Folk / Roots

80 page book with over 50 photos and a 21 track CD. Printed in Belgium by die Keure. Designed by John Hubbard. "Zabelle Panosian sang one of the most amazing notes I've ever heard - so much humanity, sorrow, promise, infinite longing. When I write my novel the main character will be Zabelle's note." -David Harrington, Kronos Quartet "Please listen to the Armenian singer, Zabelle Panosian. [Her ‘Groung'] is a secret song that steals away the breath of those who are fortunate enough to hear it." -Nick Cave "A carefully crafted and detailed, yet succinct biography. Many of us were introduced to Armenian-American singer Zabelle Panosian’s soul-jolting rendition of “Groung” via the 2011 release of To What Strange Place, but here, in Zabelle Panosian: I Am Your Servant, for the first time, we travel with Panosian from her birthplace in Bardizag to her home in New York. We are there in the studio with her at Columbia Records for her historic recordings in lower Manhattan, and we stand with her in the radio studios of WEAF. We become readers of reviews of Panosian’s concerts both celebrated and scathing. We accompany her on performances, minuscule and grand from Waterford to Providence and San Francisco to Fresno, eventually recrossing the Atlantic with her to sing in France, Italy, and Egypt. More than a singer or performer, we learn of Zabelle, the estranged sister, the loving aunt, and the mother who passes the baton to her daughter, Adrina Otero, completing what will be the starting point for future historians or ethnomusicologists wishing to explore Zabelle Panosian and her legacy.” -Richard Breaux, Associate Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Among the most significant Armenian singers in the early twentieth century, Zabelle Panosian made a small group of recordings in New York City in 1917-’18. Unaccountably, she was then largely neglected as an artist for more than half a century. This volume by three dedicated researchers is the first effort to reconstruct the life and work of a woman who had an exceptional and cultivated voice — who toured the world as a performer and made a significant contribution to the cultural lives of the Armenian diaspora, the elevation of Armenian art song, and the relief of survivors of the Armenian genocide. Panosian’s music is derived from a syncretic experience of the Western Armenian village near the sea of Marmara where she was born and a passion for the coloratura sopranos she encountered in Boston. As an immigrant carrying the traumas of dislocation and the loss of her home, she transformed her grief into action, dedicated her life to an expression of the greatest art she could imagine, both from her former life and her new life in America, and she created a path in her wake for her daughter to become a renowned dancer. Tracing her story from the Ottoman Empire to New England, from the concert halls of Italy, Egypt, and France to California, Florida, and South America through two World Wars, the story of Zabelle Panosian is that of a serious talent recognized and celebrated, dismissed and forgotten, year by year, waiting only to be known and loved again.

The Book Of AM is a project begun in 1977 with esoteric philosophical intentions, and featuring words and sounds from around the world and across hundreds of years. Part V, representing Night, for some reason was not completed and never appeared with the rest of the collection, but this crack team, using overdubs and additional composition as well as mixing and mastering techniques, now present the completed final part!

"2015 reissue. Originally released on FBWL in 2000. Remastered in 2014 by Taylor Deupree at 12k." "... For those who believe they've heard all Connors has to offer, seek this out because it will astonish and mystify you while simultaneously changing your mind. For the rest who are fans, this is one of the man's records you need, because it, more than any other, expresses who he was during its recording. Painfully honest, vulnerable, raw, and graceful, Portrait of a Soul is unlike any record ever made." --AllMusic

Songs 9, 11, 12, 13 by Myriam Gendron; 1 by John Jacob Niles; 8 by John Jacob Niles / Myriam Gendron. All other selections: traditional revived by Myriam Gendron. Recorded at home, early 2021. Mixed by Myriam Gendron & Tonio Morin-Vargas. Produced by Myriam Gendron, Eric Villeneuve & Tonio Morin-Vargas. Mastering by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering. Chansons 9, 11, 12, 13 par Myriam Gendron ; 1 par John Jacob Niles ; 8 par John Jacob Niles / Myriam Gendron. Toutes les autres pièces : traditionnelles ravivées par Myriam Gendron. Enregistré à la maison au début de 2021. Mixé par Myriam Gendron & Tonio Morin-Vargas. Réalisé par Myriam Gendron, Eric Villeneuve & Tonio Morin-Vargas. Matriçage par Harris Newman chez Grey Market Mastering.

Following up our early 2020 tape The Sun Is Setting on the World with a further collection of hardcore rebetika recordings from the 1930s through to late '50s. More songs of sorrow, poverty, loss and the end of the world.

This sprawling collection by Belgian loner blues savant Bram Devens aka Ignatz encapsulates the mystery, murk, and melancholy of his uncanny craft at its most windswept and wayward. Originally issued via Goaty Tapes in September of 2015, this long-anticipated vinyl edition expands the saga with an additional 17 minutes of archival material. Deven’s palette remains constant throughout: feathery fingerpicking, modal loops, and intuitive six-string navigations interspersed with candlelit passages of mournful voice, alternately whispered, mumbled, moaned. His is an aesthetic of embers and resin, cracked masks and distant lights, of what’s left behind and what lingers on. I Live In A Utopia was recorded following a relocation from his longtime base of Brussels to Landen, with a second child due soon: “I remember the weather being nice and having just bought a hammock.” The change of scenery seeded a promise of slower days and lighter times – no utopia perhaps, but a sense of faint hope glowing on the horizon. The songs slide between loose acoustic spirituals and smoky basement ragas, late afternoon haze and midnight moons, a seesawing restlessness reflected in the titles (“I Have Found True Love,” “Time Does Not Bring Relief,” “We Used To Smoke Inside”). The fidelity is grainy but vivid, refracted by tape warp and Flemish dust. As always, Deven’s playing is deceptively elegant, raw but precise, attuned to resonance, radiance, and negative space. Echoes of Fahey and Jandek reverberate in certain moments but ultimately the world Ignatz maps is one incomparably his own. A landscape both doomed and dawning, weary but undefeated, tracing outlines of lengthening shadows. “I walk in the sunshine,” he sings, uneasily. This is music of a rare inner wilderness, poised at cryptic crossroads, devoted to its ghosts. I Live In A Utopia stands as an apex work by one of the underground’s most veiled and visionary talents.

180-gram reissue of John Fahey's 1972 major-label debut. "In the liner notes for this wonderful disc, sideman Chris Darrow comments, 'I remember the first time I ever heard him, I thought they'd turned the record from 45 to 33 or something, 'cause I couldn't believe how slow he played.' One of the (many) great beauties in Fahey's approach is just that: he takes his time and savors every last resonance he can wring from his guitar. This 1972 release was his first for a major label (originally on Reprise) after more than a decade of issuing work privately or on small imprints, and also the first instance of Fahey having access to a large ensemble of musicians, including a brass and string section. Still, the extra players don't come close to swamping the session; Fahey is very much in the foreground and a number of the pieces read, essentially, as solo performances. It opens with 'Steamboat Gwine 'Round de Bend,' as gorgeous an example of Fahey's slide guitar work as he ever recorded, languid, soulful, and profound. Similarly, his medley of 'Deep River' and 'Ol' Man River' is steeped in Delta humidity, lazily floating downstream. The tracks with the brass band raise the ghosts of Dixieland, while some of the string accompaniment may recall Van Morrison. In any event, Fahey, major label or not, is simply himself, leisurely rolling along, sharply perceptive in his observations and sumptuously gorgeous in his evocations. A fine effort and certainly something that belongs on the shelves of any fan of the late, very great guitarist." --Brian Olewnick, AllMusic

Rooms With Walls and Windows is the first album by Seattle-by-way-of-Chicago-by-way-of-Buffalo singer, songwriter & guitarist Julie Byrne. Blending psychedelic & traditional folk elements, Julie Byrne creates a highly personal & quietly mystical world that echoes the early work of Leonard Cohen & Vashti Bunyan. Rooms With Walls and Windows' twelve tracks were collected from two limited edition cassette releases, recorded between 2011 & 2012 by Jake Acosta in Chicago, IL. Each song was recorded live, with Julie accompanying herself on fingerpicked acoustic guitar or keyboard. Rooms With Walls & Windows was lovingly remastered for vinyl by Owen Ashworth & Matthew Barnhart.

It's an oversized board, don't miss it. The analog record that was delayed in release has finally arrived! From , which has extremely strong personalities such as C418, CFCF, and Bruce Smear (Beach Fossils) familiar from the "Minecraft" soundtrack, OPN aka Daniel Lopatin's ally Joel Ford, Kevin Morby, The War On Drugs, etc. The debut work of yes / and, a folk duo started by two famous guitarists / studio musicians Meg Duffy in the US indie area who are also participating in works such as Amber Arcades, has arrived. Last year's highest peak indie / ambient folk album created in the shadow of a pandemic! The vast natural beauty of Western Americana and the addictive nostalgia of the early New Age revival to the heyday of drones blend together in an intimate and optimistic view of the universe, a gem of a soundscape.The charged partnership of versatile guitarist Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) and producer Joel Ford (Oneohtrix Point Never, Jacques Greene, North Americans) took shape during pandemic-shadowed studio sessions in Los Angeles, gradually congealing into a poetic sonic language compellingly distinct from their respective discographies. As the moniker alludes to, ‘yes and’ embraces an elusive, curious forward momentum, spiraling but subdued, between divination and dissipation. Despite the album’s experimental nature, its 10 tracks feel distinctly intimate and emotive, imbued with a strange optimism, both open-ended and opaque. The song titles reflect a similar duality, alternately blunt and oblique (“Learning About Who You Are,” “In My Heaven All Faucets Are Fountains”). Their musical instincts are oddly complementary, with Duffy’s tactile fingerpicking and string caresses framed by Ford’s spatial textures and compositional patience, conjuring an elevated theater of rare air and veiled escape. It’s a suite born of friendship and depths, as tangled as it is translucent, somehow barely there yet far beyond the sum of its parts.

For over 50 years, Kan Mikami has stood as a master of the Japanese blues and outsider folk. His unmistakable, powerfully evocative voice and surrealistic poetry reveal a gritty, transgressive life on the margins shot through with evocations of sex and violence, religion and romance. Released in 1991, I¡Çm the Only One Around was Mikami's first album with Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. Records and heralded an artistic renaissance. It marked the beginning of an incredibly productive and wildly creative era for Mikami that extends to the present day. This opening salvo presents the essential core of Mikami¡Çs music; With nothing but his voice and a stripped down electric guitar the album is a powerful, effortlessly emotional statement filled with moments of both brutal passion and gentle revelation. It is unrestrained, direct, brutally honest. It embodies Mikami¡Çs philosophy: ¡ÈIf you¡Çre going to make music, stake your life on it - it¡Çs worth it. Making music is an intensely human act.¡É In the newly translated notes to the album, Hiroyuki Itsuki, one of Japan¡Çs most renowned writers perhaps put it best: ¡ÈWhat erupts here is all the fury and grief of Jōmon Man (the prehistoric people of the Japanese archipelago), lobbed into the middle of a 1990s city. Kan Mikami is unchanging, yet definitely in motion. He advances not forwards, but backwards. Not a retreat, rather he consciously progresses backwards. At the final destination for his full-steam astern poésie lies a massive, gaping black hole, exuding a dazzling, black light. This is the image evoked by the world of Kan Mikami that you can hear on this album.¡É Mikami would go on to release 15 solo albums with P.S.F. as well as numerous collaborative efforts with other giants of the Japanese underground including Motoharu Yoshizawa, Masayoshi Urabe and Keiji Haino, with whom, along with Toshiaki Ishizuka he formed the group Vajra. Black Editions is honored to present the first ever vinyl edition of Kan Mikami¡Çs ¡ÈI¡Çm the Only One Around¡É featuring lyrics translated by Drew Stroud and newly translated notes by Alan Cummings. Remastered and cut to vinyl at Elysian Masters Los Angeles, pressed by RTI, packaged in heavy Stoughton tip-on jackets with insert featuring textured paper, gold foil stamping and metallic inks.

Orfeu Da Conceição was originally a stage play in three acts by poet and lyricist Vinicius De Moraes with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Premiered in 1956 in Rio de Janeiro. The play put the basis for the classic films Orfeu Negro. Needless to remember that Jobim and De Moraes were two seminal figures in Brazilian music, two modernists whose work was a major influence for generations to come. In fact Orfeu Da Conceição can be considered the beginning of their songwriting relationship. First released as 10" in the same year of the theater premier, the album features vocalist Roberto Paiva and guitarist Luiz Bonfà. An essential release for all Brazilian music fans out there.

"Axacan" is the fourth album from Daniel Bachman for Three Lobed and his first album in three years. It was recorded in 2020 at various locations in Virginia. It will be pressed on two 140 gram 12" records in Virginia by Furnace and housed within a full color gatefold jacket bearing new photography by Bachman. As a part of the Three Lobed Recordings 20th Anniversary series it features an OBI strip bearing an essay about the LP by Aquarium Drunkard's Tyler Wilcox.

There was something in the air in the urban corners of late ‘60s Japan. Student protests and a rising youth culture gave way to the angura (short for “underground) movement that thrived on subverting traditions of the post-war years. Rejection of the Beatlemania-inspired Group Sounds and the squeaky clean College Folk movements led the rise of what came to be known in Japan as “New Music,” where authenticity mattered more than replicating the sounds of their idols.

Some of the most influential figures in Japanese pop music emerged from this vital period, yet very little of their work has ever been released or heard outside of Japan, until now. Light In The Attic is thrilled to present Even a Tree Can Shed Tears, the inaugural release in the label’s Japan Archival Series. This is the first-ever, fully licensed collection of essential Japanese folk and rock songs from the peak years of the angura movement to reach Western audiences.

In mid-to-late 1960s Tokyo, young musicians and college students were drawn to Shibuya’s Dogenzaka district for the jazz and rock kissas, or cafes, that dotted its winding hilly streets. Some of these spaces doubled as performance venues, providing a stage for local regulars like Hachimitsu Pie with their The Band-like ragged Americana, Tetsuo Saito with his spacey philosophical folk, and the influential Happy End, who successfully married the unique cadences of the Japanese language to the rhythms of the American West Coast. For many years Dogenzaka remained a center of the city’s “New Music” scene.

Meanwhile a different kind of music subculture was beginning to emerge in the Kansai region around Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. Far more political than their eastern counterparts, many of the Kansai-based “underground” artists began in the realm of protest folk music. They include Takashi Nishioka and his progressive folk collective Itsutsu No Akai Fuusen, the “Japanese Joni Mitchell” Sachiko Kanenobu, and The Dylan II, whose members ran The Dylan cafe in Osaka, which became a hub for the scene.

Even a Tree Can Shed Tears also includes the bluesy avant-garde stylings of Maki Asakawa, future Sadistic Mika Band founder Kazuhiko Kato with his fuzzy, progressive psychedelia, the beatnik acid folk of Masato Minami, and the intimate living room folk of Kenji Endo.

Nearly 50 years on, this “New Music” is born anew.

Curious, eccentric pop experiments, steeped in the melody of the Far Eastern tradition. Strange, hypnotic incantation and another winner on The Trilogy Tapes!

Like the 1963 LP Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall, Folksy Nina was also recorded there on May 12, 1963, but duplicates little of the material found on that prior album. It isn't just unworthy leftovers, but a strong set in its own right, concentrating on material that could be seen as traditional or folk in orientation. It's not exactly strictly folk music, in repertoire or arrangement (which includes piano, guitar, bass, and drums, though not every tune has all of the instruments); "Twelfth of Never" (which had also appeared on the Carnegie Hall LP) certainly isn't folk music. However, there was also an uptempo piano blues, Lead Belly's "Silver City Bound," covers of the Israeli "Erets Zavat Chalav" and "Vanetihu" (which served as further proof that Simone's eclecticism knew no bounds), and the stark, moody, spiritually shaded ballads at which she excelled ("When I Was a Young Girl," "Hush Little Baby"). "Lass of the Low Country" is as exquisitely sad and beautiful as it gets. ~ Richie Unterberger

Fatiado Discos and Psico BR Discos present a reissue of Solange Borges's Bom Dia Universo, originally released in 1984. Solange Borges is a singer, composer, and instrumentalist, born May 1st, 1954, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Member of the family of musicians "Borges", Solange started playing guitar and piano and got to know the poetic universe with her brothers Marilton, Márcio and Lô Borges. The Borges family was an essential landmark for developing music and including other musician friends in the sixties that would initiate the so-called "Clube da Esquina" movement, that would represent several musicians and records. With figures such as Milton Nascimento, Toninho Horta, Wagner Tiso, Lô Borges, Beto Guedes, and Márcio Borges, Clube da Esquina's sound is intensely characterized as innovative. As a characteristic of this innovative sound, there is, for example, a kind of fusion of the innovations brought by bossa nova with elements of jazz, rock -- mainly the Beatles --, black folk music and Minas Gerais, classical music and Hispanic music. In the '70s, these artists became a quality reference in MPB for their high level of performance and spread their innovations and influence worldwide. Solange Borges is the only female musician member of the collective group "Clube da Esquina" and participated in the album Os Borges in 1980, also in the album Via Láctea, by brother Lô Borges, singing the songs "Vento de Maio" and "Clube da Esquina 2", having released her first LP Bom Dia Universo in 1984. "Bom Dia Universo" is the opening track that names the album, a great sweet sunny song that inspires looking at the beauty of the universe, like portraited on the album cover. "Santa Teresa" song remembers the times when her whole family including other musicians' friends from "Clube da Esquina", shared their home in the iconic neighborhood of Santa Teresa in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, known as cultural landmark. "Águas de Rios", "Puim-í" and "Beija-Flor" are gems of Brazilian regional and psychedelic music, with beautiful hippie and nature themes, and harmonies that sound just as great as if you were listening to a female version of Clube da Esquina albums. Bom Dia Universo album songs also range from rock to progressive rock, were as Solange Borges group shows it´s instrumental and composition abilities of Nico, Telo and Yê Borges, Tito Andrade, Ronaldo Venturini, Fernando Moura, Marcelo Sarkis, Silvio Nélio and Gerdson Mourão, also responsible for music direction. Contains the original 1984 insert with lyrics plus photos from her personal archives.

For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Felt appeared in 2012 in a vinyl edition of 100 on the Epic Sweep imprint. This album has an altogether more crepuscular feel, making slightly fuller use of the sonic palette -- an increase in dissonance, errant drum rumbles, and nigh-ambient instrumental murmurings around which flow Funke's basically perfect songs. The brevity, yet fullness, of the tracks and Funke's unadorned if oblique arrangements lend a sense not of sketches but of fields of color, the sensation of late fall foliage glimpsed through the window of a quickly passing train. Indeed, as much as these recordings suggest the close quarters and warmth of a small home, Maxine Funke makes music for traveling, providing accompaniment through the rough, unfeeling vectors of a disenchanted world and, as she does on the last song of Felt, imagining it differently. As the titles of these albums suggest, Funke's is a tactile art, as warm and tangible as the tape hiss bathing it, her words and music rescuing everyday moments from traps of distraction and defeat. Following limited edition vinyl reissues in 2016 -- a swansong for Nemo Bidstrup's sorely missed Time-Lag Recordings imprint -- we're happy to make Felt and Lace widely available. Maxine Funke's music, immediate and entirely unpretentious, suggests a world in which Katherine Mansfield rubs shoulders with Liz Harris, or Vashti Bunyan grows up on the Flying Nun catalog. Absolutely essential.iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3969665761/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless>FELT by maxine funke

For a decade, Maxine Funke has cut an idiosyncratic path as a singer-songwriter, all the while avoiding the parochial retreads of that worn-out label. Funke's music is intimate and deeply intelligent, buoyed by a sense of effortlessness that belies a scrupulous attention to the smallest of details. Lace was originally released as a CD-R in 2008 on Alastair Galbraith's Next Best Way label. Imagine the just-so arrangements of Josephine Foster and the knowing quotidian eye of Sibylle Baier meeting the realism of Funke's compatriots Turiiya or the acoustic textures of the Kiwi Animal and you're nearly there -- but in that gap lies the undeniable pull of Funke's music. Short songs for nylon string guitar, violin, piano, incidental snippets of bird song and furniture creaks, brief instrumental interludes in the vein of Funke's regular collaborator Galbraith: this is the realest of deals. The metaphysic of 'Second Hand Store' cuts to the uncompromised heart of this record, a rejection of the idea of ownership in favor of communal chance, the ragged comfort of things lived-in and passed on, a searching with no need to find, let alone possess. Indeed, as much as these recordings suggest the close quarters and warmth of a small home, Maxine Funke makes music for traveling, providing accompaniment through the rough, unfeeling vectors of a disenchanted world and, as she does on the last song of Felt, imagining it differently. As the titles of these albums suggest, Funke's is a tactile art, as warm and tangible as the tape hiss bathing it, her words and music rescuing everyday moments from traps of distraction and defeat. Following limited edition vinyl reissues in 2016 -- a swansong for Nemo Bidstrup's sorely missed Time-Lag Recordings imprint -- we're happy to make Felt and Lace widely available. Maxine Funke's music, immediate and entirely unpretentious, suggests a world in which Katherine Mansfield rubs shoulders with Liz Harris, or Vashti Bunyan grows up on the Flying Nun catalog. Absolutely essential."

Bola Sete - Samba in Seattle : Live at the Penthouse, 1966-1968 is the first official release of the legendary and influential Brazilian acoustic guitarist BOLA SETE's live recordings at the Penthouse jazz club in Seattle, WA featuring bassist SEBASTIÃO NETO and drummer PAULINHO MAGALHÃES. Produced by Grammy-nominated jazz detective ZEV FELDMAN, and remastered from the original tape reels in cooperation with THE BOLA SETE ESTATE, this deluxe 3-CD set includes an extensive 40 page booklet with rare photos from THE PENTHOUSE; essay by music critic GREG CASSEUS (aka GREG CAZ); new interviews and statements by guitar icon CARLOS SANTANA, legendary composer/pianist LALO SCHIFRIN, Sete's friend, pianist and producer, GEORGE WINSTON, and Bola Sete's widow ANNE SETE; plus an effusive tribute by the late guitar great JOHN FAHEY. Samba in Seattle is a significant addition to the recorded legacy of an oft–sampled musician (A Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla and Dan The Automator) whose career straddled bossa nova, jazz–pop and early New Age.

The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning fifteen years. She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How one frames themselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames themselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping a connection to place—“an ode to blue / what lives in shade.”
 
Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.
 
Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away—“Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.”

The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning fifteen years. She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How one frames themselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames themselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping a connection to place—“an ode to blue / what lives in shade.”
 
Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.
 
Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away—“Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.”

During the mid-1960s, deep in the Sussex countryside of southern England, aspiring musicians Peter Howell and John Ferdinando played in a few school bands before recording together in Howell’s father’s garage. Through Ferdinando’s connections with a theatre group, the duo created a musical companion for their production of Alice Through The Looking Glass, which the duo pressed privately; then, Fly Away, credited to Agincourt, was produced in a spare bedroom, an advertisement bringing Lee Menelaus, whose lilting voice provided a stirring female counterpart to theirs. Much of this psychedelic folk oddity has a quaint innocence fitting of the era and along with English folk-rock there are shades of pop, a touch of West Coast and even jazz in places. Pressed in minute quantity on another private press, original copies have been known to sell for £1500 or more; the duo continued recording, notably on work credited to Ithaca, before Howell became a full-time member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, where he notably worked on the Doctor Who theme.

Not long after recording her tenth album Ruins, Liz Harris traveled to Wyoming to work on art and record music. She found herself drawn towards the pairing of skeletal piano phrasing with spare, rich bursts of vocal harmony. A series of stark songs emerged, minimal and vulnerable, woven with emotive silences. Inspired by “the idea that something is missing or cold,” the pieces float and fade like vignettes, implying as much as they reveal. She describes them as “small texts hanging in space,” impressions of mortality, melody, and the unseen—fleeting beauty, interrupted. Grid Of Points stands as a concise and potently poetic addition to the Grouper catalog.  “Grid Of Points is a set of songs for piano and voice. I wrote these songs over a week and a half; they stopped abruptly when I was interrupted by a high fever. Though brief, it is complete. The intimacy and abbreviation of this music allude to an essence that the songs lyrics speak more directly of. The space left after matter has departed, a stage after the characters have gone, the hollow of some central column, missing.” —Liz Harris

“Abner Jay is the most unusual talent in the world. A true Southerner from South G.A. He was raised layin on his belly, drinkin water from the ol Swaunee River. Jay claims the secret for his good health and being the father of sixteen young’uns, and gonna git some more, layin on his belly drinkin water from that ol Swaunee. Abner still go to the Swaunee River every Sunday, and lay down on his belly. Abner is twenty five years older than you think.” - Abner Jay Stunning one-man band tunes from one of the United States’ great unsung artists. A new album of previously unreleased tracks from Abner’s vast catalog of home recordings, showcasing some of his most haunting and powerful vocal performances on revelatory new renditions of classics like “I’m So Depressed” and “Ol Man River.” Abner recorded the majority of the songs found on this LP over and over - some were recorded with R&B bands in the late 1950's, some as earnest folk ballads in the early 1960's and some as homemade one man band recordings on electric banjo, drum and harmonica throughout the 1970's. Here Abner plays these songs more deeply felt than at any other point, accompanied by his electric guitar, plaintive harmonica and solid almost tribal bass drum. We don't know exactly what date these recordings were made, but they stand as absolutely timeless. A truly independent artist who performed at swap meets and fairs out of his custom converted trailer, Abner Jay traveled the United States from the 1930s until his passing in 1993. Told with his characteristic blend of humor and pathos, I Don’t Have Time To Lie To You is an unsparing take on the country Abner knew so well, and possibly the best full album of his music to date. Licensed from Brandie Records and Abner’s family.