Folk /
To Catch a Ghost: Field Recordings from Madagascar
This is Sublime Frequencies' second volume of transcendent musical field recordings from central and southern Madagascar, produced by Charles Brooks. Like the grand beauty and wonder of its flora and fauna, Madagascar's music is completely unique. Whether the tempos are fast with polyrhythmic precision or slow in the form of a Kabosy ballad, once one gets familiar with its sound, it can never be mistaken again. Charles Brooks has been traveling to Madagascar and living with these spectacular art…
Music of Northern Laos
Music of Northern Laos, subtitled Provinces of Luang Namtha et Phongsaly. One part of Akuphone's collection of Laotian music. Includes liner notes in English, French, and Japanese and a download code. Akuphone presents a collection of recordings of various musical practices from the Laotian provinces of Champasak, Attapeu, Sekong, Saravan, Luang Namtha and Phongsaly. These documents are a perfect introduction to the traditional music of South Laos minority groups. Popular modern music is widely …
Musica De Venezuela 1972-81
LP version. Includes two full-sized inserts: Includes download code; Edition of 300. "After a concert of Kenyan singer Ogoya Nengo in Berlin in 2015 in a pleasant conversation Guillermo Lares told me about his father, Oswaldo Lares, a studied architect who, parallel with his professional activity, began to make field recordings of the traditional and indigenous Venezuelan music from the early 1960s onwards up until today. His search and fascination for finding the musical roots of his country le…
Ishq Ke Maare: Sufi Songs from Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan
A searing assemblage of Islamic Sufi spiritual music from the hinterlands of Sindh and Punjab, this compilation marks Sublime Frequencies' debut release of field recordings from Pakistan. Recorded and compiled by Arshia Fatima Haq, founder of Discostan - a collective of artists from an imagined federation of states from Beirut to Bangkok via Bombay - this is a rare, unfiltered collection of devotional music ranging from hypnotic solo instrumentals and vocal lamentations to euphoric ensemble qaww…
Where the Mountains Meet the Sky: Folk Music of Ladakh
Music from Ladakh recorded during the making of the film The Song Collector (2014) by director Erik Koto, with additional material recorded by Bill Kite in 1992. "Situated high in the Western Himalaya, Ladakh is one of the great cultural crossroads of Asia. For centuries, it sat at the hub of ancient trade routes that connected the Silk Road to India, Tibet, and Kashmir. Each year, once the winter snows had melted from the high passes surrounding Ladakh, its markets would buzz with merchants fro…
Music From The Mountain Provinces
In 1988, David Blair Stiffler risked life and limb to document under-recorded cultural groups living lives of extreme isolation in the mountainous Philippine regions of Nueva Ecija, Aurora, and Luzon. These are the fruits of that expedition. In the grand tradition of the ethnographic recordings that made up the majority of Folkways' vast and significant catalog comes Music from the Mountain Provinces. By the mid-1980s, David Blair Stiffler was already a most-decorated recordist, with eight Folkw…
Lost Train Blues: John & Alan Lomax and the Early Folk Music
"Lost Train Blues features 22 selections from the vast holdings of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, 13 of them have never been issued before. The record includes work songs, ballads, blues, political and union songs, guitar, banjo and fiddle music and Native American vocal music. These recordings were made between 1933 and 1950 and represent the birth of the folk music collections at the Library of Congress, now the largest repository of folk and enthographic holdings in …
The Indian Music Of Chiapas, Mexico
The Indian Music Of Chiapas, Mexico'. In the mid 1970's Richard Alderson made these amazing recordings in Chiapas, Mexico. A very unique blend of ancient music and modern rhythms. Here we have modern Mayan people singing folk songs accompanied by guitar, ragged brass bands, and much more. A trip into a very beautiful world. The cover is a faux Folkways style wrap around print on an old school "tip on" jacket. Includes liner notes. A co-release with Mississippi Records."The music of the indigenou…
A closely woven fabrik
For a number of years as West Head Project, we've been making site specific sound events and recordings at outdoor locations - initially these were held at West Head in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. We've gone on to play in special sites around Australia and this disc documents our work on Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania where we were resident for 10 days, guests of 10 Days on the Island Festival and Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania. Auditory transmogrification of Tasmani…
Strings
A sublime constellation of sound miniatures divided into 3 long tracks (at once random and simultaneous) of delicate field recordings and found objects transformed and woven into intricate electronic tapestries, a slowly building "ambient" work with a unique sense of melancholy. Stefano Pilia's Strings is a diary composition began in 2004, a series of subtle epiphanies followed by a somewhat enigmatic resolve or 'answers', richly spacious explorations that appears suspended in time, with distan…
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems consists of location recordings made during the summer and fall of 2008 of the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain Ð gondolas (aerial cable cars), funiculars, and chairlifts Ð of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations, in different parts of Switzerland. In this way the album is a sonic investigation of the integration of such technology into the Swiss social-geographical landscape. Recorded from …
The Sound of Insects
'The Sound of Insects' is the Soundtrack for Peter Liechti's film with the same title without the narrative voice. The movie is Peter Liechti's documentary account of a man alone in the wilderness, committing suicide by starvation, and the subsequent decay of his mind and body. Norbert Möslang's original score for 'The Sound of Insects' received the Cinema Eye Award for Outstanding Achievement in Composing at the 2011 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking and the Swiss Film Award 2010 for …
Unter den linden / Und transit
The 'Grundton' of this 30-minute composition is the recording of the concert given at SND Studios Sheffield (UK) in March 2009, entitled 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' by Mark Fell and powered with d&b speakers by Tony Myatt (MRC, University of York). The sounds of planes have been recorded in Mallorca (Spain) in 1987, and in Pilat (France) in 2009. This music comes after HCDC, composed in November 2008 after the death of Daniel Charles Ð his last days were darkened by brea…
Red Favorite
Red Favorite, a cycle of compositions for guitars, electronics and voices created by Jeremy Pisani was first released as a limited edition CD on Spirit of Orr and is now offered, as it was originally conceived to appear, on an LP. He moved closer and looked through the peephole. And he saw: the world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle space with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now…
Billowy Mass
'Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman began making sound in the mid 1990s in New York City where they were among the first labels to take advantage of affordable cd-r technology to distraibute non-commercial works. They soon became known by their early use of folk and acoustic electronic sounds. Educated in the fine arts, by 2000 they were invited by art institutions to make large scale installations that included sound as an essential element. In 2002 they won an Award of Distinction in Digital …