Folk / Roots

"When I was little, I could open the window and go right up to the roof. I didn't have a balcony, so I would lie on the roof and watch the night sky." A dream to be releasing the first vinyl edition of Yahho no Potori, a treasured recording by one of our most cherished contemporary Japanese folk outfits, Eddie Marcon. Comprised of the core duo of Eddie Corman and Jules Marcon, Eddie Marcon was formed in Himeji in 2001, following Corman's involvement in noise-rock duo Coa and Shinsuke Michishita's fabled psychedelic outfit, LSD March. Marking a stylistic shift into delicate, acoustic territories, the duo would release dozens of albums and singles, mostly self-released through their Pong-Kong imprint, that have seen little distribution outside of Japan. An'archives helped us source some of their recent 7" singles, while Preservation, who compiled their earliest works in 2005, remains the only other label outside of Japan to have released their work exclusively. Recorded over a particularly humid summer and autumn, Yahho no Potori sees Eddie Marcon drifting from the delicate psychedelia of their debut EP (2002) into traditional song-based structures, first hinted at in their preceding and debut album, Aoi Ashioto (2005). A document of tenderness, wistfulness and joy, Marcon's deft yet effortless guitar strum sets a stylish backdrop for Corman's voice to ascend. Desirous yet self-assured, Corman breathes life into an intimate space adorned by the elegant instrumentation of Yashuhisa Mizatani, Yoriro Tatekawa, Ran Mizutani and Saya Ueno, whose ingenuous collaborative instinct has been gifted to listeners through collectives such as Tenniscoats, Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Spirit Fest. Here, she also lends her engineering prowess, having produced the entire album. Devotees of ambitious yet beautifully understated songwriting will find much to adore in the songs of Eddie Marcon, and followers of Reiko and Tori Kudo, Nagisa Ni Te, Ai Aso, and those curious about the wider contemporary Japanese underground, will not be surprised by the inclusion of the album's devastating climax, 'Toratolion', in Morr Music's Minna Miteru compilation in 2020. An intense and heartbreaking piece where Corman's voice takes centre stage, it remains a favourite amongst listeners and a centrepiece of Eddie Marcon's live performances. Released on vinyl on June 14 with remastered audio, faithful artwork and Japanese lyric sheet, A Colourful Storm is proud to give new life to a shimmering, underappreciated gem.

A humanity-reminding suite of miracle moments, Someone Like Me unites a geographically unbound cast of real people in pursuit of a meaningful connection. Taping their lived experience in economic studios in quiet English counties, Pacific Northwest woodland retreats and the big city bustle of Sydney and Los Angeles, these kindred spirits rendered sheer beauty in the process. Custom pressed folk songs of love, loss and the lord saviour. Illuminating minor works from seasoned players such as former Syndicate Of Sound chart-topper Sharkey and late-era Canned Heat lynchpin James Thornbury, the collection simultaneously honours the fleeting amateurism of hobby musicians. With their one shot at tangible vinyl, freshman Lynne Ann Kingan realised her loose bubblegum rocker on campus time, while U.S. Navy recruit Fred Potts cut his unconditionally serene ballad remotely stationed on a Spanish naval base. Spartan production continues to reign with Jon Betmead’s hair-raising gospel, howling into infinite space, and Goldrust’s stripped back garden hymn. Throughout the hour-long reflection, faith has an intermittent yet revelatory presence, most overtly with the divine choral soul of Seventh-day Adventist quartet Remnant. More subtly, Gary Ramey and Jim Kennedy both turned to song in their spiritual quests, offering their all to a universal power. An irrefutable compilation cornerstone, the National Office For Black Catholics showcased Charles Murphy’s lionhearted account of the Black experience at a 1971 concert. Five years earlier, high school seniors The Superwomen would use their hauntingly angelic harmonies to address racial inequity with a breathless take on ‘Lowlands’. Reaching the furthest corners, Someone Like Me secures the inaugural licence of three homespun masterpieces. Discovered by fluke in the digital haystacks of Youtube and Soundcloud, Jim Huxley’s bedroom pop earworm melds peacefully into Charlie Webster’s synthesized reverie. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s John Agostino introduces us to the bizarre world of tax scam records, with the artist only now learning that his tender psych-folk demos were leaked via a 1977 bootleg. Compiled and lovingly restored by armchair digger Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring/The Green Child), Someone Like Me pays due service to seventeen rarefied journals of truth and devotion. Adorned with visual artist Chris Fallon’s figure and flora dream extractions, the uniting songbook is further detailed by expansive track-by-track liner notes and a foreword from San Franciscan poet Rod Roland.

This is a new intersection of field ambient and improvised sound. ARBORE, a collaborative project by French-born, Berlin-based sound artists Diane Barbé and Laure Boer, will be released by Somewhere Press, an underground sound venue in Glasgow! Rough field recordings and improvised noise/sound sculptures interweave the spiritual and the animal. The faint footsteps deep in the forest, the noise of creaking metal, and the rippling breathing can all be considered sensory reorganization devices that awaken non-human senses.

Graham Jonson is drawn to the comforts of melody and noise. How the two conspire in tension, tonally and atonally, stirring up memory and mood. This quality animates the technicolor world of quickly, quickly, the psych-pop project that emanates from Kenton Sound, his basement studio in Portland, Oregon. “Everywhere your eye lands, there’s another curio to marvel over,” noted Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne when he visited Jonson’s recording space for a Rising feature just after the release of his “strikingly original” 2021 debut LP, The Long and Short of It. Since then, Jonson formed a live band, released his Easy Listening EP in 2023, got into production projects (for Moses Sumney, Kid LAROI, and SahBabii), and navigated the up-and-downs of a young musician, the sustainability of tours and relationships. While shaped by personal bouts and fallouts, his highly-anticipated full-length follow-up finds Jonson making music that’s universal, open-ended, and rewarding, like great songwriters can do. He set out to make a folk album but couldn’t help coloring it in with noise; a confluence of lush instrumentation and unexpected sounds. Ambitious yet intimate, hi-fi yet homespun, the idiosyncratic songs on I Heard That Noise curve around the contours of everyday life with warmth, wit, and dissonance.

When asked to unpack the inputs of I Heard That Noise, Jonson cites the unpredictable vocal melodies and sound design of Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie), the raw emotion of Dijon, and the timeless cadence of Nick Drake. While drums were the focus of Easy Listening, he challenged himself to think outside of the beat with new material: “to see how much I could do with a song, specifically with production, without having a beat to it… there are moments with drums but it was more about the space in between.” Songs utilize visceral delay and distortion; sometimes, they melt out of frame before the peak or take sharp turns with sudden chord changes or sweeping jolts he likens to “jump scares” in film. “Experimenting with the idea of being comfortable, and then some crazy shit flies at you, takes you out of it for a second, and then maybe brings you back in.” What makes these non-linear choices effective is that Jonson remains a natural pop architect, knowing where to push and pull, add and subtract; and essentially, how to draw in and hold one’s attention.

Themes reach from recent experiences — a breakup followed by “periods of either being miserable or, like, living…trying to better myself” — to childhood memories. There’s a recurring low-frequency hum in his neighborhood; he and his friends have come to know it as the “Kenton Sound” (which gives his studio its name), and they’ve narrowed it down to some industrial testing site nearby. Every time it vibrates, he thinks of that time he heard “that noise” while skateboarding outside his mom’s house. Similar, but louder, scarier, a sky siren of sorts. “I remember all the dogs started barking in the neighborhood at the same time...a really weird, bizarre phenomenon.” The thought pattern, scattered with a cathartic headspace, led him to record the title track, where an abrasive intro dissipates into a sweet piano ballad about remembering and surrendering.

Jonson has a knack for interludes and outros, and he’s in full stride here; the opener’s ambient wobbles snap into the stomp of “Enything,” which at one point swelled with so much information he needed to get a new computer. Above bright and jagged guitar lines, harmonized with backing vocals from friend and past tourmate Julia Logue, Jonson playfully rattles through everything he’d do (“for you”). He’s quick to admit he often dreads the process of writing lyrics, yet the loose wordplay of “Enything” is proof his subconscious runs clever.

On “Take It From Me,” subtle sonic flourishes surround acoustic strums and tender keys as Jonson recalls the resignation of a night when a relationship’s end was imminent (“a great storm is coming over the hill.”). He explains, “I've always found peace in knowing that other people, even if I don't know their exact experience, may have the same feeling that I do.” The mantra-like reprise of “Take It from Me” carries that notion, a soft reassurance before the song washes away.

Kenton Sound’s ceiling can attest to the truth of “I Punched Through A Wall.” Jonson says in reality, the act emerged from a silly intrusive thought. The image (“The silhouette of myself”) lent a figurative scene to wrap real angst around. “I feel love like a cannon ball / I like being ripped apart,” he sings over one of the record’s sweetest, most pop-forward arrangements. As the chorus takes its final pass, a gentle piano phrase gets clipped by an outburst of power chords and feedback, repeating the lines twice as loud.

“Raven” crosses fable-like fiction with the sad story of a friend who lost his way; and just when the track’s innocent country twang settles in, he pulls the rug out with near-metal levels of heavy. The juxtaposition gets to the heart of I Heard That Noise. By excavating the extremes of his sound, Jonson not only brings the best out of himself but introduces myriad ways to engage with his music, which grows ever more inviting and boundless. 
<p><iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=824606394/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;">I Heard That Noise quickly, quickly</iframe></p>

Get onboard with this explosive encounter of Japanese folk songs and latin rhythms!

"For Japanese people, min'yō is both the closest, and most distant, folk music” explains band-leader Katsumi Tanaka. “We may not feel it in our daily, urban lives, yet the melodies, the style of singing and the rhythm of the taiko drums are engrained in our DNA”.

Initially indifferent to min'yō, a tragic event in recent Japanese history set Tanaka on his current path: “Following the Tohoku earthquake of 2011, I reflected on my life, work and identity. A fan of world music, I began searching for Japanese roots music I could identify with. Discovering mid-late 20th century acts like Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri and the Tokyo Cuban Boys, I was captivated by their eccentric arrangements and how they mixed min'yō with latin and jazz music.”

Lead singer Freddie Tsukamoto fell for min'yō after hearing a song from his hometown on a TV competition whilst in a restaurant. It was a revelation – until then he had been an aspiring jazz singer yet was uncomfortable singing in English. The restaurateur told him a min'yō teacher was his neighbour and the two connected. Tanaka and Freddie formed Minyo Crusaders in 2011 in Fussa, a city where the US military Yokota Air Base is located, in western Tokyo.

Recruiting other local musicians versed in afro and latin rhythms, they began hosting jam sessions at the Banana House, a building that was previously part of the military base and that used to house US soldiers. The band started recording their music, and their debut album "Echoes Of Japan" was released in 2017. It received huge acclaim in Japan and abroad, and was also released by British label Mais Um in 2019. Several European tours followed, as well as some US and South America gigs.

In this second opus, the Minyo Crusaders take us on a trip to Japanese folk songs fused with latin rhythms. Their unique arrangements breathe new life to classics like Kiso Bushi, Sado Okesa or Soran Bushi, among many other min'yō songs from all over Japan that were originally performed by Japanese fishermen, coal miners and sumo wrestlers hundreds of years ago. The magical groove created here proves once again that the Minyo Crusaders are one of the most dynamic representatives of the current Japanese world music scene. Yoi Yoi, Enjoy!

Andy Jenkins always assumed Nick Sanborn was going to get rid of his guitars, anyway.

In March 2021, Sanborn had mostly finished construction at Betty’s, his studio outpost with partner Amelia Meath in North Carolina’s cozy Piedmont woods. Both busy pieces of their respective but intertwined music scenes in Richmond and Durham, Jenkins and Sanborn had been fans of one another for years but had never formally collaborated. Jenkins had spent the last several years gathering songs for the follow-up to his 2018 solo debut, Sweet Bunch; the new ones were intricately rendered odes to the assorted assurances and anxieties that can come with finding some measure of contentment as you cross into yours 30s. He’d even played them all during two outdoor concerts in Richmond, folks scattered throughout his backyard to listen. Sanborn reckoned that was enough rehearsal. Don’t send demos, he suggested; simply drive the two hours down, and live and work in the studio for two weeks while spring drifted into the South.

As Jenkins rolled through his assembled tracks in Betty’s Studio B, Sanborn listened and allowed his imagination to run wild. Sanborn recalled a conversation with the songwriter Damien Jurado, where he said he’d once arrived at the studio of producer Richard Swift without dispatching anything in advance; that instinctive and improvisational strategy led to Maraqopa, a modern masterpiece. What could Jenkins and Sanborn conjure?

Sanborn flooded Jenkins with ideas—rhythmic shifts, keyboard flourishes, vocal effects—and looked for and listened to his responses. There was the double-time piano, a mistake dropped into “Too Late” they both loved. There was the Vocoder selection during “Emptiness Is,” a choice that allowed the pair to hang so much of the song on bass and drums alone. There was the sequence that bubbles beneath “Leaving Before,” a mirror of the lyrical nervous heart.

When Meath and Flock of Dimes’ Jenn Wasner were palling around the studio, Sanborn asked if they would mind singing on a few tracks. That’s Meath on “Blue Mind,” sweetly trailing Jenkins’ lines about being under love’s spell like she’s offering an incantation, and Wasner rising through the static dawn of “Lovesick.” “Andy wanted someone to make decisions he would never make,” remembers Sanborn. “It was this mining operation we got to do together.”

As the songs steadily cohered, though, Jenkins insisted it was finally time to drop his guitars. “I have never been,” he says now with a little laugh, “a particularly competent guitar player.” But Sanborn loved the idiosyncratic way his strums sat against his voice, so he stalled. He wasn’t much of a guitar player himself, so they’d need to wait for Jenkins’ longtime collaborator, an ace named Alan Parker, to come down from Richmond and replace those parts. When Parker did, he heard the same thing as Sanborn—yes, he was more technically proficient, but his overdubs didn’t have the same personality, the same narrative truth. Jenkins relented, so his guitars stayed, the anchor for most of these 11 tracks.

One notable exception: “Nobody Else,” the album’s brief but brilliant centerpiece, a testament to holding close to the people in your life, of not losing nobody else. It stems from a quiet moment Jenkins and Parker shared in an otherwise-empty studio. Parker (who, in the end, added leads and fills throughout the record) plays a rubber-bridge guitar, while Jenkins’ voice rises and falls like the waves of the maritime scene he limns, his curious voice making melodies from mere air.

It is the exception here, Jenkins stepping away from guitar to lean into an old friendship and render something exquisite in its ache.

Since Always came, in large part, from letting go—of self-perceptions, of expectations, of assumptions. Jenkins found space to trust himself as the guitarist for his own songs. Sanborn stepped into a new kind of production role, dreaming up ideas and filtering through them together. There was, in short, a very adult trust to it all, two fans working in tandem to make something. The process feels of a delightful piece with Since Always, a record where the loss and love, compromise and gain of adulthood come into full view.

Grayson Haver Currin

Ward, Colo.

January 2025

2024 Repress. Tokyo's Ai Aso is a Japanese psychedelic pop singer-songwriter whose work has a whisper-thin acid-folk quality to it. She started performing as a solo singer around 2000. Her solo work, infrequent collaborations with White Heaven members You Ishihara and Michio Kurihara, Yurayura Teikoku, and Boris bring a level of fragility and hypnotism to the stage, recalling lost memories, small flavors of Coil, and serial playing on the verge of evaporation. As for her recent activities, she has performed on bills together with Sunn O))), Boris, Masaki Batoh (Ghost), Touri Kudoh, Kim Doo Soo, Mark Fry, Simon Finn, etc. Cut by CGB at Dubplates & Mastering.

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. 

Jagjaguwar is proud to release the long lost Julie Doiron album 'Broken Girl', expanded to include her first two 7"s. It was originally released in 1996 by Doiron after her band--the psychedelic folk group Eric's Trip--had crumbled around her, under the temporary moniker "Broken Girl". The name did nothing to hide her feelings regarding the breakup of her band and the relationships that she shared with its members; neither did the songs on the record. The twelve songs from the original album come across like an epitaph for a departed lover. 'Broken Girl' was indeed a new beginning for Doiron, both as a solo artist as well as a record label executive. The first two Broken Girl 7"s (both included on this reissue), as well as the self-titled full-length were released on her own label Sappy Records, a label which went on to release her Juno Award-winning 'Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars' full-length as well as releases by Moonsocket, Orange Glass, Snailhouse, and Elevator to Hell.

'Broken Girl' was a watershed for Doiron, showing her to be the sort of songwriter and performer that Eric's Trip only hinted at. Achingly beautiful and showcasing her vocal style and personality as a songwriter, the reviews immediately put her in the same class as Leonard Cohen in terms of importance as a Canadian solo artist. The album was self-recorded in the same home-y manner as the classic Eric's Trip albums which helped--along with albums by peers Sebadoh, East River Pipe and Smog--define the bedroom aesthetic of the early '90s. While some rock scribes would call it lo-fi, the fidelity of the recordings that Doiron and her Eric's Trip mates employed in the first half of the '90s was clearly the most appropriate medium. The close-mic'ing of everything from the vocals to the swirling guitars and peaking drums created a sense of real intimacy (while avoiding a lot of the awkward pitfalls that so many confessional songwriters run into) and suburban claustrophobia. It is very easy to see the four-piece as a Nick Drake-like entity who had been raised on the far East Coast of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick on the SST catalog (Eric's Trip took their name from the Sonic Youth song from Daydream Nation) and whose nucleus was a four-fold of independently-minded co-dependents with no need for a producer or other intermediary to the recording process which might break the spell for even a moment.

Initially released in a scant edition of 1,000, 'Broken Girl' went immediately out of print and has become a highly sought-after collector's piece.

"Fellow Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen once titled an album Songs From A Room. Montreal-based Julie Doiron apparently took up residence there and removed whatever furniture was left behind."--Rob O'Connor, Rolling Stone 

When not gazing out windows into the stormy Manhattan skyline, Margo Guryan spent her thirties banging out earworms for the likes of Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon, Claudine Longet, Carmen McCrae, and Julie London at CBS’s April Blackwood Music. Guryan’s timeless musings on love, Sundays, earthquakes, crying, and boys named Timothy have soundtracked countless films and viral videos—enduring masterpieces from the before times. 28 of her ’60s and ’70s songwriting demos are collected on this 25th anniversary double album edition. Get under Margo’s umbrella.

Our next release with Gary Sullivan's Bodega Pop project - rooted in a passion for digging for music in bodegas and cell-phone stores across NYC's boroughs. This edition focuses in on early recordings found in Russian neighborhoods in Brooklyn & Queens.

"At the turn of the last century, the Russian Empire stood at a crossroads, caught between the weight of its imperial past and the promise of a radically altered future. Recorded during a period of profound cultural transformation and unrest, the music collected here offers a haunting glimpse into that fragile moment in history. From playful and satirical melodies that were musichall staples to heartbreaking ballads reflecting the despair of those exiled to Siberian penal colonies, these songs provided both refuge and a reflection of the deep suffering experienced by many living under the regime. More than entertainment, they formed essential strands in the Russian cultural fabric of the time—songs sung in drawing rooms and taverns and on street corners and prison grounds.

I found this music in several gift and media stores in Forest Hills, Queens, and the Brighton Beach and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn. These and a few other communities are home to more than half a million people of Russian background currently living in New York City, many of them refugees. Back in the aughts and teens, when I was collecting music from New York’s innumerable immigrant-run stores, I would always wonder why this music, why here, and why now.

The CDs immigrants stocked on their New York shelves in the 2000s and 2010s was a tiny fraction of what was available in their home countries. The Russians were in the minority of those who consistently carried compilations of early 20th century recordings—the Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, and Turkish shopkeepers were the only others I remember off the top of my head as being particularly dedicated to this period of their musical history.

What was the appeal of such old music? First-generation Russian New Yorkers might have experienced in it a reflection of their own feelings of displacement and uncertainty. The deep sorrow and yearning expressed in these songs may have resonated with their own senses of loss while offering comfort in the form of shared emotional experience. Perhaps it was a way to keep some cultural memory alive in something they knew had once accompanied their elders and ancestors through times of hardship and change.

What is the appeal of such old music for us, today?"

A selection of brooding, haunting Turkish tango recordings from the decades following the foundation of the republic in the early 1920s through to the mid 1950s.

"Drag City presents the first official reissue of Dorothy Carter's 1976 album debut, her folk-music exegesis, Troubadour. In her lifetime, Dorothy, a self-made traveling musician and folklorist, brought forth masterful evocations on hammered dulcimer and psaltery from a myriad of times and places. Her music was played, produced and sold outside of that era's mainstream music distribution. Troubadour reissue producer Eric Demby can look back to a childhood spent off the grid: the early '70s in rural Maine, and later on, in Boston -- wherever his freewheeling father brought the family, at one point or another, there too was Dorothy, as she lived and breathed, playing her hammered dulcimer. The early '70s found everyone living up on the farm up in rural Maine; it was here that Rutman, Constance, Dorothy and some others formed Central Maine Power Company, a troupe of almost feral improvisers playing on a combination of self-made and found instruments, with live video feedback to boot. In 1976, Dorothy had been playing music for decades, but had yet to record any of it. That year, she went to Cambridge's Studio B with Rutman and friend Steve Baer at the console. Constance and Sally Hilmer accompanied her. The performances captured there were released later that year as Troubadour. In addition to hammered dulcimer and psaltery, Dorothy played the flute and sang. She chose songs from all over: Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, with a few of her own songs for good measure. They all flow together effortlessly under Dorothy and friends' hands in a syncretic space that we can identify today as a garden of world musics -- a highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era -- his childhood -- from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter."

"...Maria Kapel is exemplary, a solo guitar record that sounds like nothing, really, outside of itself, while communicating in tongues that are instantly explicable to anyone with a pair of ears." - Volcanic Tongue Originally released on my Pavilion imprint in 2011 in edition of 500. I was invited by the Incubate Festival and the city of Tilburg to participate in an artist residency where I would explore the region’s unique chapels built for the Virgin Mary. After writing the music for about six months by drawing on memories of the encounters with the chapels and using techniques inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics Of Reverie, I flew back to Tilburg to perform the music at the Incubate Festival. We recorded the evening and I released the result on my Pavilion label. Each cover was hand painted white on white in the old Pavilion style. I created a stencil and used graphite powder to make the design that is inspired by the sun imagery in Athanasius Kircher diagrams.

</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1786378255/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://armlock.bandcamp.com/album/trust">Trust by Armlock</a></iframe><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1786378255/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://armlock.bandcamp.com/album/trust">Trust by Armlock</a></iframe>

Scheduled to arrive in late February, reservations are being accepted. The editorial board released on CD from in 2010 by British singer-songwriter Bill Fay has been re-released in analog form from . He left two great works on Deram, 1970's Bill Fay and 1971's Time Of The Last Persecution, but little was known at the time. In the 1990s, his work gained cult popularity, and when it was reissued in 2005, his secular folk and pop hymns gained new fans and his career began. Re-evaluated. This work is a collection of 1970s demos and home recordings released in 2010. In addition to these songs, this reissue includes rework by contemporary artists who were heavily influenced by Bill Fay's music such as Kevin Morby, Mary Lattimore, Julia Jacklin, and Steve Gunn.

Before morphing into the excellent psych trio, B.F. Trike, Hickory Wind (from Evansville, Indiana), released one brilliant, and extremely rare, country psych album in 1969. Just 100 copies were pressed for the Gigantic label, and originals have been known to change hands for a small fortune. The album features excellent vocals, plus an interesting mix of fuzz guitar, and droning organ, as well as some wonderfully melodic songs. This reissue also features four bonus tracks from the B.F. Trike album session, recorded for RCA Records in Nashville, Tennessee in 1971. The B.F. Trike album, however, remained in the vaults for 25 years, before it was finally uncovered and given its just recognition in the mid-nineties. </p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K3IzI2EcBpU?si=-aZLG1UwEr0lp9_M" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

A mega-rare album is reissued. This is a tremendous property from the famous "Outernational Sounds", which has been conducting ambitious excavation releases across spiritual jazz, jazz funk, and Indo jazz, including rare works related to Nimbus. This is a reissue of a legendary independent album released in 1979 by Betty Lou Landreth, a female jazz singer from Oklahoma who also performed at clubs and worked as a backup singer in studios. This is the only album that features talented session players such as The Funk Brothers, a Motown session group, and Marcus Belgrave of Detroit's Tribe Collective. This is a cult album of jazz vocals with a fierce blend of unfathomable mysteriousness and excessive energy that engulfs all kinds of audiences into another dimension.

Propelled by his 1956 Lee Hazlewood-produced hit “The Fool,” Sanford Clark was already a rockabilly legend in his own right by the time he swapped his hair gel and switchblade for a pair of cowboy boots on They Call Me Country. Recorded between 1965-67 and originally released as a series of singles for Phoenix’s Ramco label, the 12 tracks on this LP borrow Bakersfield’s outlaw sound and ignore Nashville’s countrypolitan flair, standing as a true lost masterpiece of country music’s third generation. Clark’s booming baritone tells tales of bar fights, heartaches, and drinking til you can’t stand, while Waylon Jennings provides a backdrop of fuzzed out guitar twang. Mastered from the original session tapes and back on vinyl for the first time since the Nixon administration.

Punisher is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, released on June 18, 2020 by Dead Oceans. Bridgers first established herself with her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, a widely acclaimed indie rock effort. In the years preceding her second album, the California native formed the bands boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center. On Punisher, Bridgers' songwriting is somber and sardonic; deeply personal in nature, it explores topics like dissociation and fragmenting relationships.

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights, and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she'd caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song "Killer" in his L.A. studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three-song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City and Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others. On September 22nd, Phoebe Bridgers will release her debut full-length, Stranger In The Alps. From the weeping strings and Twin Peaks twangs of opening track Smoke Signals, to the simple heartbreak of Funeral and melancholic crescendo of Scott Street, Stranger in the Alps is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

Limited reissue in heavy black vinyl of the second Happy End album released on November 20, 1971, which is highly acclaimed as a classic Japanese Rock album.

Tara Nome Doyle's latest EP »Agape« marks her return to the music scene after a two-year hiatus following the success of her acclaimed sophomore album »Værmin« (Modern Recordings, BMG, 2022). »Agape« is a profoundly intimate collection of songs documenting TND's emotional journey through grief, commemorating the passing of a loved one. Each track explores different facets of this emotional landscape, showcasing TND's otherworldly performances and unique approach to songwriting. This self-produced EP represents an artistic leap for the Norwegian-Irish songwriter. Skill-fully capturing the arresting beauty of her compositions, TNDs minimalistic arrangements feature the haunting melodies of Norwegian-Scottish cellist Sunniva Shaw of Tordarroch (known for her work with Fay Wildhagen, Liv Jakobsen and Juni Habel). The ethereal atmosphere they create together evokes a distinctly Scandinavian eeriness while TND's dedication to crafting poetic lyrics and vivid storytelling pays tribute to her Irish singer-songwriter roots. The EP's title »Agape« translates to unconditional, selfless love - a sentiment that permeates each of the six tracks. This timeless collection of songs aims to be a comforting and cathartic companion for anyone caught in the throes of grief.

“Upopo Sanke“ means “Let's sing a song" in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-response structure of many of the songs is performed with a mantric quality in a vocal style that is perhaps best described as elastic and breathing. There seems to be a gentle smile in every note and syllable. This music softly hits the heart. Upopo Sanke was recorded on a farm in Tokachi in the summer of 2003. We hear dogs barking, a distant thunderstorm and voices imitating animals. The liner notes that accompany the 2LP release gather the anecdotal memories of Umeko Ando and Oki Kano about the stories of the 14 songs. Oki Kano is a musical ambassador of the Ainu culture who tours worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band and also gives solo concerts, always playing the Tonkori, the five-stringed Ainu harp. The Ainu have suffered from the oppression of their culture and language by Japan, especially since the 18th and 19th centuries. Only recently, in 2008, were the Ainu officially recognized again as an indigenous people culturally independent of Japan. As a result of the marginalization, there are now only a few hundred native speakers of the Ainu language left, making it a particularly worthy object of preservation. "Upopo Sanke" was mixed again in part by Oki Kano, before being mastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer. The 2LP plays on 45rpm and it sounds fantastic. This album was the second album by Umeko Ando, the follow-up to „Ihunke" and also re-released in 2018 by Pingipung together with Oki Kano.