Beseeching, heartbreaking, balladeering Thai popular song, with a new, post-war urban polish and sensibility, and measured display of western styles like jazz, tango, and rumba. Lovely stuff.

A song-based ritual dedicated to the memory of Sofía Miranda de Bellido, performed one year after her death, in the Ayacucho region of the Central-South Sierra of Peru.
Bells are rung all morning. The coffin is presented at noon. Mass starts at midnight; at four the next morning, harp and violin players pick up the pace.
“I have not died, I will die on the day that you forget me!”

Cut-ups of two decades of pirate radio broadcasts, starting in the late eighties: soundclash business, rubadub soul, jungle, Indian music, dub, dancehall; complete with ads, chatter, phone-ins…

Old records of solo dulcimer, fairground mechanical pianos and music boxes, re-rendered via a slowed-down, pitch-modified turntable, with tape delay, EQ-fiddling and distortion.
Strange, atmospheric, poignant, folky dokey. Well worth checking.

With Arthur Russell, Bob Dylan, Anne Waldman, Perry Robinson, David Amram and co, having a whale of a time in sessions which sound like the best kind of parties, between 1971 and 1981.
‘Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs. Chanteys, Come-All-Ye’s, Aborigine Song Sticks. Gospel, Improvisations, Renaissance Lyrics, Blake Hymns, Bluegrass, Hillbilly Riffs, Country & Western, 50’s R&B, Dirty Dozens & New Wave.’
The first-ever full vinyl reissue; gatefold sleeve. Photography by Robert Frank!

A second helping as sublimely pleasurable as the first, with Prince Buster, Rupie Edwards, Derrick Harriott, Dobby Dobson and Joe Higgs amongst the singers.
‘Enthralling to anyone,’ according to The Guardian.

Digging deep in archives from West Virginia University to the British Library — across seven decades, 1934-2001 — in search of versions of the chilling ballad of Lamkin, about the grisly murder of a woman and her small child.

The first volume in a two-part collection of pirate radio adverts & idents, assembled from home recordings of London stations made between 1984 & 1993.

Haunting, ravishing blends of western art song, blues and jazz with traditional and classical Japanese music. Wonderful.

Stunning piano improvisations — mostly solo, though peppered with tombak, violin, and scraps of poetry — using his own tuning system, recorded for Iranian national radio between 1956-1965.

‘Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced ‘a pause for the cause’, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing through the immense number of pirate radio sets archived on the internet.
‘A few of my original unintended ‘saves’ and latterday ‘finds’ are included in this wonderful collection, focusing on the audio equivalent of the rave flyer: MCs breathlessly hyping a club night or upcoming rave, listing the lineup of deejays and MCs, boasting about hi-tech attractions like lasers and projections, mentioning prices and nearest landmarks to the venue, and occasionally promising ‘clean toilets’ and ‘tight but polite security’. Some of these ads are etched into my brain as lividly as the classic hardcore and jungle tunes of that time. Names of deejays ring out like mythological figures: Shaggy & Breeze, Kieran the Herbalist, Tinrib, Food Junkie…
‘These ads capture the hustling energy of an underground micro-economy; but most of all they are hard hits of pure nostalgic pleasure, amusing and thrilling through their blend of period charm, endearing amateurism, and contagiously manic excitement about rave music’s forward-surge into an unknown future. The best of these ads give me a memory-rush to rival the top tunes and MC routines of the era’ (Simon Reynolds).