A rollicking organ-and-drums grounation workout.
Plus Ken Boothe taking liberties with Nat King Cole’s Hazy Lazy Crazy Days Of Summer.

‘A work of intimacy, love, struggle, grandeur and sonic adventure,’ recorded in Geneva during 2013-4.

I really felt the need to work on something like In Major in the moment I started it. It’s instantly joy!
And only back then, during the storm, I thought of working on an album…

Terrific new folk music from Dublin. Try the opener, the travellers’ song What Will We Do When We Have No Money? And the centre-piece, the furiously inward-turned immigrant song, Déanta in Éireann. The Granite Gaze… killer.
Hotly recommended.

Another tremendous album from Dublin. It kicks off with a devastating reclamation of The Wild Rover — waste, shame and regret restored — and closes with a compelling original, about a community of women living rough (in nests) on the plains of the Curragh, County Kildare, in the nineteenth century. The centrepiece is a dread version of the Appalachian song Katie Cruel, about a sex worker, by way of Karen Dalton. There are revivals of old-time fiddle music from Montana and Missouri; moments of heavy metal hornpipe.
“Drone is a big part of traditional music because the Uilleann pipes are indigenous to Ireland, so we’re ramping up that history and taking it as far as we can.”
Hotly recommended.

Taut horror soundtrack from 1963: dramatically orchestral, with jazzy intervals.

His second EP for this excellent Finnish label.
‘Four tracks of arctic tropicalia constructed during last summer’s heatwave. Badly behaving analogue synths and echos were layered with noisy field recordings and improvised percussion instruments. Some dub was also thrown in. When temperatures finally started dropping, files were sent to Scape Mastering.’

Photos from the ramshackle mobile photo booths run during the 1930s by the Massengill family of rural Arkansas.
Compelling, sharply poignant glimpses of the Depression-era South, alongside essays, remembrances and diary transcriptions.
‘June 18, 1939 Mr Pennington drowned today. We went home about 4:00 o’clock and made cream at mama’s.’
180 pages, beautifully done.

A Now Again labour of love: the complete works of this legendary guitarist-singer-songwriter from Atlanta. His earliest work for the Tuska label, through his more mature releases for Shout, and smaller regional labels like Note, Free Spirit and RSC, at the most subterranean and fertile interface of Southern soul and funk. CD presented in a fifty-six-page, saddle-stitched book, with extensive essays on Marks’ career and never-before-seen photos and ephemera. Great stuff.

Lloyd Charmers, Alva Lewis, Glen Adams and the Barrett brothers, holding a candle for ska at the close of the 1960s. With a precious, uptempo, alternate take, on the flip.

Mid-nineties kwaito by Thami Mdluli (veteran of chart-toppers Taboo and CJB, and in-demand producer of the likes of Sox and Sensations).
Tasty, infectious rhythms and synth-work — if the singing is a bit Black Box — with an up-for-it, DIY energy and self-identity encouraged by the momentum of the liberation struggle in this period. “Once Mandela was released from prison and people felt more free to express themselves and move around town, kwaito was becoming the thing,” says Thami.

Utterly beautiful solo-piano explorations in African folk, spiritual meditation, Satie-esque classicism and Tatum-esque jazz, by this Ethiopian nun, making her 1963 LP debut, recorded in Germany. Stunning; highly recommended.

‘Gebru is a true original,’ says Mississippi. ‘Her playing is somewhere between Satie, Debussy, the liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear! All original compositions available for the first time on vinyl beyond the original early 1960s editions, which are completely impossible to find. Old school tip-on cover with gold foil printing. A must-have masterpiece for anyone who needs some spiritual comfort.’