Folk / Roots
431 products
Korlakang, a fresh four‑piece band emerging from Thonburi on Bangkok’s west side, delivers a debut double‑sider 7" on Guruguru Brain. Blending the melodic beauty of Thai traditional music with the hazy textures of 70s psychedelic rock, the group reshapes these elements into a contemporary ethno‑groove.
Incredibly, Yoshiko Sai's masterpiece, Taiji no Yume, was quietly released on cassette in 1977! This legendary collector's item, known only to a few, is now being happily reissued in its original cassette format. Following her first album, Yuji Ohno returns as arranger, lending greater musical support to Sai's world of sublime strangeness, reminiscent of the works of Kyūsaku Yumeno. As the title suggests, "A Fetus's Dream" is a journey deeper into the inner spiritual world. Yoshiko Sai, at the tender age of 24, was an isolated figure—a poet, painter, and singer. The jacket features an illustration by Sai herself, distinct from those on the CD and LP. This is truly a must-have collector's item for fans.
PRE-ORDERSep 18, 2026 (EST) LP - Black SS083lp 6669454152402 $13.00 3 TOTAL 3 Teranga, the final album in the Wau Wau Collectif trilogy, the dreamy cross-cultural collaboration across cultures, finds the band finally coming together. Taking its name from the Wolof word “teranga” is used to express a welcomeness, a hospitality to others, and something loosely as a shared meeting - an apt title for the album that is an expression of a meeting. The project began in the village of Toubab Dialaw in 2018, where two musicians Arouna Kane and Karl-Jonas Winquist first conceived of the idea. Over the subsequent years, the project evolved, with the two producers trading files back and forth over WhatsApp, incorporating their network of friends and colleagues into what would become a the Wau Wau Collectif, culminating in their first album “Yaral Sa Doom” (2021) and "Mariage” (2022). Their latest album, Teranga, is the third entry and final entry in this trilogy, finalized and mixed during the the band's first live tour - a five week sprawling journey across Europe with "three swedes, three Senegalaise, and a french driver, a lovely mess of languages”, Karl-Jonas explains. At the heart at the heart of Wau Wau Collective is a strong musical foundation, borne not just by the wide cultural swath from which the collective draws inspiration but from the deftly talented musicians - composed and performed with a staggering 26 different songwriters and musicians, playing an impressive array of instrumentation, from balfon, ngoni, calabasse, violin, cello, saxophone, and omnicord. The resulting sound is complicated to place, but sonically has certainly found its place in Teranga. At times, dreamy and meditative, but imbued with an organic soul, a wholly unique sound that is both anachronistic and future facing. “Oh, Africa” could be at home on a classic reissue, with an almost Turkish guitar riff, where 100 ans (their first live studio recording) reminiscent of early 2000s Amadou et Mariam. With roots in avant garde (Karl-Jonas has cited Barney Wilen's Moshi as an inspiration) while Wau Wau draws inspirations from these experiments, though diverging in their dedication to the collaborative spirit - a project enabled by cellphones, WhatsApp, and mp3s zipping around the internet - slightly ironic considering how acoustic and grounded and human it feels. As we close the chapter on the trilogy, Karl-Jonas insists that this may well be just the beginning: “we have barely started in some ways” he says, with plans shaping in the next year for getting the whole band together, and more tours on the horizon, more hope, more humanity, and more coming together.
“It rained more days than it didn’t. The beds of silt turned up notched pieces of quartzite and flint. Water came up through the floorboards in the sixteen-sided candle room. The house was empty except for what the flood brought in. Miles on the river of salt and silver in first light.”
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The final document from the New England collective Old Saw is available as a 2xLP via Lobby Art Editions, with photography by Dylan Hausthor. Many of the known personnel from the last records circle back here on The Wringing Cloth to close out the ride with their signature fog and low burning momentum.
Like the sharpshooting carnival contestant who knows that the winning practice isn’t to aim for the red star itself, but rather to shoot out a perimeter around the star and thus remove it, Old Saw have historically dealt with forms by tracing their boundaries rather than going for the target outright. If the first three records hinted at but never touched song-shaped forms, The Wringing Cloth makes at least glancing contact while retaining the layered haze and drawl that threads their sound together.
Contrary to the often-used ambient tag, Old Saw shows up here in a markedly active and sculpted form — manipulating, unwinding, and pivoting with a strange and warped precision. What has always been uncanny about this music is that it arrives in a state at once familiar and obscured, like a memory weighed down with sensory information but no identifying details to place it. The Wringing Cloth walks off further into that geographical dream without time or language until it’s just a speck of light.
- JS
Natalie Wildgoose's new work, Rural Hours, recorded deep in the Yorkshire Dales with Chris Brain and Owen Spafford. In a space without heating or electricity, piano and folk ensemble blend with the sounds of the fire and wind, quietly depicting the land's memories and losses.
The acoustic unit MIZ, formed by members of Japan's hugely popular band MONO NO AWARE, released in 2022.
More top tier biz from a resurgent Scenic Route label, this time in a more bare-boned and classic sounding singer-songwriter mode courtesy of Oakland-raised and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Knight, produced by Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) and tipped if you’re anywhere on the line from Joanne Robertson to Sam Amidon, Dagmar Zuniga to Mark William Lewis. "Ivy Knight’s songs reflect a city dreamer creating a new world to sink into: across Iron Mountain, she conjures imagery of barren Southwest American landscapes as she recounts memories that feel beamed from generations past, channeling folk melodies and old trail ballads of the late 50s and early 60s. Much of her work has been created both within, and in reference to the Hudson Valley, where she met frequent collaborator Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) who produced and engineered."
in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music Recorded 2019-2024 'the gold metal must be wrung a bore is a well lit mine where everything belongs to me' Dagmar Zuniga makes music that feels both intimate and expansive: songs drift like disrupted signals, carried by harmony, tape hiss, and a strong sense of touch. Her debut solo album in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music — written and recorded in New York, Norway, and Athens, Georgia over a period of five years on her longtime companion, the Tascam 424 — was uploaded to Bandcamp and YouTube in January 2025 through Dagmar’s friends People's Coalition of Tandy. The project quickly garnering over two hundred thousand views and the attention of artists such as Mount Eerie, who invited her to tour with them that summer. This year, what was once a jewel of tapped-in algorithms and message boards will meet the world at large, with in filth arriving digitally on March 4, and physically on April 10, via AD 93.
Ignatz, the long-running project of Belgian musician Bram Devens, has spent two decades refining a distinctive approach to songcraft—built on repetition, subtle shifts, and an ear for the uncanny. Across a steady stream of releases on labels including (K-RAA-K)³, Ultra Eczema and Fonal, his work remains instantly recognisable while continually evolving. I Don’t Know marks a striking departure. Following earlier recordings centred on guitar, Devens turns to piano, uncovering a new, more skeletal language. The instrument first entered his orbit in the mid-2010s, when he inherited a family piano and began exploring its possibilities as a self-taught player. Recorded at home in Landen, these pieces feel sparse and unsettled, carrying a raw intimacy that sets them apart from his previous work. The result is a haunted, deeply personal album that reframes Ignatz’s sound without losing its core identity.
Anyone smote by DINTE’s ‘Begena Songs…’ will be properly enchanted by this more expansive - yet still intimate - suite of snapshots from Ethiopia, ’71, spanning the unique, twanging harp sound thru to Amharic poetry, Afar chants, and spellbinding flutes dances One that catches the breath with seldom felt sensations, ‘Ethiopian Musics 1971’ patently owes as much to the incredible performers as their faithful representation in Ragnar Johnson & Ralph Harrisson’s recordings. All secreted to tape on a Uher Report L stereo reel-to-reel recorder, they epitomise an era of ethnomusicological preservation, when the likes of labels such as Lyrichord and Folkways were already decades deep “in the field”, documenting long-held traditions practically untouched by an encroaching, western modernity. And perhaps most crucially, the recordings beautifully render the acoustic settings and vivid vibes with an immersive quality in stark opposition to the era of dry, so-called audiophile studio recordings of ethnic musics to come - all the better for immersing in this wonderfully unfamiliar world. The abundance of singular tones and strong, rare feels they produce is quite staggering to our northern english ears, and we reckon also for anyone else, for that matter. Opening to a joyful couplet of a bluesy ’Song about the beauty of women’, and the almost shanty-like swing and hard rhythm of ’Tej Beit Song’, the set reels to distinctive pieces of Ethiopian Christian song set to begena, or ‘Harp of David’, buzz, and a landscape-scale, 13 minute ‘Love Song (Mary Armede)’. A gripping ‘Drum Song (Jigsaw)’ will be mana to rhythm fiends, and a number of standout flute pieces reprise the frisson of our first encounter with this discipline on Sublime Freq’s ‘Staring into the Sun - Ethiopian Tribal Music’ set of 2012, most potently on the pluming twin pipes of the ‘Fila Flute Dance’ parts, whilst the pentatonic craar (6-stringed lyre) parts surely strike nerves for lovers of the rawest blues, and hail the liberated legacy of Mary Armede, a folk singer-fashion designer of Azmari heritage who surely warrants further investigation. No doubt this is one of the most striking archival discoveries of 2026, acutely advised to anyone enchanted with music from this corner of the world from Éthiopiques to begena harp, thru to Ragnar Johnson’s other arenas of research for Ideologic Organ in Yemen or Papua New Guinea. Dive in without delay.
Originally released in 1997 by Sub Pop, 'Loneliest In The Morning' was Doiron’s second solo release and her first release as Julie Doiron (having dropped the moniker Broken Girl). This re-issue comes complete with three bonus tracks: “Second Time” from split 7” with Snailhouse and the tracks “Who Will Be The One” and “Too Much” from the 7” release Doiron recorded with the Wooden Stars. Loneliest In The Morning — an album Pitchfork described as “catchy enough to knock Liz Phair upside the head” — is a critical piece to the Doiron catalog and given the wonderful relationship Doiron and Jagjaguwar have forged over the last decade, this re-issue is particularly significant.
Julie Doiron began her career in music in 1990 at the age of 18 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada playing bass in Eric's Trip, a folky yet psychedelic band that were to become the undisputed underground darlings of Canadian music. Eric's Trip were the first of many maritime Canadians signed to Sub Pop and found international recognition, releasing several albums and touring widely. Following 1996's Purple Blue, Eric's Trip announced their breakup and Julie Doiron embarked on her solo career, first releasing songs as Broken Girl and soon under her own name starting with Loneliest In The Morning, which was recorded in Memphis, TN with producer Dave Shouse of the Grifters. She has released seven full-lengths and three EPs, including the Juno Award-winning Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars album.
Cut in three days in 1975, Doug Firebaugh’s Performance One captures a young songwriter alone in a Roanoke, Virginia motel room, chasing Nashville dreams through cosmic Americana haze. Self‑written and performed, with only a single pedal steel guest, it first appeared on a small grey‑market label. This Numero Group 50th‑anniversary remaster preserves its faded, wandering beauty.
Bulayo gathers extraordinary acoustic guitar performances recorded across Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and DR Congo in 1979–80 by British-Kenyan musician John Low. Travelling as a student rather than a producer, Low sought out masters of regional fingerstyle traditions, visiting and sometimes staying with artists including Jean-Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo and Emmanuel Mulemena, while also documenting under-recorded players such as Francis Kitime and Mtonga Wanganangu. Captured in homes, village squares and bars, these recordings are relaxed and immediate, with laughter, conversation and everyday sounds woven into the music. Far removed from studio polish, they offer a rare sense of how this guitar music was actually heard and shared. Some tracks previously surfaced on John Storm Roberts’ long out-of-print Original Music compilations; others appear here for the first time. All have been restored and remastered from Low’s original tapes by Andrew Walter (Honest Jon’s, Abbey Road). With notes and lyrics by John Low and commentary from Tanzanian scholar John Kitime, Bulayo stands as a vital document of East and Central Africa’s rich guitar traditions.
Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.
Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.
Mei Semones’ sweetly evocative blend of jazz, bossa nova and math-y indie rock is not only a way for her to find solace in her favorite genres, but is an intuitive means of catharsis. “Blending everything that I like together and trying to make something new – that's what feels most natural to me,” says the 23-year-old Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and guitarist. “It’s what feels most true to who I am as an artist.” ‘Tsukino’, Mei’s debut, self-released EP, is being released physically for the first time ever on Bayonet Records! The EP will be released by itself on CD & Tape formats, and will be included in a vinyl pressing on the B-side of Semones’ landmark EP, ‘Kebutomushi’! Plinking guitar tones and asymmetrical time signatures exemplify Semones’ forays into angular indie rock more now than ever before. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing music at a young age, starting out on piano at age four before moving to electric guitar at age eleven. After playing jazz guitar in high school, she went on to study guitar performance with a jazz focus at Berklee College of Music. College is where she met her current bandmates, including string players Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, whose respective viola and violin add softness and multidimensionality to Mei’s intricate guitar work. After releasing a slew of singles and an EP in 2022, coinciding with her move to New York City, Mei and her band have since gone on to collaborate with post-bossa balladeer John Roseboro and embark on their first-ever tour with the melodic rock outfit Raavi. Semones chronicles infatuation, devotion, and vulnerability in her songs, complete with sweeping strings, virtuosic guitar-playing and heartfelt lyrics sung in both English and Japanese, that have all become part of her sonic trademark: ornately catchy, genre-fusing compositions serving as the backdrop to tender lyrics touching on the universalities of human emotion.
Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first ever solo Donso n’goni recording from octogenarian Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Active in the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet, Bothén travelled to Mali in 1971, eventually making his way to the Wassoulou region in the country’s south where he encountered the Donso n’goni, the sacred harp of the hunter caste of Wassoulou society. Though playing the instrument has traditionally been restricted to those who belong to the hunters’ brotherhood, Bothén found an enthusiastic teacher in Brouema Dobia, who, after many months of intensive one-on-one lessons, gave Bothén his blessing to play the instrument both traditionally and in his own style. Returning to Sweden, he would go on to pass on what he had learned to Don Cherry and play the Donso n’goni in a wide variety of inventive settings, including the driving Afro-jazz-fusion of his Trancedance (reissued as BT118).
The seven pieces of Christer Bothén Donso n’goni offer up a stunning showcase of Bothén’s work on this remarkable instrument, heard entirely unaccompanied, except for the final piece where he is joined on a second Donso n’goni by his student and collaborator, the virtuoso bassist Kansan/Torbjorn Zetterberg, and Marianne N’Lemvo Linden on the metal Karanjang scraper. Produced by Johan Berthling (of Fire! & Ghosted) and recorded in three sessions in Stockholm between 2019 and 2023 in richly detailed high fidelity, the instrument’s buzzing, sonorous bass strings make an immediate, overwhelming sonic impression. Hyper-focused on hypnotically repeating pentatonic patterns, the seven pieces are at once relentlessly single-minded and endlessly rich in subtle variations. The concentrated listening environment turns small details, such as the deployment of the instrument’s segesege rattle on two of the pieces, into major events. Six of the seven pieces are traditional, with Bothén contributing the remaining ‘La Baraka’, but the line between tradition and the individual talent is imaginary here: as Bothén explained in a recent interview with The Wire’s Clive Bell, ‘I play traditional and untraditional, and I play the music forward and backward’. While the traditional Wassoulou pieces provide the rhythmic and harmonic elements, Bothén’s individuality as a performer is alive in every moment, felt acutely in boundless variations of attack, improvisational flourishes, and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. Captured entirely live and bristling with spontaneity, this music is undeniably the product of almost half a decade of Bothén’s devotion to the Donso n’goni and its traditional music.
Accompanied by detailed new liner notes by Bothén and stunning colour photos from his time in Mali, Christer Bothén Donso n’goni is a stunning document of a remarkable instrument, played with an almost spiritual intensity by one of contemporary music’s great explorers.
From Melbourne, Australia, singer-songwriter Ruth Parker releases her album, Otherwise Occupied, featuring a rich tapestry of acoustic instruments like guitar, ukulele, accordion, bouzouki, cello, and mandolin, all woven together with her delicate and intimate vocals. The sound, which carefully preserves quiet space, places the album squarely within the indie-folk and singer-songwriter lineage. However, its lush textures and mellow resonance also give it a dream-folk quality, resonating with listeners and allowing them to relive moments of introspection and subtle emotional shifts. Rather than focusing on grand gestures, it's an album that rewards those who lean in to appreciate its finer nuances, wrapping you in a gentle and profound sense of depth.
Geoff Farina’s Southern Records tenure was not just about Karate. His late-90s guitar-and-vocal solo output included the bedroom-recorded Usonian Dream Sequence that echoed The Secret Stars’ intimate lo-fi sentiments, Reverse Eclipse that rode the more delicate fringes of Unsolved-era Karate, and the single Steely Dan, a paean to a contemporaneous guilty pleasure. FFF collects all three long-out-of-print releases here on vinyl for the first time, fastidiously packaged and punctuated with Farina’s written reflections on their making.
Geoff Farina’s Southern Records tenure was not just about Karate. His late-90s guitar-and-vocal solo output included the bedroom-recorded Usonian Dream Sequence that echoed The Secret Stars’ intimate lo-fi sentiments, Reverse Eclipse that rode the more delicate fringes of Unsolved-era Karate, and the single Steely Dan, a paean to a contemporaneous guilty pleasure. FFF collects all three long-out-of-print releases here on vinyl for the first time, fastidiously packaged and punctuated with Farina’s written reflections on their making.
Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions. Are y’all ready for some Hillbilly Erotica? Migration from last album’s Ragas to this new Erotica is another chapter in Bishop’s progress, drifting via songs into the further frontiers of his pappy’s hometown sounds, trancing over and out in their hand-me-down clothes. As with the ragas, the ‘rotica’s hung round the neck of John Fahey’s infamous dubbing of certain traditional American folk sounds as “American Primitive.” A perfectly good thought, but Sir Richard picks his own axe and chose a separate path. Rushing through gutters & picking pickled brains in the saucy headwaters of the down-low & literal American primitive, his hillbilly music is a mash of brined cultural inheritance, mini-ragas and moonshine-drunk savagery breaking out on the frets. As a conception for Sir Rick’s acoustic guitar music, it’s a dynamite means and frame, centering his improvisations in a place overflown with pagan desire and unbound in deliverance. Here he flies up and down the neck, his manner less pristine, yet more exquisite, a flailing, flowing-on-the-river medley through stubborn whitewater turbulence, post-grass and folk’s classical gas. Anybody who takes a snort of this here Hillbilly Erotica will find a frankly spellbinding richness of intent and execution in their ear-mouths. And may thereafter find brain and blightness. It’s fine! As Sir Richard reminds us, Hillbilly Erotica is: “…still exploring the areas around these parts with a similar type of aggression [as Hillbilly Ragas], but as morning light approaches, a clearing or two present themselves, with hills and valleys viewable in the distance inspiring a slightly different sonic landscape. One could be forgiven for feeling a sense of relief from finally arriving from out of the night-time woods to a place which may seem less threatening in the daylight, but it’s a trap - the darkness of night is always right around the corner. Enjoy the postcoital smoke but tread carefully!” Like with Hillbilly Ragas, Sir Richard plays one acoustic guitar on all eight Hillbilly Erotica cuts, no overdubs and, but for the closing “Postcoital Serenade,” improvised entirely. The not-so-sexy ‘sexy’ angle of song titles like “Lick Skillet,” “Sweet Lips,” “Hookers Bend,” and “Finger, Tennessee” is actually actual names for dots on the map in rural TN, each one just five minutes removed – by horse, of course – from Richard’s dad's remote Enville homestead, its town name purloined previously for a song on 2020’s Oneiric Formulary. This ancestral interzone’s a venue of interest for Rick, allowing him to ask the deep questions, like “What the hell has been going on around here with place names like these?” while running down the changes like no one else before. Hillbilly Erotica promises unspoken wonders of the world around each and every dark corner, revelations of legacy, a new spyglass to sight your forebears! Imagined American music at it’s most gorgeous and violent, simply achieved by Sir Richard Bishop through a powerful application of steel-stringed instrumentation and delightfully exhaustive flights of speculative thought.