Folk /
Jumble Queen
Temporary Super Offer! English singer-songwriter Bridget St. John grew up in a musical family in Surrey, beginning on piano, viola and trumpet before picking up the guitar in high school. In the late 1960s she met the brilliant John Martyn who quickly became a fan and brought her music to a larger audience, which included the legendary DJ John Peel, for whose label Dandelion St. John recorded her first three albums.
Jumble Queen, St. John’s fourth album, was originally released in 1974 on Chrys…
Chelsea Girl
She is beautiful. And in a world where so much can easily be possessed on a whim or for a promise, she is not comparable. She has a clear, pure ring, a trueness, like an arrow that has hit an inner mark and can’t be wedged loose. Her voice and her manner, that stretch farther into the past than perhaps she realizes, may set the new style: an existential pop style that is as earthy as Mary Travers (Peter, Paul & Mary) yet more elegant, more isolated. Her name is Nico. I don’t know where she was b…
Alive In America 1974
This album features Fairport Convention's 1974 live recording from their USA tour, making its debut on vinyl. The band, founded in 1967 by Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings, and Shaun Frater, evolved through lineup changes, with Sandy Denny steering them towards traditional British music. Liege & Lief marked the inclusion of fiddler Dave Swarbrick. By 1974, Dave Pegg replaced Hutchings. This vinyl release captures a pivotal moment in the band's history during their USA tour.
I’m The Sky: Studio And Demo Recordings, 1964–1971
*2023 stock* Norma Tanega’s I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971 is a comprehensive survey of the pioneering folk artist’s two commercially released studio albums, an unreleased album, and a trove of unheard demos. Before playing a pivotal part in folk music’s cultural crossover in the ‘60s, Tanega was a curious little girl born at the very end of the ‘30s to a multicultural Navy family in Long Beach, California. Her parents often brought her to Los Angeles for piano lessons, and e…
Iron Day
North London’s midnight man tumbles out his treehouse to deliver twelve potions of minor healing in “Iron Day”, his questing, soul-salvaging songbook. Brimming with majesty and maraud in equal parts, Genghis Cohn synthesises trad. English folk and woe with surrealist dream sequences on this debut long-player. A romance of two hedgehogs, devotional bone temples, broken shadows and sausage kings, GC conjures a grand slab of folk music that, in a warmly recognisable form, challenges its ancient rew…
London Conversation
London Conversation is the first album by John Martyn, released on Island Records in 1967. Largely self-penned, the album is much more folk oriented than his blues/jazz tinged later releases. Recording was completed by 9 August and the album was released when Martyn was 19 in October 1967. The album reputedly cost £158 to record. The cover photo was taken by Barry Wentzel on the roof of Island Records boss Chris Blackwell's flat in Cromwell Road, London.
Manifestación
*2023 stock* Pigmy is the solo project of Vicente Maciá, founding member of 90s Spanish psych band Carrots. Highly influenced by late 60s / early 70s UK psych, folk-rock and baroque pop (think Magna Carta, Fairfield Parlour, Pete Dello, Duncan Browne, Cat Stevens, Amazing Blondel…) as well as Spanish 70s folk-pop / SSW (Solera, José y Manuel, Vainica Doble…), Pigmy surprised everyone with his previous two albums, “Miniaturas” and “Hamsterdam”, which are now cult items between psych-folk fans.
Af…
Meçhul: Singles & Rarities
Erkin Koray and Sublime Frequencies are pleased to present this collection of rare tracks and lesser-heard singles. All tracks were recorded and released in Turkey between 1970 – 1977 and culled from Koray's personal vinyl collection. Includes exclusive photos and remastered audio. What more is there to say about Erkin Koray? An iconic guitar and songwriting genius. A voice of gold – Having founded the country’s first ever rock and roll group in 1957, he is regarded worldwide as the father of T…
Playing Guitar - The Easy Way
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Here's Lantern Heights' personal tribute to the one and only Michael Chapman, a hero in his own right, a 'Fully Qualified Survivor' (just to mention one of his most successful creations). An unreleased live album on vinyl in the form of an astonishing trio." A live set recorded at Nottingham's Playhouse Theatre on July 23rd 1977 by Chapman and a power house rhythm section in Lindisfarne bassist Rod Clements and former John Mayall drummer Keef Hartley. Some of his…
Something Special
The three years spent on MGM Records between 1966 and 1968 were golden ones for Lee Hazlewood. He spent them working with his muse, Suzi Jane Hokom, writing a still-unreleased book, The Quiet Revenge of Elmo Furback, competing with Phil Spector from their respective studios, and coming up with the formula for the "boy/girl” songs for which he’d become famous. In fact, the unflattering portrait on the cover of Something Special did little to hint at how hip this late-flowering talent (he was in h…
Shirk
*Edition of 300* Shirk is the new AOR flavored free improvisation solo album by Sam Shalabi featuring Eric Chenaux and Nadah El-Shazly where Synth Pop and Sound Poetry fester. Sam Shalabi is an Egyptian-Canadian composer, improviser and guitarist living between Montreal and Cairo. Starting out during the late 70s punk era, his work has evolved into an experimental synthesis of modern Arabic Music that incorporates free improvisation, traditional Arabic music, noise, classical, text, and jazz. Ot…
Distances
*Limited edition of 400 copies.* "Brilliant new instrumental fork-bending from the always amazing Elkhorn, presented here in a quartet setting I had not heard before. The basic band remains Drew Gardner on electric guitar and Jesse Sheppard on acoustic, but as often seems to happen with these guys, there are a couple more faces in the studio. This time it's two drummers. One is Ian McColm, a Virginia tub monster who has played in many excellent situations, including a 2012 Feeding Tube duo casse…
Seance
*2022 stock.* A Colourful Storm presents Seance, a new set of songs by Maxine Funke. Following a productive recording period beginning with Silk (2018) and ending with Forest Photographer (2020), Seance marks a remarkable levitation of Funke’s tender, softly spoken songcraft first documented on Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) into new creative heights. Folksong confessionals with the burden of memory. Ghostly confines, murmurs from the cracks. Soil, blood and skin. The beauty and mundanity of the ev…
And Then There Were Three
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Here's Lantern Heights' personal tribute to the one and only Michael Chapman, a hero in his own right, a 'Fully Qualified Survivor' (just to mention one of his most successful creations). An unreleased live album on vinyl in the form of an astonishing trio." A live set recorded at Nottingham's Playhouse Theatre on July 23rd 1977 by Chapman and a power house rhythm section in Lindisfarne bassist Rod Clements and former John Mayall drummer Keef Hartley. Some of his…
Magic Lady
*In process of stocking* Spriguns Of Tolgus (later shortened to just Spriguns) were a British folk-rock group formed in 1972, who have long been admired by connoisseurs of that era. Having made two self-funded albums, they attracted a major label deal with Decca for two further LPs, which demonstrated their growing originality, and caught the attention of some significant figures in that world.
After two Decca albums Mandy decided to form her own label and rebranded as Mandy Morton and Spriguns …
Stories
”David Blue was the peer of any singer in this country, and he knew it, and he coveted their audiences and their power, he claimed them as his rightful due. And when he could not have them, his disappointment became so dazzling, his greed assumed such purity, his appetite such honesty, and he stretched his arms so wide, that we were all able to recognize ourselves, and we fell in love with him.” - Leonard Cohen
David Blue is the ‘blue’ in Bob Dylan’s “Baby Blue”, the voluble chain-smoking pinbal…
Hölderlins Traum
"Debut album by this legendary German folk outfit centered around the family core of brothers Christian and Jochen Grumbcow and including Christian's wife, Nanny, as the band's lead singer. Another sample of Dieter Dierk's talent for turning otherwise average folk albums into something else, their album for Pilz was a refined and complex work which included such remarkable guests as Bröselmaschine's Peter Bursch on sitar or Walter Westrupp on flute. A German progressive folk master opus which to…
Sophisticated Beggar
*2022 stock* This is where it all began, with a slim volume of poems and psychedelic ditties set to music, backed by a simple Revox machine, and transformed by instrumental turns that display British cult hero Roy Harper's deft guitar work. "Girlie," "Big Fat Aeroplane," and "Legend," while steeped in traditional folk idioms, show hints of Harper's unique songwriting style. His caustic wit and passion are already evident in the wordplay of this 1966 debut. "Forever" is as pretty a love song as y…
Folkjokeopus
*2022 stock* 'This Shel Talmy-produced album is as sprawling and unwieldy as its title. Always a determined eclectic, Harper tries to cover a lot of ground here, and his effort is impressive. The influences of Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch, Donovan, and maybe even early Al Stewart hover over most of this folk-rock. Harper tries to cram too many musical and (especially) lyrical ideas together here, and several of his heart-on-the-sleeve narrative folktales ramble on for too long, with an obscurity that …
Kazuki Tomokawa 1975–1977
Tip! A poet, soothsayer, bicycle race tipster, actor, prolific drinker, self-taught guitarist, and living legend of Japanese sound, Kazuki Tomokawa catapulted into Tokyo’s avant-folk scene in the mid-1970s, forging a sound and sensibility marked by throat-wrenching vocals and searing ennui. Among his musical peers in postwar Japan, Tomokawa distinguished himself as a pioneer of radical individualism. He had “the personality of a hydrogen bomb”—as the notorious ultraleft band the Brain Police on…