Folk /
Sara Juega Y...
Ghost-record from 1986 Mexico City underground. Nine minimal folk compositions of rare delicacy - an acoustic guitar breathing in solitude. American Primitivism filtered through personal intimacy.
Further Than Thought
180g black vinyl with poly-lined black paper sleeve and double-sided insert. There's a lineage of American fingerstyle guitar that runs from the Piedmont porches of Elizabeth Cotten through Robbie Basho's visionary expansions into spiritual territory - and then, somehow, into the waters. With his second full-length album, Brooklyn-based guitarist Ben Van Bonn acknowledges these predecessors while floating wordlessly into terrain they never mapped.
Further Than Thought is aquatic music in the tru…
Steenkiste - Bischoff
*250 copies limited edition* “Steenkiste - Bischoff” is a new album recorded as a correspondence between two contemporary European weird music staples: Glen Steenkiste (Hellvete, Sylvester Anfang) from Belgium and Sebastian Bischoff (also known as Son of Buzzi) from Switzerland. Album will be released on December 1st 2025 in an edition of 250 copies. All in screenprinted jackets with artwork by Jakob Battick and write up by Holger Adam (at whose house Glen and Sebastian performed together for th…
Huys Opnamen
*50 copies limited edition* Venediktos Tempelboom is the alias of Gentenaar Benwa Meneers. Using the 12-string guitar as his main instrument, the self-taught musician takes fingerpicking Americana and Eastern transcendence into the Flanders fields with spiraling compositions that often drip with dark drone melancholia. 'Huys Opnamen' contains a selection of his home recordings from 2019 - 2020. The five pieces are Venediktos Tempelboom at his purest: raw, eerie and at times with a sly sense of h…
Als de nachtwind die fluistert door de spichtige halmen der duingras
*50 copies limited edition* ‘Als de nachtwind die fluistert door de spichtige halmen der duingras’ (Like the Night Wind That Whispers Through the Spindly Culms of the Dune Grass) is the second solo album by Dutch guitarist Marijn Filius. It follows after a handful of ep’s, self-released on digital formats, throughout 2024 and 2025. The album is a culmination of the modes of guitar playing he has been exploring these last few years and his most substantial release since his debut album from 2021.…
Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark, the third full-length from Gwenifer Raymond, finds the Welsh guitarist deepening her American primitive explorations with a turbulent, spectral intensity. Across ten instrumental tracks for solo guitar and banjo, Raymond braids the darkness of Appalachian nights with the cosmic anxieties of science fiction, displaying fierce dexterity and meditative nuance.
Solo at Cafe Oto
*Edition of 300* Melodies are alive, remolded and reshaped in each performance. Guitarist Shane Parish embraces this continual evolution by transcribing songs from across musical genres, instruments, and eras for solo guitar. Recent albums like 2024’s Repertoire, which features 14 songs across jazz, folk, and electronic music and played on acoustic guitar, showcase his skill in transcription, as does his work transforming Bill Orcutt’s Four Guitars from a multi-tracked solo project into a quarte…
The Sun Is Not True
"David Nance’s doom spiral tour of the supermarket. The spectral glade fashioned by the Spatulas in “Heaving Chimes." The hazy, chattering, crypt-riot of Bruce Russell and Peter Wright’s Escalation. The warmth and momentum of Liam Grant’s barn dance. These intensely physical spaces are all conjured through song, an unexpected venue for such somatic expression. It’s a bracing, welcome tangibility, a mark of exceptionalism shared by this music. But what do these songs have in common, beyond their …
Path To The Gallows
Path To The Gallows was recorded in Beeston, UK and Durban, South Africa straight to cassette and engineered by the wizard Rob V. It's Duncan's 9th "proper" album (but could also be his 12th or 6th depending how you count them).
Hillbilly Ragas
Sir Richard Bishop returns with Hillbilly Ragas, an album of raw, solo acoustic guitar explorations. Stripping back to basics, he blends American Primitive style with East Indian raga, creating untamed, rhythmic pieces that evoke the spirit of an outsider’s folk tradition.
Unraveling In Your Hands
James Blackshaw’s ‘Unraveling In Your Hands’ marks his return post-hiatus, blending hypnotic, precise guitar and minimalist influences. The album, praised for its emotive depth and beauty, features meditative tracks and earned critical acclaim, including an 8.0 from Pitchfork.
Fixe Idee
Nearly four years to the date after the release of Higher Order, Eric Arn’s previous release for Carbon Records, we are releasing his latest collection of guitar excursions.
World Behind Curtains
2012 release ** “While guitarist Yair Yona was first lured into the world of acoustic fingerpicking by a Bert Jansch CD that he found in a London shop, the Takoma school is his foundation. Like Steffen Basho-Junghans, he’s embraced this fundamentally American style on its own terms, learned its language inside out, and still made music that’s true to an upbringing on the far side of the Greenwich Meridian.” Recommended if you like: John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, American Primitive Guitar,…
s/t
Aside from spending the last couple summers teaching music on a remote New England island, David Alexander Shapiro has spent the rest of his time playing with various New Haven heads such as Headroom and Center, as well as accompanying the legendary Kath Bloom at local and various regional tours. To showcase his unique style on a variety of stringed instruments, David presents here, a side of banjo tracks, and a side of mandolin tracks. Continuing on his long tradition of untitled, or barely tit…
Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan: The Lost Live Recordings
"It has been said that Robbie Basho's art was strongest in concert. To what extent the experience can be reconstituted is uncertain. Whatever the case, Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan is the mother lode of Basho live recordings. On these five discs we are treated to some remarkable pieces that have never been published, as well as surprising renditions of old favourites. Compiled from Basho’s sprawling personal collection of master tapes (discovered during the production of Voice of the E…
Žaltys
The new album by Polish guitarist Raphael Rogiński is named after the grass snake Žaltys, a revered household spirit in Lithuanian folklore, and explores themes of Eastern European mythology and nature. As a conduit of cultural exchange, "Žaltys" connects with Rogińsk’s previous work, most recently his critically acclaimed 2023 album "Talàn".
"Žaltys" is deeply rooted in the rolling hills of the Suwałki region, in the northeast of Poland, where Rogiński spent childhood vacations and became intri…
European Primitive Guitar (1974-1987)
NTS presents European Primitive Guitar, a compilation of instrumental guitar compositions, mapping out European analogues of the American Primitive Guitar movement, spearheaded by John Fahey in the 1950s. European Primitive Guitar spans works directly influenced by and responding to Fahey’s approach to composition, alongside works by artists that arrived at similar conclusions independently.
The music is, at once, both starkly traditional and contemporary. This is no more evident than with the …
Still Valentine's Day 1969
Sandy Bull was an American folk musician who rose to prominence with a series of albums on the Vanguard label in the 1960's and 70's. Still Valentine's Day 1969 is pulled from two live shows recorded at The Matrix in San Francisco in 1969 with Bull playing shimmering electric guitar and oud, accompanied by tape loops. Previously available on CD, but now out of print in all formats - this is the first ever vinyl pressing and includes the original liner notes from Byron Coley.
Two Improvisations
*250 copies limited edition* "The first full length LP by Joshua Massad and Dylan Aycock. Massad is a tabla player living in India and studying under Zakir Hussain. Massad and Aycock came together in Tulsa to record these improvisations live at the legendary Church Studio which was founded by Leon Russell in the 70's. Over a few nights they captured some moments in the studio before it came under new ownership and just before Joshua moved to India. Aycock improvising on 12-string with Massad acc…
Anima
*100 copies limited edition* Raoul Eden is a french solo guitarist in the American primitive tradition. Leaving behind strumming, he began playing fingerstyle guitar. Coming from the old European continent, Raoul Eden has singular influences, which he puts down to the crossroad position of his roots – between the eastern and western world, north and south. Arabic music has always been present around him; he is fond of Gnawa music and plays guembri (a Gnawa bass lute also known as a sintir, gimbr…