Blazing, hardcore bluegrass from 1967, including covers of the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Delmore Brothers, and the Carter Family. Written for the duo by the father of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe, and saturated in blues music, closer The One I Love Is Gone is the killer blow.

Their monumental 1965 debut. Driving, full-strength bluegrass, with magnificent accompaniment by fiddler Chubby Wise, David Grisman on mandolin, and Lamar Grier from the Blue Grass Boys playing banjo.

Their first two, groundbreaking Folkways LPs, plus a previously-unreleased go at the Louvins’ Childish Love. Decent booklet, with various essays and great photos.

‘When those albums first came out, I was disappointed with the quality of the sound,’ writes engineer Peter Siegel. ‘I think the new masters better capture the essence of Hazel and Alice’s music, and sound more like the traditional bluegrass style that these performances represent.’

Songs for dancing, about love and heartache, conflict, and spirituality, over the rolling lilt of the ekonting, a three-stringed gourd lute played by Jola people in Gambia and the Casamance region of Senegal.

Luminessence Series.

Paradigmatic yet forward-looking township jazz from 1975.
Braiding Wes Montgomery into marabi, the legendary guitarist leads a stellar line-up of musicians including Kippie Moeketsi, Barney Rachabane, Gilbert Matthews, Dennis Mpale, and Sipho Gumede.
The opener glances sideways at the commercial success of Abdullah Ibrahim’s recent Mannenberg — but the real magic follows on, when the players cut loose in their own, new directions.
This is the first vinyl reissue. Sleevenotes by Kwanele Sosibo feature interviews with key musicians, and previously unpublished photos.

Upful, true-born-scuffler sing-jaying over a crisp, late-eighties Mansfield McClean rhythm.
Life is for living, but watch your step; ‘dollars weak but life is sweet’.

Bringing together two generations of South African guitar mastery: Madala Kunene, ‘King of the Zulu Guitar’, now in his mid-seventies, and his protege Sibusile Xaba, whose playing interweaves multiple South African guitar lineages in an original, spiritualised fusion.
Recorded in Zululand in the town of Utrecht, at a cultural centre called Kwantu Village. “It’s such a broad word, but the elders teach us that Ntu is basically an energy, almost chi, an energy, a force that all living beings have within them. It’s a living energy, so kwaNTU is almost the place of this energy.”

‘A beautifully expansive collection of interweaving, finger-picked melody, husky vocalisations from elder Kunene and thrumming hand percussion’ (The Guardian).

A classy, rock steady sextet — the rhythm section is Art Taylor and Paul Chambers — presenting four compositions by Mal Waldron.