• Music

    Banat Tamburitza Orchestra – Serbian Dance Band in New Jersey, ca. 1949​-​50

    November 20, 2022 - By 

    Canary Records produces another excellent collection of archival music, this time from Serbia.  From his Bandcamp site: “The Banat Tamburitza band are said to have been formed around 1912 or ’13 in Elizabeth, New Jersey by Serbian immigrants from the village of Sânpetru Mare (then-population about 2,000) in the Banat region of present-day Timiș county of western Romania. A group by the same name recorded for Columbia in the mid-20s for Columbia and then in the mid-40s for the Sonart label with the renowned Bosnian singer Edo Ljubić (b. 1912; d. 1993) at which point a reference in Miriam Lidster…

  • Music - Spotify

    Yggdrasil & Vera Kondratieva — Timint Areh

    November 16, 2022 - By 

    Yggdrasil are a Faroese project led by multi-instrumentalist Kristian Blak (whom I had the pleasure, many years ago, of meeting in Varna, Bulgaria) and a host of local musicians along with singer Vera Kondratieva from Siberia.  You would expect to hear a melding of Scandinavian and traditional Siberian music on Timent Areh, but this also adds elements of jazz, rock and maybe just a touch of post-punk.  It’s a fun album, not too terribly dark, sung beautifully and supplemented by a rather tight backing band.  Tutl Records, the record label Blak has run since the 1970s, has released another gem. …

  • Music

    Wickerbird – The Sea Weaver

    October 1, 2022 - By 

    Though our friends at Lost Tribe Sound have chosen to release this album on November 22, 7 weeks away from today’s date, I thought it wise to hip you, my friends and readers, on an album you’ll surely find to be a treasure. From the label’s press release: Lost Tribe Sound is happy to announce a new album and artist joining the roster from Washington State based songwriter, Wickerbird. We’ve been closely following Wickerbird’s output for many years. It’s a bear-hugging type of sound that needs to be heard. Wickerbird is the atmospheric dream-folk project of Blake Cowan, started in the…

  • Music

    noemienours – The Dry Path

    July 18, 2022 - By 

    It’s hard for me to make out the influences of this album, but I can say with certainty that listening to this rather weird album was a pleasure.  From noemienours’ Bandcamp site: ““The Dry Path”, noemienours’ 5th LP, developed around a Gobi Bear narrative of barren edge conditions as an access point to supra-natural realities, is definitely a turning point in the noemienours discography, notably because of its introduction of harpsichord in the noemienours instrumentarium, but also because of its recourse to a widened approach of its lo-fi musical approach, by creating a new musical form somewhere between Swedish post-black…

  • Music

    Galaverna – Wagdans

    June 23, 2022 - By 

    I would have expected an album like this to come from England, the Netherlands or even somewhere in the Scandinavian realm, but to think that such a wonderfully played (and sung – in English!) album comes from Verona, Italy, of all places, shows that Galaverna are true students of such amazing bands as Tudor Lodge, The Trees or Kebnekajse.  This is progressive folk which looks back fondly to the masters of the genre and builds on their work.

  • Music

    Various Artists – Shirley Inspired…

    May 27, 2022 - By 

    There is, apparently, a documentary film coming out on the life of Shirley Collins, the grand dame of British folk music who worked with such artists as disparate as Davey Graham and Current 93.  This compilation is tied to the film, and features artists like Lee Ranaldo, Alasdair Roberts and Angel Olsen, but the standout track is The Murder Of Maria Marten, eerily performed by Ela Stiles. 45 tracks of well-done covers.

  • Music

    Sak Sok Ensemble of Fershampenuaz Village – Nagaybak Songs From Chelyabinsk Region, Russia

    April 19, 2022 - By 

    A fascinating release from our friends at Antonovka Records.  From their Bandcamp website: “Nagaybaks are an ethnic group that descends from the Christian Tatars and shares the same self-name with them — “Kreshenner”, which means “Baptized Ones”. There are about 10 thousand Nagaybaks in total, they live primarily in the Nagaybaksky district of the Chelyabinsk region, in the South Ural area. In the Russian empire the Nagaybaks belonged to the Cossack estate. Many of their villages were named after European settlements, at which the Nagaybaks distinguished themselves in the battles. Fershampenuaz is the capital of the Nagaybak district, it got…