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First-time-out for these early-seventies recordings — countrified drafts of some classic Hurley, with backing from Vermont mates the Fatboys, aka the Deranged Cowboys.

Beautiful, stoned, outsider American folk, remastered from the original tapes (with superior sound quality to the super-rare original). From the eight years between First Songs LP in 1964 and Armchair Boogie.

45s and LPs spanning the period 1964-1973, including his long-lost album debut. The original material here trumps the folk chestnuts. Alasdair Roberts does Lord Randall a lot better, has to be said.

A kind of greatest hits of the one-man-band, albeit all rare now, or previously unreleased.
An early version of Abner’s signature song I’m So Depressed, on LP for the first time, is followed by four unreleased recordings, on electric banjo, drums played by his feet, and harmonica.
The second side features Abner’s charged, mournful last recordings, not for the faint of heart, made two months before his death. These were released by Mississippi as a ten-inch EP back in 2011, entitled Last Ole Minstrel Man.

Wildly entertaining sixties outsider Americana from this one-man band out of south Georgia. With songs like I’m So Depressed, Cocaine, Vietnam and The Reason Young People Use Drugs.

The unlikely Hawaiian-influenced Xabagies music of 1930s Greece: surrealist guitar portraits blurring Athens and Honolulu, haunting tropical serenades, wild acoustic orchestras, and heartbreaking steel guitar duets. With a 28-page booklet.

‘Classic Louisiana swamp soul / R&B, recorded in the early to mid 1960s. Includes the popular dancefloor fillers I Got Loaded and Stop, as well as some real beautiful obscurities. Ballads and stompers to make life better. Old school tip-on cover.’

‘Heady, raw, druggy songs of love, dread, hardship, and yearning, recorded in Athens between 1932 and 1936, when Markos was already a master of the bouzouki. His forceful, clean playing compliments his hoarse voice and his stunning rhythmic sensibility, the result of his years as a champion zebekiko dancer. Tracks build and spiral outward, his open-note drones and melodic lines drawing calls of ecstasy and encouragement from his fellow musicians. These recordings mark the height of rebetika, the brief period between the music’s emergence on the recording scene in the early 1930s and government censorship of all lyrics starting in 1936. During the Axis occupation there was no rebetika recording, and though Markos had some hits in the years after the war, he never again attained this level. These are the dizzying, entrancing, and heaviest works of one of the great artists of the 20th century.’

Olima Anditi is a blind guitarist beloved throughout Western Kenya for his old Luo songs about love, morality and politics. This warmly intimate session was recorded in his room in Kisumu, in 2010. Like Usiende Ukualale, it’s lovingly presented, with a colour booklet.

Thrilling primitive gospel from Alabama. Fuzzy, loud, dissonant guitar somewhere between Pops Staples, John Lee Hooker and the outsider R ‘n B of Hasil Adkins. True testifyin’ magic, and highly recommended.

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