Psych /
1966
Karen Dalton was a remote, elusive creature. A hybrid of tough and tender with an unearthly voice that seemed to embody a time long past. As is often the case with such fragile beings, she instinctively understood that the only way to survive the harshness of the world around her, was to keep herself hidden. So it comes as no great surprise that she rarely sang in public or ventured into the unnatural setting of a recording studio. Only twice, for 1969’s It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love …
Emtidi
First legit reissue of this debut album from 1970, predating their most commonly known Saat album from 1972. "Emtidi are best remembered nowadays for their classic album Saat, but prior to that release, the duo formed by Maik Hirschfeldt and Dolly Holmes had already released a marvelous LP. This superb debut album is filled with charming folk-oriented material. 6, 7 and 12 string acoustic guitars and beautiful flute arrangements surround the lovely female/male duet voices of Hirschfeldt and…
Third Dimension Blues
RESTOCKED, FEW AVAILABLE A sublime collisions of John Fahey-esque acid guitar picking set against trance-indulged eastern raga "Abate’s 4th album stands as the zenith of his solo work to date. Opening with an acid guitar and harmonica crescendo, somewhere between the Missisipi Delta and the desert, ‘Third Dimension Blues’ turns soon into a free, deep exploration of the possibilities of Maurizio’s instrument. The love he puts on every single touch of his strings, the warmth and the beauty of thes…
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
another gem, a wonderful collection of obscure solo acoustic guitar tunes from the mid 60s up to the dawn of the 80s -- beautiful work from a slew of players we've never heard of -- but we'd put right up there with Fahey and Basho in the way they reach from the back porch to the cosmos with just their fingers and some strings! One thing we love about this set, and the Numero Group releases to date, is how deep they dig and what beauty they unearth, somehow with impeccable sound quality. S…
Starsailor
180 gram audiophile vinyl. Starsailor is a culmination of Buckley's experiments and with
former Mother of Invention Bunk Gardner on sax and alto flute, the story
is complete. This album endures as one of the most legendary albums
ever made by a singer/songwriter. Tim Buckley's most experimental album and one of his most artistically successful. Buckley's recorded output was uneven; he never quite comfortably fit into the singer-songwriter mold and tried out all sorts of musical personas durin…
Luck In The Valley
Like all pre-war recordings and all of Rose's releases, this album was recorded live. It was not created using overdubs but rather by recording a few 'takes' and selecting the best performance out of those. Rose stated, 'I wanted the songs to have an immediacy and spontaneity as they were being recorded. All the musicians chosen for the record know how to play the songs without overworking the material, but at the same time creating memorable accompaniments on the spot.' Several of the so…
Smoke Song
Third in a trio of limited edition new LP’s from the ever mysterious Vibracathedral crew, returning from another relatively quiet period with an uncompromising set of outre’ jams. Slightly reorganized around a lineup of stalwarts Mick Flower and Adam Davenport with frequent collaborators John Godbert (Total) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), the band here stretches way, way out over these six sides, taking in several different styles while maintaining “that” sound all the way through…
Myrrh
this mindblowing album was originally released in 1972, when Robin Williamson was at the time still a member of the Incredible String Band, the ensemble he started with Mike Heron in 1966. These ten songs are all Williamson originals, with the exception of"Strings In The Earth And Air" by Ivan Pawle.Where his band's recordings were then getting increasingly electric, this is a return to a more acoustic bearing. This set includes some gorgeous, if overlooked, songs from the vast catalogue William…
Vanguard Visionaries
Sandy Bull may have been the first man in the '60s folk renaissance to foreground modal drones in his music and thereby forge a link between Scottish ballads, jazz, and sitar meditations. The results are seismic, and when seen in the light of the millennial freak-folk scene, they cast Bull as one of the genre's primary father figures. VANGUARD VISIONARIES seeks to introduce neophytes to Bull's finest noodlings, covering ground that's similar to the previous Vanguard best-of, RE-INVENTIONS. The d…
Ore
Fluid forms of drones, doomy laments, & folk melodies fleshed out from a backbone of sine oscillators & violin. Behind these droning squalls is the lone figure of Marielle Jakobsons. Armed w/ her tiny army of sonic weapons, she concocts a lavaflow of melodies only to then bury them underneath a flowing river of muck. Limited to 500.
The Dawn Wind
Australian folkie Paul Adolphus created some magical music back in the mid-1970s: mostly acoustic, intimate songs with a bewitching psychedelic gloss. This excellent obscurity was recorded in Japan in '73, and although it was critically acclaimed, it was never widely distributed. The album, reissued intact in 2007, also features Mitsu Harada on organ and piano.
Synanthesia
Long awaited CD reissue of extinct & much sought after Uk 1970 folk rock masterpiece. Exquisite use of echo-flutes, acoustic guitars, bongos, violin. Melodic and sensitive wispy voices blend magical and hauntingly with instruments to give you beautiful songs like 'Minerva', Morpheus", 'Tale of spider' & 'the fly'..... special remastered for CD. Never officially issued on CD. Features comprehensive liner notes by the group's leader. Booklet features many rare photographs. Contains rare bonus mate…
Bill Fay
Bill Fay's first, originally released in 1970 on Deram Nova; this is presumably the same 2005 24-bit remaster from original tapes as Eclectic used, with 2 bonus tracks from his staggeringly great1967(!) single, new liner notes by Mark Powell , etc. Very well done. Bill Fay is an enigmatic UK based singer, songwriter and pianist whose work is impossible to categorise. His late '60s and early '70s work has a strong cult following, is highly regarded by many music journalists and is dark and haunti…
Forest
The classic debut album by the UK's Forest, originally released in 1969 by Harvest. As the 1960s progressed, almost every musical genre was affected by the psychedelic boom -- and folk was no exception. Artists such as Bert Jansch, Davy Graham and Donovan had introduced elements of world music into their repertoires by 1965, and in 1966, The Incredible String Band's debut kicked the door wide open for a generation of young musicians to follow. Forest, whose two Harvest albums have long elated li…
Just Another Diamond Day
Recently voted one of the Top 100 British Albums of all time by the OMM, this CD re-release of Vashti Bunyan's 'Just Another Diamond Day' features the likes of Robert Kirby (of Nick Drake fame), Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) and the Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick, it is also regularly cited as inspiration by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Scout Nibblet... Possibly sounding a bit naïve in retrospect, much of 'Just Another Diamond Day' seems to exist somewher…
Music By William Eaton
Mellow disc of tripped-out experimental acoustic-instrument pieces from composer/instrument designer William Eaton, reissuing a self-released 1978 lp of said. there’s more than a twinge of Fahey/takoma-lineage steel-string wrangling herein, albeit augmented with a certain Partch/Hans Reichel-ish sensibility and unusual recording techniques... but it stays pretty damn “easy on the ears” throughout.. "When I started building instruments, playing guitar took on a whole new dimension. The process of…