‘Their ability to harmonize together is stunning, their reedy voices coming together and pulling apart amid delicate fingerstyle guitar and concertina deployed in just intonation, which imparts a deeply resonant, almost glowing harmonic presence. It’s all quite subtle, and if you only listen to the way the voices of Cater and Rasten blend you might even miss it—but the full sonic spectrum is what distinguishes and, in certain ways, connects it to traditional practice… Although the album is pure balladry, unfolding with exquisite patience, each song contains nifty little flourishes or instrumental elements that set them apart, such as the slide guitar and wheezy bass harmonica on For the Ear That is No More, or the slow peal of trumpet on Death and the Lady, courtesy of Rasten’s partner in Pip and Oker, Torstein Lavik Larsen. (Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street).
‘All done with such grace and elegance, without a note wasted or any required. Wonderful… faultless and deeply considered’ (Glenn Kimpton, KLOF).

Three high English and Scottish ballads, and three original settings of European folk tales.
Matt gatefold cover; gloss spot varnish.
Check it out!

Warm, hazy and enigmatic Laurel Canyon country-folk — her debut — with well-measured baroque-ish brass and woodwind arrangements, reverbed and layered voices.

Beautiful, early-seventies, singer-songwriter, orchestral, countrified pop. The challenges of this second album put her back on heroin: it was her last.

Compositions from 1969/70, when Forti was based in Woodstock, New York — ‘stoned in the woods,’ she recalls — around the time of the Festival, just before moving to California, and working and performing with Charlemagne Palestine.
The seven songs here were recorded in 2012 during her exhibition Sounding, at The Box gallery in Los Angeles. The blue vinyl carries an etching of Forti’s Illuminations Drawing on the flip; accompanied by a sixteen-page colour book with images of the original sheet music scored by Charlemagne Palestine.

‘An album of cathartic intimacy, built around electronic textures and sparse percussion, with White’s gently yielding, half-spoken vocals pitched pleasingly between Laurie Anderson and Joni Mitchell’ (Mojo).

Respite from his recent firestorms, this conjures from spellbinding acoustics and drones galore something meditative and darkly unsettling by turns. Fine vocals and shredding axe work from Elisa Ambrogio.

‘The first thing is how unhinged it all sounds. The album brews and boils with an ominously dark tone in a desolate space, dense with energy, guitar overdriven past the point of sanity, slamming drum accents, vocals cutting through in what seems to be comprised of another, as yet unheard, language. Yet, inside the apparent wild abandon and destruction is a strict internal logic of construction that unveils itself upon listening…’ With Noel Von Harmonson from Comets On Fire on drums, and Rob Fisk from Badgerlore sharing the bass-playing with San Francisco psych legend Charlie Saufley.

Wonderful, previously-unheard recordings by the legendary Bahamian guitarist, at his peak in 1965, made at his only New York concert, at home in Nassau, and in a Manhattan apartment. Gripping, one-off playing, continuously stepping out of line, or surprising you with accents, like Monk; rough, enraptured singing in the age-old tradition of local sponge fishermen, with startling irruptions of humming, babble and scat.

Legendary stoner folk by former Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape member (who dropped some LSD and motorcycyled from California to the Nashville studio in his pyjamas).

Terrific analogue recordings of inimitable covers of Thin Lizzy, Nico, Black Sabbath, Abba, Sandy Denny etc, with support from Will Oldham and labelmates Supersilent.

A singing trio from Charente-Maritime, reviving folk songs from the neighbouring department of Vendée, on France’s western seaboard. Mostly recorded at home, with guests playing accordion, violin, piccolo and contrabassoon, and cigar-box guitar.

In his liner notes, old admirer and collaborator Alasdair Roberts registers ‘a deepened richness’ in these new recordings, ‘unfolding with a patient confidence… considered and poised.’
‘There’s a greater complexity and subtlety to their unique three-part harmonising, too. Their voices mesh in even stronger — almost telepathic — ‘fraternité’ than ever before: now commanding and mighty as a full-rigged counter-vessel, now gentle and lulling as a mother’s cradle-croon, or a whisper in a lover’s ear.’

Trá Pháidín are a nine-piece from Conamara, Galway, a wild coastal region of West Ireland, where Gaeilge remains the first language. They make a joyful noise — a unique and unpredictable blend of traditional Irish folk, post-rock, jazz, and Dadaist absurdity. 
Their album An 424 is a freewheeling, dialectical consideration of the 424 bus route and its passengers, passing up and down the coastline from the Gaeltacht into anglophone Ireland, and vice versa, and taking in wondrous locations like Cuan na Gaillimhe / Galway Bay, An Bhoirinn / the Burren, na hOileáin Árann / the Arann Islands, Aillte an Mhothair / the Cliffs of Moher, Portach Mhaigh Cuilinn / the bogs of Maigh Cuilinn, Bóthar Loch an Iolra / Eagle lake road, Cuan Casla / Casla Harbour, Cuan an Fhir Mhóir / Greatman’s Bay, Cnoc Mordáin / Mordáin hill, Sléibhte Mhám Toirc / the Maamturk Mountains, Na Beanna Beola / the twelve pins…
‘This is a topic you could write a PhD about (and maybe someone already has),’ says the band. ‘But if you are someone who grew up or lives in this region, you have a particular understanding at this stage of how complicated Gaelic psyche is and the kind of spectrum of identity along bóthar Choise Fharraige. With the landscape in mind, this bus journey is a great meditation on the various topics of life.’
Listen out for flights of wild improvisation filled with brass, woodwinds, harp, and fiddles… and hard-nosed grooves.

A terrific, bountiful seasonal single — with Bonnie Prince Billy in his cups on one side, and Mike Heron from The Incredible String Band on the other, with a Boxing Day ghost story. Beautifully sleeved, limited.

‘New levels of excellence… a poetic incantation of British identity far brighter than Michael Gove’s proposed GCSE history syllabus *****’ (The Sunday Times). ‘Magnificent ****’ (The Guardian).

Gorgeous, downbeat, giddy with reverie, longing and loss. Led by Inigo’s guitar, banjo, ukelele or harmonium; with classic brass-band charts. Recorded by James Blackshaw’s engineer; mastered by Rashad.