Folk Vinyl 238 Items

Andalou Folk meets western psychedelic and Surf Rock - an incredible fusion and a long overdue release.

Millions Brazilians formed in Portland, Oregon in 2006. Founding members Grant Corum and Suzanne Stone have been central to the band since it’s inception, while a rotating line-up backs them depending on the latest vision for the sound. TIP!
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The band carry out their own interpretation of a genre bending ethos that has evolved throughout the American underground. Drifting between boundless compositions, focused energetic improvisations and experimental collaborations that embrace a weird sort of transcendence.

Their next installment Red Rose and Obsidian was recorded in Maine and engineered by Big Blood’s Caleb Mulkerin. Both he and the band deliver a powerful yet fragile and personal release. The mythical and evocative recordings are inspired by Maine's rugged coastlines; mournful ripples of sound wash up on the shore, whilst a lonesome, at times harrowing saxophone drifts through the rolling mountains, providing unsettling melodic interludes. Electronic treatments veil organic sounds, a fleeting whistle meets spontaneously with spacey flutes, mutated rock rhythms are topped off with the soaring vocals of Suzanne Stone who leads the listeners into the magical world of the Million Brazilians.

Metqal Quenawi, born in 1929 in Luxor, Egypt, (also known as a.o. Met'qal, Metaqal Kinawi Metaqal and Awlad Metqal, and active with his Metaqal Rebab Ensemble), developed a style based on folk traditions from southern Egypt. Recovering the traditions of the Said (the southern region around Luxor), Metqal was brought up with the customs of the Fellahin (agricultural labourers who passed on the age-old traditions of Egypt) he mastered the rebab, an violin-like, Bedouin instrument made out of coconut shell, wood and animal skin that's played with a horse hair bow. His many recordings from the '70s and '80s (relesed on various cassettes) disseminated and rescued in the '70s and '80s made Metqal into a key reference in Egyptian music. Thanks to this LP, pressed in an edition of 500 copies, Metqal's music is now also available to western audiences.

Matana Roberts is one of the most acclaimed, socio-politically conscious and aesthetically intrepid avant-jazz practitioners of the 21st century. Following the critical accolades that the first two Coin Coin chapters have thus far received, the past year has been marked by further career-defining recognition for her body of iconoclastic work: Roberts was a recipient of both the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the Daisy Duke Impact Award in 2014.

Roberts has long employed the phrase “panoramic sound quilting” to describe the process surrounding her Coin Coin work. The third chapter in her Coin Coin series finds Roberts implementing this metaphor most explicitly, constructing a sound art tapestry from field recordings, loop and effects pedals, and spoken word recitations, alongside her saxophone and singing voices. Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee could arguably be considered first and foremost a vocal work, and notwithstanding its experimental and esoteric structure, a deeply narrative work as well.

Cover has a slightly bumped corner.

Cracked corner. Original inner sleeves. With CD.

Cover with slightly bumped corner. Etched vinyl

The first-ever compilation of "havagies", the nearly forgotten Hawaiian-influenced music of 1930s Greece, focused on the compositions of Kostas Bezos and his ensemble White Birds. A world-class slide guitarist, political cartoonist and sleepless Bohemian, Kostas Bezos created some of the most unique music of any era: surrealist guitar portraits blending Athens and Honolulu, haunting tropical serenades, wild acoustic orchestras, and heartbreaking steel guitar duets. Incredibly, this is the same musician responsible for the legendary "Kostis" rebetika recordings (see A. Kostis "The Jail's a Fine School" [OLV-002 / MRP-098]).

Puzzling collage of Tibetan Buddhist rites

Red vinyl. Still in shrink, but opened, with hype sticker

Karen Dalton was a remote, elusive creature. A hybrid of tough and tender with an unearthly voice that seemed to embody a time long past. As is often the case with such fragile beings, she instinctively understood that the only way to survive the harshness of the world around her, was to keep herself hidden. So it comes as no great surprise that she rarely sang in public or ventured into the unnatural setting of a recording studio. Only twice, for 1969’s It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best and then again for 1971’s In My Own Time, was she coaxed from her habitat into the studio. Other times she made music in casual settings, sitting around a kitchen table or wood burning stove with her friends, singing and playing until daybreak.

In 1966, Carl Baron brought his reel to reel over to her remote cabin in Summerville, Colorado and recorded one of those exquisite musical evenings. Karen and Richard Tucker were rehearsing for a gig when Carl hit the “Record” button. The result is a 45-year-old tape, carefully exhumed, documenting Karen at her most raw and unfiltered. On it are Fred Neil and Tim Hardin songs we’ve never heard Karen give voice to before, as well as traditional songs she uncannily makes her own, including a devastating version of ‘Katie Cruel’, that is so powerful, it is as if the ghost of Katie Cruel seeped into her blood. This recording is a window to her Summerville cabin opened, allowing us to eavesdrop on Karen Dalton at her most pure and unaffected.

Vinyl close to NM

Vinyl with a couple of light scuffs. Cover close to NM

Limited Edition Clear Vinyl.
Includes a poster insert. Tiny wear.

Julie Byrne’s much loved second album Not Even Happiness (2017) added atmospheric instrumentation and electronic flourishes to her unusual guitar tunings and fingerpicked melodies, moving the songs from the front-porch into subtle anthemia. Whether witnessing the Pacific Northwest for the first time (‘Melting Grid’), the morning sky in Colorado after staying up through the night at a house party in the mountains of Boulder (‘Natural Blue’), recording the passage of freight trains on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York ('Interlude'), or a journey fragrant with rose water; reading Frank O’Hara aloud from the passengers seat during a drive through the desert of Utah into the rainforest of Washington State (‘All The Land Glimmered Beneath’), Not Even Happiness is Julie’s beguilingly ode to the fringes of life.

OBI is missing!

Jozef van Wissem's 2017 album is inspired by a Vanitas painting by the Belgian artist Cindy Wright, which also graces the cover of the album. This inspiration is beautifully reflected in the music of the album as Jozef's lute arrangements sound fragile and his sparse vocals delicate. as if the vanity, the temporality and senselessness of everything has been rendered audible. Each song title refers to the painting, making each track a memento mori on its own. This is counterbalanced by the strong and deep sound of the album.

Niandra LaDes And Usually Just A T-Shirt is the first solo record by John Frusciante. Between 1990 and 1992 the guitarist made a series of 4-track recordings, which at the time were not intended for commercial release. After leaving the band Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1992, Frusciante was encouraged by friends to release the material that he wrote in his spare time during the Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions.

Originally released on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label in 1994, Niandra LaDes is a mystifying work of tortured beauty. Frusciante plays various acoustic and electric guitars, experimenting with layers of vocals, piano and reverse tape effects. Channeling the ghosts of Syd Barrett and Skip Spence, his lyrics are at once utterly personal and willfully opaque.

Frusciante’s rapidfire, angular playing shows how key he was in the Chili Peppers’ evolution away from their funk-rock roots. His cover of “Big Takeover” perfectly deconstructs the Bad Brains original with laid-back tempo, twelve-string guitar and a fierce handle on melody.

The album’s second part—thirteen untitled tracks that Frusciante defines as one complete piece, “Usually Just A T-Shirt”—contains several instrumentals featuring his signature guitar style. Sparse phrasing, delicate counterpoint and ethereal textures recall Neu/Harmonia’s Michael Rother or The Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly.

On the front cover, Frusciante appears in 1920s drag—a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s alter-ego Rrose Sélavy—which comes from Toni Oswald’s film Desert in the Shape.

This first-time vinyl release has been carefully remastered and approved by the artist. The double LP set is packaged with old style tip-on gatefold jacket and printed inner sleeves.

Jilk release their new EP ‘In Need of Tess‘ – A wonderful collection of tracks that build on the established epic soundscapes of past releases but also demonstrate the organic development of combining experimental ambient pallets with more traditional orchestral scores and delicate pop sensibilities.

Following their successful collaboration with Haiku Salut on the emotionally charged ‘Periscopes’; Jilk return with warped vocals, soaring strings and a techno core tying the spiralling dense walls of ambience together.

The lead single, ‘In Need of Tess’ is a collaborative piece; a pulsating slice of chamber pop about dead dogs and dreams which also draws on the considerable talents of video director Nic Kane, the sculptures of Hester Sorel Moriarty Thompson.

The rest of the EP comprises of a two-part piece developed from a soundtrack Jilk produced for a lovely short film by Nim Jethwa. Building, developing and fleshing out the ideas; Jilk combine the sweeping beauty of orchestral timbre with driving 4/4 pulse and rusty sounding guitars for Nim and Nim (Sit Down Outro).

Baby Hannah is an epic piece of post rock inflected electronica making full use of the bands wide range of players. Vibraphone, violins and guitars cling to foundation drum patterns as the piece moves from ambient drone through to a rain storm of melodic percussion that even Steve Reich would approve of.

Be Heart: A short but emotionally charged clattering lo-fi electro love song built from home found sounds and frazzled broken synths. The most aching club romance to take place in a child’s toy box.

Then a collaboration with the incredible Nuala Honan as Jilk rework her stand out track ‘All is Not Lost’, (taken from her 2014 album The Tortoise). Jilk mould the song into a hazy blanket of clicks, whirs, strings and heart wrenching vocals from snippets.

2015 reissue. Still sealed.