Folk Vinyl Sale 306 Items

Twin Cosmos is not only the name of the musical output of fraternal twins Morihito & Yasuhito Ito, but more philosophically, an album that encapsulates, “the universe of twins”.

The pair were born 1953 in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. A port city 50 kilometres west of Nagoya, famous for its chemical plants. Despite their surroundings, they grew up in an environment that fostered learning and self-expression. From an early age, they began to carve out their own paths.

Morihito was fascinated with scientific endeavours, space travel and spirituality. His father, an electrician by trade - motivated him to build his own musical equipment. This led him to attend an acoustic engineering school in Tokyo from 1972-1974, after which, Morihito returned to Yokkaichi where he worked in the instrument and audio section of a department store. This helped him keep up to date with the latest equipment, while allowing him to simultaneously work on his own musical endeavours.

Morihito’s side of the ‘Double Action’ LP is a cohesive piece, which effortlessly drifts from one song to the next through samples of flowing water and rockets launching into space ,that were recorded while visiting his brother in the States. His music is carried by flowing vocal harmonies, guitar strums, and floating synths to create an eternal dreamlike ambiance.

In contrast, Yasuhito gravitated towards philosophy and the arts and in 1976 followed his Englsih teachers’ advice and moved to the ‘foreign world’ of the United States. It’s here that he further explored his interests in Christianity, sadomasochism and poetry. He was exposed to artists like John Cage and Sun Ra, as well as a variety of ‘Do It Yourself’ recording techniques that enabled him to record remotely.

Using samples, poetry, and an original approach to traditional folk & rock songs, he recorded his side of the LP. The outcome being provocative, dark and confronting realisations, which solely used English lyrics to represent his experiences in the ‘Western world’. In 1980, Yasuhito was wooed back to Japan by his brother and the prospect of a combined record release.

The self-released album ‘Double Action’, was completed at Victor studios in Japan. Without a distribution network, the release was sold mostly to family and friends and fell into obscurity. Despite not reaching commercial success, the pair have continued to make music over the past four decades, crediting it as their driving force in life. This 2022 release includes an insert with archival images & liner notes in both English & Japanese.

"This album is written and recorded on a reed organ with two manuals and pedals. The instrument was built by Alfred Cedergren who was a reed organ builder 1870–1925 in Vänge on the island Gotland, Sweden. During this period of time Hulda Veström lived in the same village. When Hulda was 14 years old she left her mother and sisters to travel to her father in Los Angeles. In spring 1912 she boarded the Titanic together with her aunt, who was also named Hulda. There is a picture of the two Huldas in the wooden chapel in Vänge where the Cedergren instruments today are gathered. In 2019 Felicia Sjögren moved to Vänge and the chapel with reed organs became her closest neighbor. Over time she got to know the instruments and stories of the village. When she decided to write music on one of the organs she knew she was going to dedicate it to Hulda, a teenage girl 100 years into space and time of this very place. Hulda is also the name of one of the few women prophets in the Bible, appearing in the Old Testament with warnings of the doomsday. The album is written and recorded in the chapel by Felicia Sjögren."

sferic mark 5 years of operations with a special deep dive into ancient/modern Mediteranean culture by Giovanni Napolano, usually known for crankier industro-dancehall output as Nplgnn (Reel Torque, Youth) as well as programming the wonderful MBE label (Beatrice Dillon, Conor Thomas, Evol) - a proper Riyl Jay Glass Dubs, Christos Chondropoulos, Alan Lomax, DJ Screw, Coda Lunga.

Unfolding along two sprawling 15 min sides, Napolano stitches threads of chopped & screwed folksong with a discrete dub strategy, seamlessly leading the mind down labyrinthine ginnels of his imagination in a sort of uchronic regression session where the ghosts of the past inform the present. In the process it humbly speaks to Naples’ position at the frontier of the current migrant crisis, and necessarily takes a standpoint against Italy’s resurgent, nationalist fascism, revealing the beauty and energy of its indigenous mixture of peoples, rather than erecting borders between them.

Taking his native Naples as a locus of Mediteranean culture, Napolano plunges the port city’s palimpsest of energies embedded by successive waves of Greek, Northern African & Eastern migration to discover an underlying, rhizomic connection and commonality linked by dub and hip hop as a contemporary iteration of folk music.

Under its titular, mythical metaphor for the fall of Babylon, and usage in Rastafari culture, ‘Le Macerie Di Babilonia’ imaginatively examines a sense of self via a historic lens, drawing on Napolano’s upbringing in the chaotic port city and his autodidactic research into the rich mosaic of Napolitan heritage, to model how a folk class solidarity and shared character, with its own rules and rituals, has emerged from its syncretic milieu.

Variously a treatise on provenance; an impressionistic tale of the European north meets a global south; a dub-abstracted, allegoric, ethnomusicological collage; ‘Le Macerie Di Babilonia’ is a fascinating and immersive listen that presents its maker’s dilated world view at its most mesmerising.

Quantity: 1700
Release type: RSD Exclusive Release

Dark Horse Records is proud to reissue Leon RUSSELL’s 1984 album Hank Wilson Vol. II on limited Red Vinyl for Record Store Day Black Friday. The album notably features a duet with Willie Nelson on the country standard “Wabash Cannonball,” plus takes on classics by Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Don Gibson. Russell was born in Oklahoma, had a home in Tulsa, and grew up around country and blues music. After making successful rock albums, touring, and releasing the concert album Leon Live, he returned to his roots under the name of a fictional musical personality: Hank Wilson. His second outing under this assumed name, Hank Wilson, Vol. II, was self-produced in 1981 at Leon’s Paradise Studios in Burbank, California.

Holy grail for Fans of Master Wilburn Burchette, William Ackerman, John Fahey and Robbie Basho. Ultimate collector’s item in Ambient/Folk Music history.

After almost two years of work, we're glad to invite you to a new journey through the fog of time and enjoy the upcoming reissue of the great Ambient/Folk record from 1984. A well-known to collectors but extremely rare record by Jon Iverson a multi-instrumentalist from Palo Alto and his college friend, mandolinist Tom Walters. They shared a love for singer/songwriter fare and gigged around campus playing covers of Neil Young, CSN, and Loggins/Messina in the late '70s.

"First Collection" was recorded during the Spring of 1984 in a small garage that had been converted to a one-room apartment in the seaside community of Los Osos, California.

With an instrumentation of 12-string guitar, piano, mandolin, analog synthesizers, and sampler, the duo has recorded nine bright, weightless, and diverse compositions where electronic experiments mix with ethnic rhythms, sweeping through inspired folk reminiscent of the work of William Ackerman, John Fahey, Master Wilburn Burchette, and Robbie Basho, to homemade pastoral space folk exuding sophisticated, pale, lunar sonic moods that somehow might remind of the work of Roedelius from the early 80s.

Equipment used for tracking included a rented 1/2" 8-track Otari Mx5050 analog tape machine and assorted mics. With only a few thousand albums pressed, First Collection has become a collectable in some circles.

Now, almost forty years later, First Collection has been remixed and remastered from the original 1/2" tapes for this release.

Limited edition of 100 copies!

Talk about a talented family: Willie Nelson and his Sister Bobbie Nelson each achieved massive success in country music. Even in their late 80’s, the Nelsons continue to make music and their influence can be heard through many artists in the genre. December Day, Willie’s Stash Vol. 1 is a collaboration album between the two, and upon release in 2014 it was met with positive reviews from music critics. The album spawned three singles: “Who’ll Buy My Memories”, “Laws of Nature” and “Summer of Roses / December Day”. The liner notes were written by Willie’s frequent collaborator Mickey Raphael. This record comes as a limited edition on snowy white vinyl.

The thirteen edition in the Imaginational Anthem series features renditions of Bruce Cockburn tunes by James Toth (Wooden Wand), Kyle Hammett Duo (ft. Luke Schneider), Wet Tuna (Matt Valentine), Jerry DeCicca (ft Bill Callahan), and others.

Diatom Deli's Time~Lapse Nature is a channel between cerebral ascension and somatic memory, tethered to the micro-present though humbled by a beyond. Dilated by celestial fluctuations and dynamic flutters, the reverberations from the Taos-based artist's new album culminate through airy tests of vocal layering, longing guitar laments, and discreetly sourced sound, compelling Deli's commitment to esoteric precision and impulse. Delisa Paloma-Sisk was born and raised in Clarksville, Tennessee, an hour north of Nashville and many more from Lares, Puerto Rico, where she spent extended time with her mother's side of the family while growing up. Deli recalls hearing her grandmother's neighbor playing classical guitar every night during one visit to Lares, the melodies lingering and resurfacing while she self-taught herself the instrument in her early teens and then formally studied it in college. Deli would gradually bring together the guitar, synthesizer, and her own voice, recording and releasing two albums, Feelsounds and TQM (Te Quiero Mucho), as Diatom Deli in 2015 and 2017. Written between 2016 and 2019, Time~Lapse Nature embodies Deli's generous, ongoing excavation of her inner emotive spectrum and offers listeners a lush, loving overgrowth; a hiding place for heart-centric radiation. After several synchronistic and collaborative encounters, the album was channeled with the help of Michael Hix (synthesizers, connective magic) and Bryan Talbot (engineering, soundscapes), Deli steadfast at the center, a transparent catalyst for the album's omniscient landscapes and fleeting tenor. Deli's affecting process is palpable throughout the eight songs of Time~Lapse Nature; moods move like planets in thick orbit, spinning forward like an anti-apology, embracing new feeling frequencies where vulnerability radiates tenderly in tonal embers, conveying an exalted melancholy that sticks the moment it lands. A clairsentient offering from Deli, where sound imparts knowing, and is felt more than heard, Time~Lapse Nature is a space to which listeners are invited to commune in a hymnal harmony, prismic beams stretching over sweet, nourishing water. Like a mist dissipating over open fields, Time~Lapse Nature incants a process of succulent renewal towards the mythic, eternal_summoning each listener to delight in the resounding stillness.

One Last Time for Love. A magnificent follow up to the 2018 masterpiece Dark Companion which told the dark tale of his wife's sickness and death in the most astonishing musical way. Lars about the album:"The album picks up where my previous album 'Dark Companion' left off. After the funeral of my wife. When relatives and friends finally have returned to their normal lives after joining forces around my and my children's grief. When you sit there alone on the sofa and try to understand what happened."

'Until We Fossilize' Is The Debut Album From Marta Del Grandi, An Eclectic Singer Songwriter From Italy. This Release Shows An Ward-Winning Jazz Vocalist Set In New Territory, Crossing Borders Of Genre And Style From West Coast '60s To Ambient Exotica, From Plaintive Lynchian Etherealism To Dramatic Morricone Scores. Marta Gathers Influences From Near And Far To Create A Unique Genre-Splicing Style Who's Now Travelling Her Own Unique And Unchartered Path.Newly Signed To Fire Records, This Debut Is An Unravelling Of Time And Distance; A Breath Taking Journey From Mainland Europe To The Far East And Back Again, Delivered As An Eerie, Soundtrack By A Captivating Vocalist. A Self-Produced Gem; Filled With Lush Strings And Electronic Ambience And An Eclectic Vocal That Transcends Boundaries.Lead Single 'Amethyst' Takes Inspiration By The Myth Of Amethyst, Filled With Greek Mythology, Touching The Wildest Manifestation Of Imagination, It's The Story Of A Woman Who Frees Herself From The Expectations Imposed On Her By Patriarchy. Composed With Indian Drummer Tarun Balani, Marta Sounds Like Sandy Denny Backed By Eno On Gamelan With A Nod To Sun Ra.'Until We Fossilize' Is A Lyrically Aware Set Of Dramas Littered With Life-Affirming Couplets Over Gorgeous, Dramatic Turns. It's Modern And Ancestral At The Same Time.

Ninja Tunes folk hero Fink's full-length for 2011!

Earth Tones is the debut record from folk artist Izzy Johnson
Izzy Johnson is a musician, artist, and producer born and based in Southeast Michigan — lands stewarded by the Anishinaabe peoples, who include the Odawa and Potawatomi. A self-taught guitarist, they started writing songs in their late teens as a way to process living with chronic illness. But since the beginning, guitar-playing for them expanded beyond a mechanism for coping or self-expression. It became a source of healing, freedom, and awareness: a practice by which they could both transcend and ease the ailments of their physical body; an embodied experience of music as an always already unfolding of nuanced continuities and disruptions. In their songs Izzy usually finds themself reflecting on the uncertainties and complexities of life, using guitar to translate the subtleties, pains, and pleasures of their growth.

Highway Heroine Bakersfield Twang backed by the Buckaroos! Got your ears on? This album collects Kay Adams’ live studio cuts from the Buck Owens Ranch Show. Along with Tammy, Patsy and Loretta, Kay was one of country’s first female artists who elevated women in the genre. Gritty and country-to-the-bone, let this one spin & cut a rug! Pressed on pink vinyl!

Still sealed with cracked corner.

Muireann Bradley is a young blues, ragtime, roots and folk guitarist and singer based in Ballybofey in County Donegal Ireland. Tompkins Square actually signed her when she was 13, but because of Covid and just “growing up", the process of recording took place over three years. She will be 17 in December, 2023. "This is my first album. Most of these tunes were originally recorded by the great blues men and women who were making records from the 1920s and 1930s right up in some cases to the early 1970s. I have also found inspiration for the renditions recorded here in the playing of some of the musicians who began recording this music in the 1960s and later, and who in some cases learned at the feet of the greats. Many of these guitarists played pivotal roles in the 1960s blues revival and subsequent 'rediscovery' of many of the greats of country blues. I grew up steeped in these old blues in the hills overlooking the valley of the River Finn just outside the town of Ballybofey in County Donegal. My father would play this music constantly at home and wherever we went in the car and talk about it endlessly whether anyone was listening or not, telling stories about the lives of these musicians as if they were legend, mythology or the evening news. My father could of course play all this stuff on guitar, I remember watching him when I was very young and thinking 'I want to be able to do that'. When I was nine he agreed to teach me and bought me my first little travel guitar. I worked hard to learn how to play but as time wore on I seemed to have less and less time to practice as I became more and more invested in the combat sports I was regularly training and competing in. Then in March 2020 the first Covid lockdowns happened and all contact sports were shut down. I was lost for a while but soon found my way back to the guitar. I was now listening, playing and practicing with a new intensity and focus. In a very serious moment I wrote out a list of tunes I was going to learn. The first tune on that list was Blind Blake’s 'Police Dog Blues'. I’m not sure now how long it took to get that arrangement together but when it was ready we videoed me performing it and posted it on YouTube. It ended up getting a lot of attention, I remember my parents being quite shocked and soon after that Josh Rosenthal got in touch… and here we are! Each individual track on this album was recorded live in the studio and represents one entire take with me singing and backing myself up on guitar simultaneously. Most are either first or second takes. Nothing has been added or taken away, no overdubs or modern recording tricks of any kind have been used at all so at least in some respects this album has been recorded in the same way as those classics of the 1920s and 1930s. I hope you enjoy the record."—Muireann Bradley May 2023

A veritable institution of British folk, Fairport Convention has been going strong since the mid-1960s. Double album "Live At Rock City" is chock full of winners: along with strong adaptations of "John Barleycorn" and "Reynard The Fox" there are top tracks from "Expletive Delighted", including "Three Left Feet", "Sigh Beg Sigh Mor", "Portmeirion" and "Sack The Juggler". There's beautiful symmetry between Dave Pegg's mandolin and Martin Allcock's bouzouki; Ric Sanders raises the roof on electric violin, Dave Mattacks' drums are quietly steady and Simon Nicol's guitar and voice completes the picture. A must for all Fairport fans!

Lia Ices was pregnant with her first child when she started writing her forthcoming record, Family Album, a stunning collection of psychedelic-tinged Americana. It's been a long personal journey to get to Family Album, which she's putting out on her own label, Natural Music. The first song Ices wrote for Family Album was "Young on the Mountain," a breezy folk-rock track about life and death and freedom that's the album's highest energy. "The more real life gets, the more mystical it feels," she explains. This idea reaches throughout the album, like on "Anywhere At All," which is essentially an ode to "how psychedelic it is to be a first time mother," Creating a life and creating this record at the same time is only part of the story. Those two acts also brought Ices closer to who she really is, and to the music she's supposed to make. There's a holistic energy around Family Album, epitomized by the opening track, "Earthy," a gorgeous, dynamic song that begins with Ices solo on the piano, and midway through becomes a total psych-Americana jam. Though it starts the album off, even by the end it's clear this is the record's centerpiece, both its introduction and its heart; she sings about the Muse, about life and death, about both being here and giving herself away in order to find herself. She worked with producer JR White (Girls) all over California: three studios in LA, one in Stinson Beach, and one in San Francisco. Ices describes White as a "Brian Wilson type" with a singular mastery over gear; she says even just the way he rigged the mic while she was singing allowed her to get some of her best-ever vocal performances. There's a "universal timing" to this record that it's had since its beginning, with Ices' ripening. "It keeps being a teacher to me, it has its own energy field around it."