Folk Sale 315 Items

Robin Pecknold brings light to the bleakest of winters with Fleet Foxes’ A Very Lonely Solstice, a 13-track career spanning collection recorded in December 2020, at Brooklyn, NY’s St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church.
A Very Lonely Solstice captures a poignant moment in time. The recording was originally broadcasted as a live-stream event on the winter solstice of 2020, just days after New York declared a state of emergency tightening restrictions again in response to increasing COVID-19 cases. Pecknold describes the set as “me by myself on the longest night of the year… honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.” Fans worldwide tuned in while quarantined at home, finding solace and a sense of community in a period of extreme isolation.

Much of A Very Lonely Solstice showcases a solo focus on Pecknold who offers up acoustic arrangements of fan-favorite songs spanning Fleet Foxes’ catalog. Selections cover all four of the band’s studio albums, including their 2008 self-titled debut album (“Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”) to 2011’s Helplessness Blues (“Blue Spotted Tail”) and 2017’s Crack-Up (“If You Need To, Keep Time On Me”), all the way to their latest GRAMMY nominated release, Shore. Resistance Revival Chorus joins Pecknold on Shore tracks “Wading In Waist-High Water” and “Can I Believe You.” Also featured: a cover of Nina Simone’s “In The Morning” and a rearrangement of the traditional “Silver Dagger.”

Back in Nigeria in 1995 everybody knew King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal I. Just
about every house party and club floor, every shop front and car window,
pulsed to such megahits as ‘Talazo’ and ‘Consolidation’; to the percussion-rich
polyrhythms and Yoruba chants typical of Fuji music, a genre this one-time
roadie (for Fuji music icon Ayinde Barrister) had customised by adding more
percussion – congas, the sakara frame drum – and an attitude straight off the
street.
Wasiu Ayinde had nearly twenty years’ worth of national fame under his floor
length robes (and occasional zebra-striped jumpsuits) when he played his first
ever WOMAD Festival that same year. Booked in for a session at Real World
Recording Week shortly afterwards, the artist and his 16-piece band were
inadvertently delayed and pulled in to Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire eight
hours late. The recording went ahead regardless. Against the clock. On-thefly. With a small live audience in party mode and microphones placed about
the floor, Wasiu Ayinde and his crew rode the adrenalin, summoning a set that
moved from trance-like call-and-response and vibrant Afropop ballads to those
aforementioned megahits, all of it soaked in groove and feeling. A kingly feat,
that seems even more majestic now.

An absolutely legendary album from Lebanon by Issam Hajali’s group Ferkat Al Ard, “Oghneya” stands out as one of the great musical gems of the Arab world. A groundbreaking release from 1978 that represents the meeting point of Arab, jazz, folk and Brazilian styles with the talent of Ziad Rahbani, who did the albums arrangements. Filled with a variety of sounds and genres, from Baroque Pop to Psych-Folk to flashes of Bossa Nova, Tropicalia and MPB, “Oghneya” is like if Arthur Verocai took a trip to Beirut in the 70’s to record an album.

"I came across Tongo saying something in passing in an interview with Mayor London Breed. It was so insightful, poetic and deeply felt I wanted to know who he was. I devoured the poetry books that were available and then set out to invite him to make a recording. I had no idea what the session would be like. We were strangers. He showed up, there was no small talk, and he went to the microphone. He then created a 22 minute poem, no notes in his hands, and I looked at the engineer, and our minds were blown. It was flawless, and it was meaningful, and it was channeled from some other place. I said, do you have anything else to say? And he began another piece that lasted another 22 minutes or so. And it was also flawless,and incredible. And so I looked at the engineer and I said, 'I think we have a record.' Now I’ve never seen a record cut in one sitting, I figured it was reserved for geniuses like Thelonious Monk or Robert Johnson or something. And so I realized Tongo is a genius too. The poetry is so loud and crisp and clear and fueled with energy. It has a connection back to Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets, Langston Hughes but it is also not derivative in the least, but new and of it’s own time."—Sonny Smith, Rocks in your head records “Tongo’s words are bricks-with which he builds houses, breaks windows, and - strangely- enticesyou to take a bath in. I first heard his poetry and got scared of dying. Like- I better figure shit out because this is the new shit and he’s on somethingI’m not. He’s noticing shit that I better notice if I want to experience life in color. He knows that to live- you gotta make shit aroundyou move. You can’t just watch. I’m thrilledthat this album is coming out so y’all can be scared of not living too.”—Boots Riley "Words are a kind of architecture – where the bricks exist on page or spoken into the either. A form is built and becomes a body that will not soon wilt… the spoken word is timeless and immortal. Here in this collection Tongo kicks the new jazz – a classic sense of form ad stylethat is dare I say it smolderingly masculine, drumming, with someone who clearly has an old ear for dialogue. This coolection read icadest and with a heavy hand in the past not withstanding, still boasts verbage that is very very fresh. Bravo."—Brontez Purnell