers and the best wrestlers. Ogoya Nengo was born in 1943. Her vocal abilities were discovered when she was herding cattle, as she never attended school, though nowadays her professional name signals bot…

Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without a net. Mar…

From the deep woods of Maine comes this zoned acid folk combo spinning around the core duo of Daniel Beckman and Amy Moon and featuring members of Big Blood, Ancestral Died, Caethua among others. Stoned rural vibes extracted to their essence, essential oil for the mind and body. Edition of 100 copies.

Heavily processed thai pin recordings, taking medieval sensibility into deep psychedelic drones. 80 copies.

A dazzling debut from Bay Area guitarist Aaron Sheppard whose virtuoso fi¬nger-picked six string attack is stunning in both its precision and melodicism. Sheppard's album is a bold introduction to a remarkable new talent in the world of acoustic guitar.

2014 restock, released 2010. 12-String arrangements from a true master of the instrument, Brokaw shows a range from waltzes and ballads to experiments and rhythms. Member of Codeine, The NewYear, Come, Thurston Moore and the NewWave Bandits and many more ensembles.

Collection of material from 1975 - 1982 by Brazilian artist Mestre Cupijó, entitled 'Siriá'. Siriá is a cross pollination between the music of the inhabitants of the quilombos, a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by escaped African slaves, and the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest. Mestre Cupijó has created the modernised version of this local music, which has been igniting street parties and traditional festivals across the state of Pará in Northern Brazil for decades.

restocked / Jenks "Horseback, Mount Moriah" Miller and James "Wooden Wand" Toth share a lot of the same musical influences in addition to being two of the most unique voices in underground music over the past decade. Every release from these gentlemen individually shares DNA with what came before but always takes the listener on an exciting new twist. Both Miller and Toth greatly admire the work of the other and ecstatically wanted to share a record where they could combine their own material in…

"I'm sorry, but any record that opens with a vintage rebetika track is pretty much sold for me, and since this record does, the rest doesn't really matter, it's already awesome. Yep the first track on this killer re-issue is from Marika Papagika and sets the pace (and standard) for the rest of the album, which is a showcase of music recorded in the USA between 1927 and 1948 but rooted in other cultures. So from the initial blast of gorgeous Greek folk, we're thrown into Calypso, Appalachian folk…