Folk /
Ready for the House
There were plenty of significant events in 1978, ("You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta & Olivia Newton John was quite a popular track, for example), and one of the most low-key yet significant events was the debut LP release on the Corwood Industries label out of Houston, TX. Mysteriously enough it came out under the name "The Units", but it was obviously a singular vision and not a band. That individual would come to be more commonly known as Jandek, and a total of 40+ albums have been…
Kabiyé Orchestras & Lithophones
Rhythm is paramount to the Kabiyé of Northern Togo. This recording presents a selection of music played by the tribe's orchestras consisting of percussive instruments, flutes, whistles and trumpets. Also heard is the rare pichanchalassi lithophone ('the sound of the stones') -- an instrument played for entertainment and in initiation rites of young boys. These fascinating ethnic music recordings were made in Togo between 2001 and 2004 by Lorenzo Bianchi and Daniele Segre Amar.
Burkina Faso: Lobi Country
The Lobi people of Southern Burkina Faso and Northern Ghana and Ivory Coast were fiercely resistant to colonization and remain a relatively close society today. This has aided the continuing existence of marvelous xylophone music to accompany funerals and initiation ceremonies. This album is of music played on buur xylophones, buur also being the name for the closing ceremony of the initiation of diviners. Recordings from 1998.
Central Africa Musical Anthology of the Aka Pygmies
The Aka are one of the three groups of Pygmies found in Central Africa today. They are monogamous and settle in small family encampments that comprise parents, children, sons, and daughters-in-law and offspring, groups of thirty to forty persons organized in democratic communities. Pygmy music ,in the image of all their social activities, presents very similar characteristics, that is to say, relative autonomy of each participant within implied but strict structures. The recordings of this antho…
Ironclad
This is the same Clayton Noone who isn't (but will soon be) a legend; the same man behind the art-punk Futurians and junk-noise Armpit. Nevermind his super obscure CD-R- only collaborations with Last Visible Dog label-mate Antony Milton, going under the name 'Claypipe.' Ironclad however differs from so much of Noone's output in that it is both more personal and more accessible. While none of the trappings of the low-fi New Zealand noise aesthetic are gone, this is more gentle, more melodic; a fo…
The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick - Live 1969
Live at the Matrix, SF 1968/69. "One of acoustic music's true innovators and eccentrics drawing from blues, Native American music, Indian ragas, experimental dissonance, and pop, John Fahey was living in Berkeley, California in the late Sixties when this set at San Francisco's legendary Matrix club was recorded. Drawing the best material from his two sets at the club that night, The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick shows the influential fingerpicker at the height of his prodigious technique. Deluxe…
Live in London: The BBC Recordings 1972-1973
Nearly 40 years after her passing, Judee Sill remains one of the most important and singular talents of the Laurel Canyon scene. Her two releases for David Geffen's Asylum (1971's Judee Sill and 1973's Heart Food) are critically celebrated masterpieces of orchestral folk. Her songs have been covered by artists as diverse as The Turtles and Will Oldham, and her fans include Jim O'Rourke, Devendra Banhart, Graham Nash, Sleater Kinney and more. This amazing collection of previously unreleased live …
Constant Companion
Ruthann recorded a single early '70s Reprise album of superb loner folk psych with fragile singing and delicate acoustic guitar playing...stark and deep meditations on lost love, topsy-turvy moons, ringing bells... First time on CD. Detailed liner notes, rare photos. And oh yeah, she was the writer of the Association's hit 'Windy.
A Raga For Peter Walker
Guitarist Peter Walker came up in the Cambridge, MA and Greenwich Village folk scenes of the '60s. He recorded two albums for the Vanguard label in the late '60s. Their style can best be described as American folk raga. He studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and was Dr. Timothy Leary's musical director, organizing music for his 'Celebrations.' His debut album from 1967, Rainy Day Raga, features one of the first studio appearances by jazz flautist Jeremy Steig, as well as guitarist Bruc…
Fate Is Only Once
Released as a short-run private press LP in 1965, Fate Is Only Once has long been a coveted collectible among American Primitive guitar enthusiasts. The only other recorded work by Taussig surfaced on the out of-print Takoma LP Contemporary Guitar Spring '67alongside John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Max Ochs and Bukka White. 'Dorian Sonata' was recently featured on the acclaimed acoustic guitar compilation Imaginational Anthem Vol. 1, and now the album is here. remastered, with original liner notes and…
Bury The Square
From the vibrant Southern quasi-capital of Durham emerge Megafaun, wearing earnestness across the chest and abstraction along the sleeves. They pour forth dulcet harmonies, as seeking vocals tug banjo lines up the Appalachian mountains; redemptive noise soaks everything, like thick air wafting from the Atlantic. Clawhammer banjo and strummed acoustics lock and roll with electric guitars and electronic textures. They realize that folk implies deep, personal, intense expression, whether the instru…
Daze on the Mounts
Dredd, aka Dan Ireton, has finally come out and ended a near decade of silence and Daze on the Mounts, a spiraling three-dimensional crest of the so-called avant-folk expression, is the celebratory homecoming. Originally a limited 2004 CDR, this reissue presents the colossal side for all. In collaboration with Matt Valentine & Erika Elder (MV&EE/Bummer Road and Tower Recordings), two of modern-time's purest interstellar travelers, Dredd Foole bounds between Tim Buckley-esque bellow and a hyper-e…
Venus in Cancer
The 1969 guitar classic, remastered from the original tapes. With new reflections by Will Ackerman, Max Ochs, Steffan Basho-Junghans, and Pete Townshend. "Robbie Basho released Venus in Cancer in 1969 on the Blue Thumb label. After five albums for the Takoma label in the '60s, Basho had cemented his reputation alongside John Fahey and Leo Kottke as one of the most brilliant guitarists of his generation. His wide range of musical influences from around the globe set him apart from other blues-bas…
Desperate Man Blues: Discovering the Roots of American Music
This DVD documentary chronicles the amazing life in music of legendary record collector, Joe Bussard (founder of Fonotone Records). Blues. Gospel. Jazz. Hillbilly. The late 1920s was the big bang of the music industry. King of record collectors Joe Bussard tells the story of "America's real music" with passionate enthusiasm in his own inimitable style. The film has an outstanding soundtrack featuring artists Charley Patton, Son House, The Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Willie McTell and …
improvika
By trade Sir Richard Bishop is a dealer of rare occult books and fine paper ephemera. For many in the musical cosmos, he has occasion to travel the smoke filled carnie circuit as 1/3 of the Sun City Girls medicine show. But in the twilight hours of a shadow world sensed only by few, Bishop is a dazzling unaccompanied guitarist. On Improvika, Bishop rides a very tall horse through a surrealist's cowboy set that's 1 part bruit Peckinpah muscularity & 2 parts illuminated Jodorowskian symbolism. A v…
Music By William Eaton
Mellow disc of tripped-out experimental acoustic-instrument pieces from composer/instrument designer William Eaton, reissuing a self-released 1978 lp of said. there’s more than a twinge of Fahey/takoma-lineage steel-string wrangling herein, albeit augmented with a certain Partch/Hans Reichel-ish sensibility and unusual recording techniques... but it stays pretty damn “easy on the ears” throughout.. "When I started building instruments, playing guitar took on a whole new dimension. The process of…
Khalifa Kirana Gharana
An archival performance from 2000 by North Indian classical master Ustad Hafizullah Khan is the latest release on La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Just Dreams label. Those who purchased the recent Pandit Pran Nath set will find much to enjoy here. Hafizullah Khan, who passed away in 2002, was a virtuoso of the sarangi. The sarangi is India's premier fiddle instrument; to most western ears it probably most resembles the violin. It is comprised of a solid wood body, three main playing strings, …
I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty
After releases on Kraak and Imvated (or Bread and Animals, Dutch Beer, Cauliflower Dreams or whatever Lieven decides to call it) Ignatz put out this rand new release on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Dense clouds of chirping crickets and tangled birdsong are woven into thick sonic brambles, a swirling confusional knot of sound, a bit like Sunroof! occurring in nature, while underneath a strange melodic tapping drifts and a moaned vocal floats ominously. Pulsing bagpipe like guitars intertwine with ha…
Boujeloud
The Master Musicians of Joujouka are often credited with being the first "world music" group. The Joujouka music for Boujeloud, or the Father of Skins, is frantic and has several movements which would equate to a symphony or the score of an opera if it were European classical music. The festival and ritual originate in the worship of the God Pan. In 1994, Frank Rynne began a two year long project recording the Master Musicians of Joujouka in their village. Sub Rosa released two CDs from these re…
Sounds Of The Indian Snake Charmer
Indian snake charmer`s music. The track is composed using very rare traditional double reed instrument called `Pungi` also called as `Been` that produces strange vibration of sounds that tranquilizes the cobras