Folk /
Blind Tarots
Blind Tarots is a split tape featuring the contribution of My Dear Killer & Matteo Uggeri (Italy) and Modern Day Monks (Indiana, USA). The tape shows two different but somehow related attitudes to approach soft, minimalist, introspective folk. The A-side is played with acoustic guitars by My Dear Killer and processed by Matteo Uggeri, who also provided field recordings and broken rhythms. The side is called “L'albero della Morte”, and flows uninterrupted through five sections along the branches,…
Music From The Mountain Provinces
In 1988, David Blair Stiffler risked life and limb to document under-recorded cultural groups living lives of extreme isolation in the mountainous Philippine regions of Nueva Ecija, Aurora, and Luzon. These are the fruits of that expedition. In the grand tradition of the ethnographic recordings that made up the majority of Folkways' vast and significant catalog comes Music from the Mountain Provinces. By the mid-1980s, David Blair Stiffler was already a most-decorated recordist, with eight Folkw…
Jackson C Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius
The story of Jackson C. Frank is tragic. The victim of a school fire in his youth, struggling with homelessness and mental illness throughout his life, half-blinded in old age before his death in 1999, Frank met continuous obstacles. And yet he enjoyed a shining moment with the release of Jackson C. Frank on Columbia Records in 1965. The album would go on to be seen as one of the greatest folk albums of the decade—maybe of all time—and its opening track “Blues Run the Game” has become a standard…
Formación del Espíritu Nacional
2013 release. With his sight set on legendary figures of guitar experimentation (John Fahey, Jim O’Rourke, Loren Connors), Negro builds a statement of his own that is wider than it may seem at first hearing: ambient, mutant blues, field recordings, finger picking, rusty folk, post-punk, lo-fi poetry…
Watch The Stars
Reissued by Fledg'ling in 2005, and originally released in 1967, Watch The Stars is a remarkable long-lost gem from the mid-'60s British folk revival. A beautiful collection of folk, blues and haikus, the album melds a folk-boom topicality with a fine "beat" sensibility; uniting the Afro-American West Coast with suburban London. Long out-of-print, the record is an early milestone in the careers of Dorris Henderson and John Renbourn. OnWatch The Stars, Dorris and John are joined by the classical …
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2008 release, restocked. "Fotheringay remain one of the great might-have-beens of British music. They lasted less than a year, and released just one album, but their disappearance robbed the early-'70s scene of a group of musicians capable of taking folk-rock to new heights of subtlety and musicianship. Now, the nine songs on that debut album; assumed for almost four decades to be their sole testament, are joined by the eleven that would have constituted a follow-up. Sadly the group broke up d…
Joe Bussard Presents: The Year of Jubilo - 78 RPM Recordings of
Legendary collector Joe Bussard is putting records out once again! After running the last 78-RPM label in the US (RIP Fonotone Records, 1956-1974), Bussard had relegated his efforts to promoting old-time music by making cassette tapes for people hungry to hear his rare treasures and producing his Country Classics radio show for stations in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. But in 2014, Bussard and his daughter Susannah Anderson had the idea to produce a compilation of Civil …
Across The Rocky Mountain
Jeanne Dielman present Across The Rocky Mountain, a magical collection of Kentucky's own Roscoe Holcomb. Roscoe Holcomb is one of the most legendary figures of Appalachian music and a huge influence on the '60s folk scene. Playing banjo, guitar, and singing in that beautiful high lonesome sound, this compilation spans his recordings from the late '50s and early '60s, mostly done in the "field" with a single microphone. A coal miner for most of his life, Roscoe knew the world he sang of …
Dust and Chimes
Ben Chasny was on a holy roll when he laid down the eleven tracks on Dust and Chimes. It was 1998 and y'all were floating on that Bill Clinton peace-and-prosperity bubble. Meanwhile, Chasny had dropped his self-titled debut LP earlier that year, and the cognoscenti and illuminati were pricking up their ears. Dust and Chimes announced the arrival of a brow-furrowed troubadour whose complex, morosely beautiful guitar playing didn't Basho you over the head with Fahey-isms. The three solo guitar tra…
The Music of Norma Lyon
A collection of 16 pieces privately released by Norma Lyon in the late 1960s. All are original compositions for piano and organ. Dark, moody and dramatic, each of these 'sketches' was inspired by a place Ms. Lyon has lived. The tone of the record is set by its fantastic titles, including 'Flight of the Spirit Geese,' 'Phantom Cathedral of the Sea' and 'Dirge of the Sea Gods.' The first side, 'Dune Sketches,' is based on a period when she lived amidst the dunes in southwest Oregon. The sec…
Rob Jacobs
Rob Jacobs, known in the DIY scene for his group Wei Zhongle, released his S/T solo album on February 10th through Chicago progressive label, International Anthem.Jacobs’ eponymous album flirts with Eastern folk, psychedelia, avant-garde, and lyrics that “surface out of the waters of the subconscious.” Just as surprisingly, it even evokes Western pop music. ‘Wordless Incantation’ wryly introduces listeners to the album. Listeners may not know what to expect, and the song only leads them deeper i…
World Slide
Courtesy of the same folks who reissued that crazy 'Killing Melody' LP comes an amazing outing from British bluesman Mike Cooper. Since the early 60s he's been active supporting American blues artists such as Jimmy Reed, and Howling Wolf on their UK tours besides earning a crust backing many homegrown R&B bands. He also mastered the steel blues and Hawaiian lap guitar before veering into more avant-garde territory during the 80s, consolidating his various styles into a unique sound. The tracks h…
Celestial Explosion
"Don Bikoff released one lone, rare solo album, Celestial Explosion, on Keyboard Records in 1968, now reissued by Tompkins Square. Watch the YouTube video of Bikoff playing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, taped May 12, 1968. You'll see the sheepish, long-haired, mustachioed musician spinning gold in a style (still?) so foreign to the mainstream listener. The befuddled host concludes after Don's performance, 'That's unusual to say the least.' A kid from Oyster Bay, LI, Bikoff got his start in Green…
I Am All Your Own
Ilyas Ahmed's songs exist in a sublime moment of suspended animation, calmly dwelling in between modes of music making both timeless and contemporary – deeply imbued with stillness and peace. On I Am All Your Own, his first album in three years, Ahmed employs strategies gleaned from experimental and ambient musicians, such as Lawrence English and Fripp & Eno, and applies them to song-based guitar music. Building slowly and purposefully, each individual track adds to the album's overall, scrupulo…
La Casa Del Lago
"La casa del lago" came out just a year after Saint Just's eponymous debut album; in 1973 the band were a very special trio, consisting of Jenny Sorrenti (voice), Antonio Verde (guitar) and Robert Fix (saxophone). They had a contract with Harvest (as well as Jenny's brother Alan Sorrenti, who debuted with "Aria" the previous year), and managed to stand out in the vast Italian pop scene of the early '70s.Unlike many other musical realities, they had a concrete support from the record label…
Isis And Osiris
"Sam Shalabi presents Isis And Osiris; a dystopian fantasia for ud ruminations and iterated tape manipulations. Listening to Sam's music or playing with him is always a psychedelic bliss. When Isis And Osiris penetrates my ears I am possessed by an emergent universe where immanence and alienation, abjection and love meet. Nothing will be the same. The transformative effect of Sam Shalabi's cosmology is one of the most joyful and inspiring estrangement I experienced." -- Alexander St. Onge; …
Juarez
Legendary Texan artist Terry Allen occupies a unique position straddling the frontiers of country music and visual art; he has worked with everyone from Guy Clark to David Byrne to Lucinda Williams, and his artwork resides in museums worldwide. Widely celebrated as a masterpiece—arguably the greatest concept album of all time—his spare, haunting 1975 debut LP Juarez is a violent, fractured tale of the chthonic American Southwest and borderlands. Produced in collaboration with the artist and meti…
Oar
The haunted genius of Alexander 'Skip' Spence's Oar returns at long last to its original format, the LP. Sundazed is ecstatic to be able to reissue Spence's cult classic on 180-gram vinyl, with original track listing, liner notes and photos intact. Spence, a founding member of seminal San Fran skull benders Moby Grape, cut his only solo work in Nashville immediately after being released from New York's Bellevue Hospital late in 1968. Unavailable on the collector's market these days at any p…
Changed Fool
"A couple years ago I received a demo in the mail which frankly blew me away the minute I hit play. Some of the best late night listening I’ve heard recently. Spencer is from Texas and his music has the same loner vibes as Charalambides and the early blues legends. Essential. 70 copies." (Sloow Tapes)
Lullaby
Following the breathtaking Airs, another gem from Loren MazzaCane Connors "story of shadowed miniatures; flickering electronic guitar poems,” the 14-track album was originally burned to CD-R in an edition of 100, but is now being remastered from the original tapes, with Loren’s recent artwork included as a 6”x9” insert reaches vinyl on Sean McCann’s Recital imprint. Lullabies renders Connors at his most sublime, wistfully sanguine, swaddled in tape distortion and gentle reverbs with a barely the…