Folk /
Timeline
2023 marks the twenty-eighth year of Suarasama; it is also the first year for this reissue of their 2013 masterpiece, Timeline. Irwansyah Harahap and Rithaony Hutajulu, Ethnomusicology lecturers at University of Sumatera Utara, founded Suarasama in 1995 after graduating from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology program. Their music, as expressed on both Timeline and Fajar Di Atas Awan (first issued in 1998, reissued by Drag City in 2008) is hypnotic and joyful; progressing ancient North …
Spirit Cry Flutes And Bamboo Jews Harps From Papua New Guinea : Eastern Highlands And Madang
Softcover book with full color obi-dustwrap. Thread sewn softcover with green thread. 292pp. Edition of 500 copies. A New Guinea Journey" is Dr. Ragnar Johnson's 289 page manuscript concerning his ethnomusicology research in Papua New Guinea during the 1970s. Ideologic Organ has released three double LP/double CD titles of recordings from these extensive, immersive and assimilated research trips. This is the definitive writing on the topic.
»The recording of a male initiation ceremony with sac…
Requia & Other Compositions
*2023 Stock. 180gr LP deluxe heavy paste-on cover * In his liner notes to this release, John Fahey mentions his desire to have an entire world orchestra in his guitar, Western to Eastern, bagpipes to gamelan. Perhaps it's this mental approach that sets his music so deliciously far apart from other so-called folk guitarists. Requia is essentially in two sections. One is a series of blues-based pieces in line with music he had previously recorded. These include the lovely "Requiem for John Hurt" a…
Talea
Recorded in Australia, Brasil, Italy, Japan, Turkey and America on his 2015/16 world tour, these excellent recordings offer an astonishing range of styles and sounds – all somehow emanating from Angeli’s fingers and feet – and his highly modified, prepared, extended and amplified giant Sardinian guitar which – like Angeli himself – is routinely able do several very different things at once. You have to keep reminding yourself as you listen that this is just one person with one instrument, workin…
Upopo Sanke
“Upopo Sanke“ means “Let's sing a song" in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-…
Gebel Barkal / Version
Reissue of the 2008 Sub Pop single, the first OM recording featuring Emil Amos on drums. Limited pressing.
The Forest In Me
More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White speak to each other across great distances with the intuition and fellowship that can only be found over years in each other’s company. With fewer distractions, appreciative of the freedom to play with new sounds and spaces, they carve The Forest In Me from unbelievably thin air.
Hawksworth
Several decades young on the trap kit, Matt Espy makes his solo bow with an album of solo drums, in dialogic flight with birdsong. Restaging a seminal moment from his seismic early days in music (and inner life), Matt references places he’s been between then and now with hallucinatory evocation. Hawksworth is a new organic space where percussive meditations on a life in music create NEW life in music, a comment on the nurture of nature itself.
Tusona: Tracings in the Sand
It is a long time since Zimbabwe gave us some of the giants of African music but, in the mighty Mokoomba, there is finally a convincing successor … Lead singer Mathias Muzaza naturally grabs the attention with his stunning, piercing vocals [...] the band’s magic quality is the perfect gelling of guitar, bass, keyboard and African drums ... [and] impressive arrangements. - The Independent
Music Of Nubia
Hamza El Din (July 10, 1929 – May 22, 2006) was an Egyptian composer, oud player, tar player, and vocalist. Performing on the oud (the Arabian short-necked lute) and the tar (the ancient single-skinned frame drum of the upper Nile), along with his gentle voice and original compositions, Hamza combines the subtleties of Arabic music with the indigenous music of his native Nubia. He has single-handedly forged a new music, essentially a Nubian/ Arabic fusion, but one in line with both traditions an…
Al Oud
Hamza El Din's second album is similar in tone to his debut, featuring original compositions based on Nubian folk traditions, masterful oud playing, and soothing vocals. Serene and haunting, this was among the first world music recordings to make an international impact.
Raga Yaman
Pandit Uday Bhawalkar is an Indian Hindustani vocalist. He is an exponent of the dhrupad genre. Uday Bhawalkar is a standard bearer for Dhrupad, and a strong force in its growing recognition and popularity. Uday believes that when immersed in the note and raga, the self disappears and music takes on its own existence; the principle of ‘darshan’. These values are helping him on the path of devotion to Dhrupad. Dhrupad is one of the oldest forms of North Indian classical music and Uday maintains i…
The Unguitarist : Complete Works, 1969-2022
Ohio-born Rick Deitrick took up the guitar at 16 and decided to approach his playing as if he was the only guy on an island and the instrument had just washed ashore one day. According to Rick, "I completely divorced my playing from any formal music knowledge, but it was very important to me to use original tuning. During those years, the ‘60s/70's, there was a lot of acoustic guitar playing, often using open tuning as a base. I wanted to create whole tones without de-tuning and keep access to t…
Afro Exotique 2 - Further Adventures In The Leftfield, Africa 1975-87
After "Afro Exotique - Adventures In The Leftfield, Africa 1972-88" was enthusiastically embraced by heads, collectors and core Africa Seven enthusiasts alike, we dived back down into the vaults, and hope we've come up with another volume of listenable esoterica from roughly the same period. "The Quest", courtesy of fleeting 1978 leftfield supergroup Afro Cult Foundation (featuring Joni Haastrup, Remi Kabaka and friends) sets the tone-bar high and sideways, with 4.50 mins of atmospheric, effecte…
Nippon Guitars (Instrumental Surf, Eleki & Tsugaru Rock 1966-1974)
Legendary is a word too often used when writing about musicians. Takeshi Terauchi is no myth, more an elemental force and surely a nominee for the status of Living National Treasure – a first for a rock musician in Japan. While not exactly well known in the West, he has received praise over the years from artists as diverse as the Ventures and Jello BiafraYou don’t want to mess with Terry, as he is commonly known. An 8th Dan of the Wado school of Karate and a Zen master of the Zuiganji temple, h…
Playing Guitar - The Easy Way
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Here's Lantern Heights' personal tribute to the one and only Michael Chapman, a hero in his own right, a 'Fully Qualified Survivor' (just to mention one of his most successful creations). An unreleased live album on vinyl in the form of an astonishing trio." A live set recorded at Nottingham's Playhouse Theatre on July 23rd 1977 by Chapman and a power house rhythm section in Lindisfarne bassist Rod Clements and former John Mayall drummer Keef Hartley. Some of his…
Winter Songs, Wedding Songs
Biggest Tip! ** 250 copies. Deluxe LP comes complete with a 20pp booklet * The long-anticipated LP of folk songs from Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region — one of the worst affected by Russia’s invasion. - The Black Sea folklore of Mykolaiv is a women’s history in song: neglected by folklorists and ethnologists for the area’s late settlement and mixed ethnic composition. This LP corrects that oversight.
Collected over the last decade by the young musician and ethnographer, Tetiano Chukno, these recording…
Wa Maret El Ayam
From the two towering pillars of the Arab World’s Tarab, Om Kalsoum & Mohamed Abdel Wahab, comes another cult classic of Wa Maret El Ayam. With an iconic prelude featuring one of Abdel-Wahab’s quintessential fusions, this time a Libyan folk melody, Souma records bring a long-awaited remastering of the original studio version. Entrancing, magnetic and transcendental all at once.
Psyché
Drop a needle on Psyché's debut double-sider and you'll see visions, or rather Mediterranean visions, be they of waves of heat shimmering above dunes of sand, or of women dancing around a bonfire on a rocky plain, or of bushy cliffs overlooking emerald-green and turquoise sea. The name Psyché is of course ancient Greek for 'soul' or 'mind', signifying the band's love of psychedelic funk, but also the wide range of Mediterranean influences – from Southern Europe to the Balkan Peninsula, and from …
Something Special
The three years spent on MGM Records between 1966 and 1968 were golden ones for Lee Hazlewood. He spent them working with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom, writing a still-unreleased book, The Quiet Revenge of Elmo Furback, competing with Phil Spector from their respective studios, and coming up with the formula for the "boy/girl” songs for which he’d become famous. In fact, the unflattering portrait on the cover of Something Special did little to hint at how hip this late-flowering talent (he was in h…