★Death Is Not The End
If I Had A Pair Of Wings: Jamaican Doo Wop, Vol. 2
Repressed by popular demand! Lauren Laverne's comp of the week on BBC Radio 6 Music w/c 11th Jan.
If I Had A Pair Of Wings: Jamaican Doo Wop, Vol. 1
Repressed by popular demand! Lauren Laverne's comp of the week on BBC Radio 6 Music w/c 11th Jan.
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. II
The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
My Greatest Revenge: Flamenco Recordings, 1904-1938
Death Is Not The End presents a collection of haunted, brooding flamenco recordings taken from the early 1900s through to the late 1930s.
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. I
The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
Waiting for Your Return: A Shidaiqu Anthology 1927-1952, Pt. I
Shidaiqu literally means "songs of the era", a term used to describe a hybrid musical genre that first began permeating through the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in the late 1920s. Blending western pop, jazz, blues and Hollywood-inspired film soundtracks with traditional Chinese elements, the shidaiqu represented a musical and cultural merging that would go on to shape a golden age of Chinese popular song & film in the pre-communism interwar period.
Waiting for Your Return brings together a wide…
River of Revenge: Brazilian Country Music 1929-1961, Vol. 2
The second volume in Death Is Not The End's survey of a form of Brazilian country music known as música caipira ("hillbilly music") - a stripped-back forerunner to música sertaneja, the Brazilian equivalent to US country & western which in it's contemporary form has come to dominate the domestic music industry in recent decades. This collection covers some of the earliest recordings made by the pioneering folklorist Cornélio Pires at the end of the 1920s, through to records from the 30s, 40s & 5…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. II
The second part in a collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces, cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 2
Tip! Back in the early '90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced "a pause for the cause", I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That's something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing t…
Lamkin: Versions & Variants Across the Northern Hemisphere
Death is Not the End teams up with folklorist Derek Piotr once more for this bumper archive of North American folk music, this time focusing on every version they could find of the ballad 'Lamkin'. It's a fascinating study that displays how a standard was able to shift and evolve as it moved from person to person over the decades.
Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol. 1
Tip! *In process of stocking* "Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced “a pause for the cause”, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent …
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 3
The third volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: …
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 2
The second volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern:…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. I
Tip! *In process of stocking* A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965... Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and…
Ever Since We've Known It: More North Carolina Mountain Singing
London's Death Is Not The End rope in folklorist Derek Piotr to curate another mystical collection of crackly mountain music from North Carolina. Powerful, soul-stirring unaccompanied vocal music.
I Had the Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz and Hard-Bop in Post War London, Vol. 1
Another luminous compilation from London's Death is Not the End, this time examining the city's modern jazz and hard-bop scenes from the end of the 1940s until the early '60s.
Kirkfield Non (Tape)
Duelling blues, simultaneously piquant and distorted, from one of Death Is Not The End’s few extant acts, following the label string of compilation pearls Back for third servings after an eponymous debut and ‘Fayet’ in 2017, Torontonian siblings Kevin and Patrick Cahill pick out bittersweet, wayward blues on these 2020 recordings made in their home city and out by the lakes in Kirkfield. We’re not sure if they’re twins, but the Cahills appear to work at near subconscious, telepathic levels of fa…
London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1
Death Is Not The End presents London Pirate Radio Adverts 1984-1993, Vol. 1. The first volume in a two-part collection of pirate radio adverts & idents, taken from recordings of London stations between 1984 & 1993. Many thanks to Wayne Anthony, Simon Reynolds, Stephen Hebditch & The Pirate Radio Archive.
Longing for Freedom
Hiski Salomaa began his life in 1891 in Kangasniemi in the Southern Savonia region of Finland, emigrating to the USA after the death of his mother in 1909 - travelling via Hanko, to Hull, Liverpool, Ellis Island, Manhattan, and finally to a Finnish American community in the South Range of Michigan.
After taking to writing and performing songs as a young boy, Salomaa saw a demand amongst the growing Finnish immigrant set for music performed in their own language, and indeed in the Finnglish diale…