Experimental / Folk Rock

Original and only vinyl edition on ZKP RTVL of superb Slovenian 1981 album fusing jazz/rock experimentation with local folk music in great RIO style like Sammla Mammas Manna, Etron Fou Leloublan, Aksak Maboul, etc.

First edition of the beautiful first album with a very original combination of avant-rock/jazz/folk in RIO tradition by the Czech avantgarde duo, released by Panton in 1988.

2005 re-issue on De Stijl / Child Of Microtones of an obscure privately released American LP from 1971 with a wild and messy experimental mix of shortwave radio sounds, free jazz, spaced-out freak folk tunes, odd beat poems, etc.

Rare 1985 LP re-issue on Blu Bus with 2 extra-tracks of the 1983 cassette album by highly acclaimed and original hardcore folk band from Torino. With paste-on cover.

Rare second album by highly acclaimed and original hardcore folk band from Torino released on their own Blu Bus label in 1986. With book-cover and insert.

1989 album on New Tone Records of "100% Ethno Rock" by Sicilian ethno-rock pioneers. With original innersleeve.

2012 release ** "Woody Jackson has collaborated on soundtracks ("The Devil Wears Prada," "Youth in Revolt," "American History X") and on the works of artists like Badly Drawn Boy and Daniel Johnston. Devoted to Morricone-inspired influences, he threw himself into this new soundtrack, perfectly adhering to its canons. "Dos Manos" is an almost entirely instrumental album, slow, warm, and enveloping, and, inevitably, a bit lacking when deprived of its visual counterpart. This is common when soundtr…

Female singer-songwriter released in 1971 on the Dandelion label, run by progressive DJ John Peel, Second album by Bridget St John. Backed by John Martin (g), Rick Sanders (g,vln) and other artists active in the folk world, and with chamber music arrangements by Ron Gysin, known for his orchestral arrangement of Pink Floyd's “Atom Heart Mother”, this album is a masterpiece of shaded, magical singing and English fantasy beauty. Paper-jacketed, SHM-CD with commentary and bilingual lyrics. Includes…

2003 release ** "Pekka Streng's music was fundamentally far from rock or pop; his intimate and reflective songs were more reminiscent of folk, vocals and often even children's music (Tove Jansson was one of Streng's great idols). Love Records' brilliant insight was to have Tasavallan Presidentti accompany his first album. This synthesis gave rise to music that, instead of acoustic folk, was influenced by prog, psychedelia and sometimes even jazz. However, the arrangements did not banish the deli…

1998 release **

2007 release ** "Brad Rose, the man behind the Digitalis and Foxglove labels returns with another solo album. Archaic Spines is an album that utilises only a bouzouki and a hint of vocals, spreading five celestial ragas over forty minutes of improvisation. Unlike the open tuned raga variations we've come to expect from the Takoma lineage, these pieces tend to be strummed with droning open strings as you'd find in classical sitar music. For all the nods toward Eastern harmonic patterns and improv…

1998 release ** "Debut by Dutch art rock/folk band. Fine sensitive folk songs, Georg Trakl poems set to music, acoustic pop ballads, a progressive feel throughout. A multi-faceted album that contains all original material ranging from the 3 minute pop song to the 7 minute tribal folk suite and encompasses influences of Kurt Weill, British folk rock in a Comus/Spirogyra vein, 70's avantgarde art rock (Lindsay Cooper). The album is hard to classify, but achieves a wholeness due to the band's songw…

2010 release ** "Verdure is Donovan Quinn, who resides in Walnut Creek, deep in the East Bay of San Francisco. He's performed his songs with the Sky green Leopards (collaborating with Glenn Donaldson) and can currently be found performing solo, occasionally being joined by various friends and collaborators under the umbrella of the 13th Month. His Verdure alias draws influence from heavy collaboration with the Jewelled Antler Collective, that loose-fitting West Coast group of artists known for b…

2010 release ** "...scraps of ulcerated, painful, immensely precarious songs. how to continue using a polaroid to fix images and faces with the awareness that what will stand out in the image, afterwards, will be the absence, not the living detail. It is a harsh and not at all consoling songwriting by Stefano Giaccone, one of the few "true" names of libertarian musical antagonism. here Giaccone uses a technological "zero degree" that is not at all trendy, a sort of epitome of unplugged: the guit…

2009 release **

2025 stock ** "Philly’s Kurt Vile can sound like Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp or Lou Reed — if those standard-bearers were murmuring through a speakerphone after a few salvia bongs. On Vile’s fourth LP, the stoner haze lifts a bit, and he settles on a mood: chilled-out but guarded, and wrapped in gorgeous folk-blues guitar-picking. The vibe is warmly psychedelic, but reality is banging at the door. “When it’s looking dark, punch the future in the face,” he slurs in “Runner Ups,” a Dylanesque rambl…

Ourselves was originally recorded as a one-hour special for broadcast on London's Resonance FM but was too good to leave to the aether. Ourselves is the first collaboration between Richard and octopus-armed percussionist Neilson. The music here represents something of a return to the extended psychedelic mania of mid 90-s outings such as Asthma and Diabetes and Endekeg. "Beam" kicks off the CD with Richard ripping it up on electric guitar over a thick blanket of hand percussion, plucked…

In 2009 Drifting/Falling released Gareth Dickson’s debut album, Collected Recordings, a stunningly beautiful and haunting ambient folk album which caught the attention of 12k’s Taylor Deupree. Thus began a not-as-easy-as- expected search for Dickson to try to coax him into writing an album for 12k. After a couple of cross-Atlantic voyages and a brief run-in involving a failing rental car and a herd of sheep on a dusty Scotish road, Deupree and Dickson met and Quite A Way Away was recorded for 12…

Mark Kozelek is back with a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Jen Wood (who has worked with the Postal Service), Will Oldham, and Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, now of Advance Base).

“The outcome of a collective trudge across the European/American desert for 40 days and 40 nights.” Cat Mask at Huggie Temple is the superb debut 12” by Desert Heat, a dust bowl rock trio of Steve Gunn, John Truscinski and Cian Nugent. The trio originally came together when they played a bowling alley followed by an appearance at Tusk Festival in Newcastle, UK where the trio jammed together like they had been a band for years. Part of the group\'s success hinges on John and Ste…