Reissues

American society was much less homogeneous during the Great Depression (1929 - 1941) than it became after World War II. There were still quite sharply defined classes, divided along economic, geographic, and ethnic lines. Each group was affected by the Depression, but in different ways and to different degrees. Each had its own tradition of popular song, and this carefully compiled sampling of recordings from the thirties gives a vivid picture of how each fared and how it reacted to the almost u…

The great age of the American march can be bounded by the years 1876 and 1926. This record gives a representative sampling of the American march during those halcyon years with a deliberate emphasis on some of the period's lesser-known and hard-to-find gems. While Sousa's preeminence is beyond dispute, many of his contemporaries wrote memorable marches, and that is the justification for this disc and its title. In addition, all the marches in this collection enjoyed great popularity and thus ind…

This compendium of American piano music of the last half of the nineteenth-century is a potpourri of popular salon pieces and works of more serious aspirations. Together they conjure a characteristic portrait of the society for which they were composed, evoking images of frontier primitivism, brownstone-ballroom elegance, urban sophistication, as well as a more academically inclined formalism looking back to European models. Scintillating pianism by Ivan Davis and absolutely fascinating notes on…

Life in 19th-Century Cincinnati The Harmoneion Singers; John Miner, conductor; Peter Basquin, piano and harmonium; Clifford Jackson, baritone; John Aler, tenor Where Home Is is an anthology of traditional songs of family and religious life coupled with contrasting songs by abolitionists, frontiersmen, and blackfaced minstrels. The explosive mixture of peoples and cultures found in nineteenth-century Cincinnati resulted in the widely disparate musical views represented here by wholesome choral …

Music of the San Juan Pueblo, Seneca, Northern Arapaho, Northern Plains, Creek, Yurok, Navajo, Cherokee, and Southern Plains Indians  The importance of American Indian music is found not in its impact on modern scholarship and composition but in the traditions and values it expresses to and for the Indian people. This oral tradition has survived solely because the music was too important to be allowed to die. The emphasis in this recording is on musical value: the music of the first Americans ca…

Clearly influenced by Varese's concept of "pure sound," the four works on From Behind the Unreasoning Mask privilege the exploration of sound as a means of musical expression. In the 1970s, the integration of new vocal and instrumental techniques and, sometimes, electronic sound sources into the composer's vocabulary broadened the tonal, textural--and, consequently--expressive palette immeasurably. Roger Reynolds's (b. 1934) From Behind the Unreasoning Mask (1975) presents an interplay between a…

Making its first appearance on CD, The Haymakers is an integral and indispensable part of the mosaic of the emerging American musical culture of the nineteenth century. It is a secular dramatic cantata on an American subject and was written in 1857, when large-scale American works were not yet supposed to have developed. It is the best-wrought and was the most successful of the five penned by George F. Root (1820-1895), remembered primarily for rousing Civil War songs like "The Battle Hymn of Fr…

If diversity and independence are definitive American traits, it would be hard to find four roughly contemporaneous native composers more unmistakably American. Markedly different in personality, each going his own stubbornly separate way, each spoke his uniquely individual dialect. They were born in successive decades (the last four of the nineteenth century) in different regions, and they were even more diverse in their musical training, affinities, and styles, yet they managed to create music…

This album is a loosely structured survey of different types of vocal styles and resources found in rural Anglo-American lower- and middle-class communities. Some of the modes of performance, such as hollering and solo ballad singing, have almost died out; others, such as Sacred Harp singing, formal duet singing, and square-dance calling, continue to flourish. The album is divided into three major sections: a survey of nonstandard vocal effects that shows how much music infuses the everyday comm…

The witty and charming selections on this CD are associated with shows that achieved their popularity through long-run productions in New York City from 1860 to 1900. A multitude of musical theater styles flourished in New York because it was the most ethnically diverse city in the country. While the city’'s population swelled with large numbers of Europeans and former slaves, the professional stage was dominated by immigrant composers and performers. They strongly influenced the melodic and ins…

This recording is a collection of American songs and hymns published mostly during the 1860s and 1870s that deal generally with angels, heaven, and death. Considering the rather morbid subject matter of these songs, they are surprisingly pleasant and refreshing. Death and its associated aspects were a major topic in fiction, poetry, art, and music during much of the nineteenth century in Victorian America. Consequently, the songwriters aimed at a broad popular audience because the subjects were …

Choral music has always held and continues to hold a prominent position in American musical life. The three works presented here take their place in a tradition that stretches back to the Puritan Fathers. The title composition, Americana, is one of the most popular works of Randall Thompson, America's finest and most-performed composer of choral music. In a prefatory note in the score the composer commented: The [five] different parts of the work are satirical and, at moments, mirth-provoking, …

A welcome appearance on disc of some of the finest American music for wind ensemble from the 1950s to the 1970s that demonstrates the evolution of the wind band as a vehicle for “serious” composition. The five compositions represent a wide cross-section of styles and composers. Pageant is a prime example of Vincent Persichetti’s lasting contribution to the genre--a warm, expressive piece written in a rich harmonic idiom. Hale Smith’s Expansions is cut from a decidedly darker cloth, a dark drama …

Hank Mobley's sextet album with Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on December 18, 1965. Japanese UHQCD reissue (UCCQ-9677).

Here are two extremely entertaining concoctions by two nineteenth-century American Romantics who wrote music on a grand scale. After a broadly lyrical first movement in the grand tradition of his friend and mentor Hector Berlioz, Gottschalk introduces, appropriately enough, a Cuban rumba into the second and final movement of his breezy south-of-the-border excursion, Night in the Tropics. The sources of Heinrich's musical style are in Haydn and to some extent Beethoven, but with the ornateness of…

The Civil War, one of the most deeply felt episodes in America's history, has left a heritage of music that reflects those feelings in the most vivid way. Indeed, this music was so intimately involved with events of the time that it became part of those events. These songs were sung in homes, North and South, at rallies, political gatherings and mass meetings, and on the very battlefields. This selection comprises several of the most popular songs of the era. First recordings from original editi…

*2025 stock* Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is the ambient techno project of Dominick Fernow. Focusing on slow paced bass studies and synthetic dub textures, surrounded by collaged and looped field recording environments, RSE shrouds sound over image to target the sector of brain where fear supersedes rationality -- the imagination. As RSE appears live for the first time, it has transformed into an entity with rotating contributors on stage and on recording. Ambient Black Magic moves away from…

Octavian Nemescu's music doesn't perform - it initiates. This Metaphon collection reveals Romania's spectral mystic at his most profoundly timeless, where bees' wings and synthesizer drones become pathways to the inaudible."

Before spectral music had a name, Romanian polymath Corneliu Cezar was crafting electro-acoustic revelations. Ziua fără sfârșit collects his 1967-75 recordings - radical explorations of natural resonance that predate Western spectralism by a decade.

2024 repress! Gary Wilson's monumental 1977 LP reissued with the original cover art (care of Owen Maercks's well-loved copy), delicately laid out by Scott Allison. Which makes it, perhaps, the last copy you'll ever need. You Think You Really Know Me (also the title of Michael Wolk's 2005 documentary about Wilson) was Wilson's second LP, but the first he recorded as a vocalist, hewing to his own bizarre vision -- a syncretic collision of romance, new wave cocktail jazz, heartbreak, disco porn-sou…

Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in t…

*2025 stock* Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his 2021 ECM disc Uneasy — the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — with Compassion, another album in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the special qualities of this group, pointing to the trio’s flair for playing “with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity… while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to c…

"Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs. Chanteys, Come-All-Ye's, Aborigine Song Sticks. Gospel, Improvisations, Renaissance Lyrics, Blake Hymns, Bluegrass, Hillbilly Riffs, Country & Western, 50's R&B, Dirty Dozens & New Wave" Allen Ginsberg's recorded opus gets its first ever full vinyl reissue on a gatefold double vinyl LP replete with photography by Robert Frank. Containing studio-recorded performances that he wrote, performed and taped in sessions taking place between 1971 and 1981 - featuring Bob…

These tracks capture Ra's electronic peregrinations during the 1970s and '80s. The Arkestra occasionally makes a cameo appearance but Ra commands the spotlight, not so much composing music as painting soundscapes with electronic keyboards. In the collection we've titled Stray Voltage, Ra is not so much composing music as painting soundscapes with electronic keyboards. Ra doesn't simply play these consoles — he attacks, cajoles, and pounds them. He upends and transports them where they weren't bu…

A quietly stunning meditation on sound and space, Let Night Come On Bells End The Day sees Sarah Davachi sculpting slow, luminous improvisations for Mellotron and organ. Each piece unfolds with patient restraint, revealing rich overtone complexity and a dreamlike sense of presence-minimalism at its most intimate and immersive

Sarah Davachi’s ‘All My Circles Run’ is a meditative journey through sustained drones and harmonic resonance, blending analog synths, strings, and organ into a deeply immersive ambient experience."

** Rare original copies. Early 80s LP reissue. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, minor wear due to ageing on covers ** A seismic moment in the history of free jazz, Sonny’s Time Now stands as a raw, uncompromising manifesto of musical liberation. Recorded in New York City in November 1965 and released on the visionary Jihad label founded by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), this is the first album led by the revolutionary drummer Sonny Murray-and it’s nothing short of essential. With a lineup that re…

** Rare original copies. Original 1987 LP pressing on Mythic Sounds, numbered edition. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, minor wear due to ageing on covers. Comes with original hype sticker ** A remarkable addition to the legacy of Charles Mingus, The Rarest On Debut – Mingus Newly Discovered unveils previously unknown studio sessions from September 1957 in New York City, now available in a strictly limited edition of 1,000 hand-numbered copies. This release is a treasure for collectors and jaz…

** Rare original copies. Original 1987 LP pressing on Mythic Sounds, numbered edition. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, minor wear due to ageing on covers. Comes with original hype sticker ** A rare window into the collaborative genius of Charles Mingus, The Rarest On Debut – Charles Mingus Sideman assembles some of the most elusive and captivating sessions from the formative years of modern jazz. Issued as a numbered, limited edition of just 1,000 copies, this Italian compilation brings toget…

** Rare original copies. Original 1987 LP pressing on Mythic Sounds, numbered edition. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, minor wear due to ageing on covers. Comes with original hype sticker ** A treasure trove for jazz aficionados, The Rarest On Debut brings together some of the most sought-after and historically significant recordings from the formative years of Charles Mingus. This limited edition, numbered vinyl compilation (only 1,000 copies worldwide) is a meticulously curated journey thro…

Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile, Adulterio all’italiana (Adultery Italian Style) is a biting comedy that targets bourgeois hypocrisy and the paradoxes of marriage in 1960s Italian society. Starring Ugo Tognazzi and Catherine Spaak, the film follows a couple in the midst of a full-blown marital crisis, navigating infidelity, subtle acts of revenge, and a battle of the sexes portrayed with intelligence and irony. Adding rhythm and color to this emotional battleground is Armando Trovajoli, who…

“Il faro in capo al mondo” (The Light at the Edge of the World) is a 1971 film directed by Kevin Billington, based on a novel by Jules Verne. It’s a dark, solitary adventure set on a remote island off Cape Horn, where a group of pirates led by the ruthless Jonathan Kongre (played by Yul Brynner) takes over a lighthouse to cause shipwrecks and plunder the remains. Kirk Douglas stars as the last surviving lighthouse keeper, caught in a grueling battle between man and nature, civilization and savag…

Directed by Sergio Leone, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is the final chapter in the legendary “Dollars Trilogy” and one of the most iconic films in cinema history. Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach form an unforgettable triangle set against the backdrop of a grim, dusty, and almost surreal American Civil War. The film is epic, lyrical, and grotesque all at once—but what elevates it to true legend is the immortal soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. The legendary main theme is one of th…

The film 7 Times 7, directed by Michele Lupo in 1968, is a brilliant comedy with heist movie overtones, crafted in a very British style but with a strong Italian identity. The international cast (including Gastone Moschin, Lionel Stander, and Raimondo Vianello) plays a group of inmates who break out of prison solely to rob the Bank of England... and then comfortably return to their cells, using prison as the perfect alibi. In this lighthearted and clever setting, the soundtrack by Armando Trovaj…

Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinc…

Ironhand Records is proud to present another magnum opus of East and West music: "Chettini and the Turkish Trio - Oriental Soul", first released in 1972. Çetin Bükey, credited as Chettini, was a musician who, during his unique career in Turkey and the UK, has truly engaged in eastern, western and hybrid musical experiments with an adventurous and nomadic soul. Bükey has played along with Turkish music masterpieces and composed film scores with his brother, Metin Bükey. He also accompanied the ic…

Rich musical history of Yugoslavia reveals a long-lasting love for the music of Latin America.

A long-lost masterpiece of Yugoslavian jazz-funk and disco finally returns! Originally released in 1979 on the iconic Jugoton label, YU Disko Expres by Igor Savin and Orkestar Stanka Selaka is a rare gem—an electrifying fusion of jazz, funk, electronic music, and traditional folk elements. Decades ahead of its time, this album remains a strikingly modern and danceable exploration of sound, seamlessly blending synthesizers with tight horn arrangements and deep, infectious grooves. Igor Savin, one…

*2025 stock* Planet Ilunga, the Brussels-based publisher has, since 2013, produced a series of recordings dedicated to the history of Congolese popular music from artists like Franco & OK Jazz, Docteur Nico, Orchestre Rock-a-Mambo and Joseph Kabasele & African Jazz. For its tenth release and in celebration of its tenth anniversary, the label launches with "The Soul of Congo" its most ambitious project to date: a well-documented and extensive anthology about the illustrious and legendary Congoles…

*2025 stock* Planet Ilunga continues its mission to uncover and highlight the overlooked yet epic achievements in the world of Congolese rumba. This time to tell the most spectacular story of all. This is the story of the creation of Surboum African Jazz, the first Congolese music label founded by a Congolese. Surboum African Jazz was owned and managed by the best singer of all time, Joseph Kabasele, alias Grand Kallé. The label's catalog during the period 1960–63 is largely dominated by Grand K…