Folk, World, & Country

Deluxe edition 2xLP set includes two exclusive tracks + a reworking of Don't Let My Marigolds Die. Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. A prime Fay song is a deceptively simple thing which c

There we go with another Afro Beat classic that did not really leave Nigeria back in the day it was released. Therefore we can only guess the value among collectors but some reliable sources tell us that even not so mint original copies go for up to 600 $. The AFRODISIA sublabel of DECCA music is responsible for quite a few awesome afro beat gems that have only recently been rediscovered by never sleeping music lovers such as the folks behind EVERLAND MUSIC from the Netherlands and here we go with the first ever official reissue of Eric Showboy Akaeze's second album with HIS ROYAL ERICOS. Eric Showboy Akaeze was former bigband leader who was hip on the Nigerian scene, which mostly happened around the main city of Lagos in the 60s and especially 70s after the military junta took over the reign and was keen to bring in more indegenious elements to the peoples allday lives and a new style of music emerged, AFRO BEAT, mixing Western rock and funk, rocksteady and soul with rhythms and melodies that clearly had an African heritage. He was nicknamed IKOTO, which is the Nigerian word for a spinner, the child's toy, due to his dancing style where he was spinning around like mad during shows. He was an extraordinary dancer and showman and what mostly interests us, he was a wonderful bandleader and musician. When Fela Kuti became the rising star on the scene and soon the musician most hated by the regime, Akaeze soon fell into Kuti's shadow but he maintained his musical activities until his untimely death in 2002 and with this, his second masterepiece ,Ikoto rock", referring to his nickname and his own style Akaeze created from this, his legacy was carved in rock. What kind of music shall we now expect from this 1974 release? The original holds 4 lengthy, groovy compositions with a jammy, nearly improvised feeling in some parts, for the reissue EVERLAND MUSIC dragged out the utterly scarce 7inch ,Akalaka" from 1975 (even beat up copies go for 700 $) and added both tracks to the A and B side of the album respectively. It fits well with the haunting, nearly hypnotizing style of ,Ikoto rock". There is always a repetitive beat, a dense network of grooves in the background of each song which build the foundation for the commanding vocals shouted out with passion for life and the harmonic arrangements of guitar, farfisa organ and brass section melodies. These songs are too furious and powerful for plain reggae and rocksteady. Listen to the simmering leads performed by Akaeze on a tenor saxophone. This is nearly eruptive. He loves to give his audience a break sometimes, adding passages with the feeling of a religious or military chant to enchant his listeners entirely. All this creates a steaming atmosphere and puts you, who gets this record spinning on his turntable, into a trance like state during the duration of the album. Most songs here were sung in Akaeze's native tongue or at least some English based lingo that includes many African words. You can easily feel how good the musicians are, due to the clear production that was a standard for DECCA / AFRODISIA releases back then. Still this album has a raw and honest feeling making it a simmering and intense musical affair. The two bonus tracks might be the most accessible and memorable here since they were conceived for a 7" release but still come as lengthy as they could. You will not find your 3 minute pop tunes here and the power of the performance is amazing. A wonderful item to rediscover, music that deserves to be alive and set the hearts and souls of a new generation on fire.

There are records with empathy, records which are your friends and then there's the others... There might be little difference between them, a certain "je ne sais quoi", an "almost nothing but still something" which makes the difference between almost pointless and vital records. Despite, or rather thanks to his cynical despair, Matt Elliott's music never holds up a moralizing mirror to us - on the contrary, it creates a compassionate dialogue with listeners like the rhythm of two steps that synchronize to become as one. In 2016, Matt Elliot brought out his seventh solo album The Calm Before whose obscure title is neither exactly threatening nor comforting... the calm before what? Before the storm for sure but maybe also before the great record, the immediate classic we felt might be coming for a long time in the dual discography of the Bristol-born artist working under his own name and his electronic alias Third Eye Foundation. The elegant details and perspectives of Little Lost Soul (2000) already hinted at the upcoming masterpiece from the English singer-songwriter. The Mess We Made (2003) was Matt Elliott's first solo album and portrayed a universe in a kind of flight towards Balkan horizons made up of visceral despair. With the Songs trilogy, he put aside the electronic side of his work to continue working with a minimalist, stark and lucid style of writing. The Broken Man (2012) was full of tears and long laments sometimes carried by Katia Labèque's piano on a record which painted new shades of grey. On this record Matt began working with the producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist David Chalmin (La Terre Invisible) who has kept on collaborating with the Bristol-born singer since then. Their partnership continued on Only Myocardial Infection Can Break Your Heart (2013) and The Calm Before (2016). Stéphane Grégoire is the head of the Ici D'Ailleurs label which has accompanied Matt Elliott since 2005 and perhaps he describes this album the best: "This new record by Matt is without a doubt his best album to date, a record that takes him into another dimension where he fully asserts himself as a songwriter and singer of the calibre of artists like Bill Callahan, Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash." Matt Elliott's other records all seemed like empathic links between each other. Farewell To All We Know is an instant classic based on the sensitive piano and superb arrangements of David Chalmin, the sensitive cello of Gaspar Claus, the subtle bass of Jeff Hallam (who has also played with Dominique A and John Parish). There is a clear form of alchemy in all of this and still we find Matt Elliott's usual atmospheres and scenery, the same Eastern European folk music, long songs that take time to settle over time. Everything is the same but also is transfigured. By making his music stark and purifying and redefining the subject matter, Matt Elliott's work became so much more delicate. However this work is never frail nor really turned in on himself and thus becomes like a vital tune that vibrates and unfolds. The opening song Farewell To All We Know seems torn between the fear of what tomorrow may bring, inevitability and hope for the future in a permanent and progressive dramatic tension expressed by his Spanish guitar, the impressionist style piano and Matt's voice teetering on the edge of whispers. A funereal tribute to endless twilights and the dawns we all dream of seeing. There are touches of Leonard Cohen from Songs from a Room or Thanks For The Dance in The Day After That with Gaspar Claus's counterpoint cello. There is no spirit of resignation in Matt Elliott's work - life's path has to be followed against all odds. We have to follow the river's flow to reach the immense ocean and its infinite freedom. The haunted instrumental Guidance Is Internal harks back to the atmospheres of Howling Songs (2008) with its guitar parts full of scansions and muted threats. The music is transcendental but never seems afraid of the risk of falling. This is also what Bye Now tells us with its quasi-obsolete simplicity and sunburst melancholy reminiscent of the work of Luiz Bonfá, Bill Evans on Peace Piece or laidback crooners of the 50s. In Farewell To All We Know, Matt Elliott incessantly alternates between the dual desires to face up to the world or to protect himself from it. Hating The Player, Hating The Game is a lucid statement about the dullness of our daily lives sometimes, our right to get out of the game and no longer want to be part of it. Matt Elliott is tender but spares no one, particularly himself. Aboulia speaks of the tiredness of living and of looming death while Crisis Apparition says that there is always a time for reconstruction after chaos. This is like initially wearying wandering in the ruins of Aleppo with the slow dilution of the melody into a hallucinated drone. However the smell of great fires always fades and the earth always regenerates. Matt Elliott seems to suggest that the survival instinct is stronger than any cold winds could ever be. Matt Elliott never sings of certainties and prefers possibilities. Possibly the worst is over? Maybe... Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again. Farewell To All We Know shows us the distance that still needs to be walked and he walks next to you - right next to you, he is the friend who doesn't spare you the truth like all true friends really do.

The second record of the five-piece band from Brighton was recorded in Frankfurt/Main at Lotte Lindenberg Studio by producers Wolfgang Gottlieb and Fakir Ayoub (The Miserable Rich, Daniel Johnston, King Khan & The Shrines...). The band knows how to

Limited 180gm orange vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. Some of country music's biggest stars joined The Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald for all-new recordings of the band's classic hits on 2014's Southbound. Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Casey James, Charlie Worsham, Chris Young, Jerrod Niemann, Johnnyswim's Amanda Sudano Ramirez, Love and Theft, Sara Evans, Toby Keith, Tyler Farr, and the Zac Brown Band make up the roster of artists choosing their favorite Doobie songs to record with the band, with selected tracks featuring special instrumental contributions from Hunter Hayes and Vince Gill. Indelible classics like "Black Water," "What a Fool Believes," "Jesus Is Just Alright," "Rockin' Down the Highway," "Long Train Runnin'," "China Grove," "Take Me in Your Arms," "Takin' It to the Streets" and "You Belong to Me" all get revitalized here. Tom Johnston remarked, "Southbound seemed like the perfect name of this collaboration project with all these dynamic country artists. The band has a lot of roots, both musically and lyrically, from the South such as blues, country, R&B, and folk. To us it was a natural fit that it be called Southbound."

World-renowned handpan player and composer Manu Delago returns with a brand-new album, which comes hot off the heels of his acclaimed awe-inspiring short film and album project, Parasol Peak – the transfixing Circadian. The album, which is set for re

Austin indie-rock band The Deer has fully stepped outside the folk/Americana world they've inhabited for the past several years with their new album Do No Harm. Singles Confetti to the Hurricane, Move to Girls, and Swoon are dynamic, powerful

A rock band without a drummer, a bluegrass band without a fiddler. To the gentlemen of The Dead South, a self-styled 4-piece string band from Regina, Saskatchewan, its about how, not what, you play. The Dead Souths combination of cello, mandolin, g

What’s New, Tomboy? is an album that seeks respite in bare minimums and barren revelations: sometimes frail, sometimes affirming, sometimes wry, and usually a threadbare mix of all those sentiments. It could be considered Damien Jurado’s finest collection of music to date, with songs exuding the inviting warmth of a lone porch light gleaming amidst the disorienting darkness. Though more stripped and grounded in their execution, songs like Sandra, Ochoa and Alice Hyatt are generous and candid in their vocabulary, eschewing the sometimes abstruse imagery of Jurado’s previous releases. “There is no hiding on these tracks.” Though What’s New, Tomboy? is the first Damien Jurado record that ends with a question mark, he has never sounded more assured and content in giving up his ghosts: “I’m only living sentences // That were long before I got here.

On her third album for both Fat Possum and Loose Records, Courtney Marie Andrews has pulled in to one package all the songwriting skill, vocal prowess, and musicianship displayed on previous albums, into one career defining statement. A break-up record for sure, though due to Courtney's extraordinary storytelling gifts, more of a modern day coming-of-age tale of love won, love sustained, and unfortunately, love's inevitable dissolution

This beautiful four-track EP features only recent and re-worked recordings by Pascal Comelade which are previously unreleased. Highlights are his cover versions of The Ramones' Sheena Is A Punk Rocker and Russian Roulette by The Lords Of The New

Stefan Christensen swamps delicate threads of melody in a muted squall of distortion. Waves of agitated noise, tamped down but still fractious, roll over the structures of his songs, so that it's hard to tell whether the song or the dissonant scree o