Folk /
Six Organs Of Admittance
Rare 1998 LP reissued on CD with two rarer bonus tracks, all on CD for the first time. In 1998 Ben Chasny self-released an LP of his 'acoustic based project[ions]' under the name Six Organs of Admittance. The resulting five-song LP is a masterpiece of diverse elements using acoustic and electric guitars, a detuned violin, organ, electronics and koto. The material covers a lot of ground: there's an acid folk duet, an epic, three-part space suite, and two short concrète-like pieces that entice hid…
How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life
2009 reprint, originally published in 2000. John Fahey is feared and revered around the world as a guitar player and composer. His inventions for acoustic and electric strings are the stuff of legend. Since he began recording in Maryland in the late 1950s, Mr. Fahey's access to the unknown tongue has been made manifest on over 30 albums, and his presence has unsettled audiences from here to Tasmania. He has served as a spiritual model for guitarists as disparate as Leo Kottke and Thurston Moore.…
Icarus
This 1972 classic captures saxophonist Paul Winter and his ensemble at the height of their improvisational powers. Winter was one of the first artists to incorporate such exotic instruments as the sitar and tabla into his music and the result was memorable chamber jazz-folk played in the wonderfully experimental, post-hippie way only Winter and his merry band could. The title track, one of guitarist Ralph Towner's compositions, became famous for its pensive melody and soaring soprano sax. "Whole…
School Of The Flower
Ben Chasny (COMETS ON FIRE) might beat you if you call his solo work folk music. Hypnotic, mesmerizing, full of rough edges & elliptical turns round & round. First studio record from the highly prolific Chasny, joined by free-jazz sensation CHRIS CORSANO on drums & absolutely no computers. Chasny says "I see my music as being much more from the underground class of '92 than this folk scene...it has the same rock to folk quotient as Zep 3...Rock is the new folk & folk fucked rock without the reac…
The Visitor
Breathing in, breathing out. Tide comes in, tide goes out. The sun rises and it also sets: beginnings and endings. These are the first impressions given by The Visitor: a build-up and break-down. One seamless, 38-minute piece of music that completely engages its listeners. An extremely thoughtful piece that even a year later, still retains all of the qualities it had upon first listen. This record made me realize the full potential music can have when someone who actually gives a damn does somet…
Whiskey Leaves
The duo of Aiko Kogo & Anthony Guerra 1st made their presence known on a micro-edition CD-R from New Zealand's Pseudoarcana. Guerra sets the pace w/ layers of makeshift percussion & guitar. Kogo also plays ukelele, but it's her voice that is the real focal point on the album. This is fractured pop perfection.
Maison Rose
She had been part of a traditional "antique folk" movement in France in the late 60's & recorded 8 albums w/musicians from this scene before this last album, recorded in '76. Certainly, the avant garde edge lurking beneath the simple folkiness puts in mind the explorations of Brigitte Fontaine w/her sometime musical voyager Areski. Her music has its own deeply ethereal quality, & the album itself has its own magic spell to cast that renders comparison w/other albums unimportant in the end.
Home
in just a few short years multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer and all round renaissance man Peter Broderick has shot from being a darling of the underground to something far more substantial. Constantly touring, Peter has accrued fans far and wide with his alluring folk songs and gorgeous post-classical compositions, but all this had to start somewhere.A few years ago Peter was kind enough to send Type a package of all his material prior to writing ‘Float’. This came in …
All My Life (I Love You)
Two of Skip's rare post-Oar studio excursions; 'All My Life (I Love You),' from '72, is Spence's boisterous take on Badfinger/Raspberries-style power pop, while 'Land Of The Sun,' recorded in '96 with the X Files in mind, sounds like nothing else under the sun, and finds Skip sonorously intoning a poem atop a psychedelic bed of sound.
Legends Of Benin
Analog Africa presents Legends Of Benin, a collection of super-rare and highly danceable masterpieces recorded between 1969-1981 by four legendary composers from Benin: Gnonnas Pedro, Antoine Dougbé, El Rego et Ses Commandos and Honoré Avolonto, each with a sound all their own. What you are about to hear is distinctively Benin--a thick brew of agbadja, soul, cavacha, funk, Afrobeat, and Afro-Latin sounds all mixed in with heavy traditional rhythms.
Lace Heart
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…
Dark Noontide
Back in stock! Limited edition vinyl issue. The fourth album from Ben Chasny and one of his most complete, 'Dark Noontide' sees the guitarist exploring the Eastern themes approached in his earlier work and also delving further into the dark drone and unsettling ambience of his debut. Indeed, sidestepping some of the more upbeat solo-guitar moments of 'Dust & Chimes', Chasny manages to create an opium fuelled moonlit Middle Eastern haven in the comfort of your front room; you can almost smell the…
Sleeping And Hiding
Limited to 500, hand numbered. Originally recorded in 2005 and intended as the third and final chapter in the series which included the beautiful albums "Last Light" and "Empty City", Dais Records is proud to release the latest album from Ghost Ambient composer Tor Lundvall: "Sleeping and Hiding". Dark and beautiful soundtracks for afternoon daydreams and moonlit forest walks.
Summer Wanderer
“Summer Wanderer” is a sideslip in the discography of the Scottish avant folk musician Richard Youngs because it’s the only acappella release in his eminent and extensive list of recordings.“Summer Wanderer” was released for the first time in 2004 in an edition of twenty copies. For close friends only. A year later, Youngs re-released these recordings on his own No Fans imprint. So this vinyl release on the Ghent based Gipsy Sphinx label can actually be called a re-re-release. But that doesn’t m…
s/t
Raw and rocking collaboration between Jack Rose and the Black Twigs with some of the most swinging, hard-hitting string music waxed in many a decade. Rose’s solo playing has always had a tough edge, with his prodigious technique often employed in the service of dropping right-hand bombs – his use of a thumbpick originates from his years of duets with Twig Mike Gangloff, struggling to make his guitar heard over Gangloff’s crashing banjo. The front line of Rose and Gangloff’s strings are joined by…
Letter to New Virginia
A majestic landscape of harmonica laced hoe down folk. A true gem featuring the whimsical nature of the band in a whole new light, from dark psych folk songs to Shins-like beauty, the band has further developed their sound which has been described as the closest to magical (sur)realism this city has to offer...a layered, wonderfully complex sound that is two parts symphonic chamber pop, one part folkloric with a sprinkling of nursery rhymes in it.
Our Mother The Mountain
Fat Possum's reissue of Townes Van Zandt's first four albums, along with 1978's Flyin' Shoes, squanders the opportunity to re-envision and expand an understanding of the songwriter in simply replicating the originals. Neither new liner notes nor bonus tracks accompany the series, which, weighed against the benefit of hindsight and existence of more popular live recordings, lends the albums little new significance other than their availability. The lack is particularly telling on Van Zandt's firs…
Radio Java
Java is the center of Indonesian culture. Three out of every four Indonesians live on Java. It is the home of some of the most elegant musical styles to be found anywhere. To the veteran international sound collector, Javanese music is no secret. For the uninitiated, rather than going through an introductory outline of Javanese music history, I will wish you away to the internet, a library, or bookstore where you can find plenty of information on the subject. The selections on this CD are a comb…
Red Favorite
Red Favorite, a cycle of compositions for guitars, electronics and voices created by Jeremy Pisani was first released as a limited edition CD on Spirit of Orr and is now offered, as it was originally conceived to appear, on an LP. He moved closer and looked through the peephole. And he saw: the world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle space with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now…
Transmissions From Sinai
There's clearly a great deal of care and thought gone into the sequencing of this ace new mixtape on Arthur Magazine's record label, and that's down to the estimable taste and selection skills of Al Cisneros (known for his work in the bands Om , Sleep and Shrinebuilder). Opening with the introductory cosmic ambience of Lichens' 'Kopernik Trip Note', the playlist takes a left turn towards Linval Thompson's classic 'Wicked Babylon' before stopping by the sublime 'Everyone In Turn' by Grouper (the …