Celebrating the twentieth year of ensemblehood, BBOJ delivers the band’s signature, funked-up melange of soul, afrobeat and hard riffing jazz. Or, as they call it, ‘now music’. Featuring the humdinger title track of last year’s EP, In The House, this is, as always, uplifting as hell.
Lovely. Classical songs by such exemplars as Schubert and Schumann, re-imagined with heart and soul as bare, doleful folk. Just voice and electric guitar.
Terrific — lit-up, reaching and odd — Josephine playing harp, guitar and piano (and singing), with Alex Nielson on drums and Victor Herrero, lead guitar.
Patti Smithed. ‘Lyrically, stylistically and musically, this is a fearless, soon to be classic post-punk rock and roll record that delivers the goods from start to finish.’
Settings of the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Intimate four-track home recordings from 2001. After years of just writing songs down, without thinking of recording them, the spur was her work as a music teacher to young children.
JF goes to Nashville — a home from home for her song-writing, its odd allure, sex and sorrow lit up by harp and pedal steel, double bass and piano.
‘A maze of spirituals, on four levels. Ritual prayers, blues laments, vestal hymns and jubilant benedictions hearkening back to the esoteric balladry of This Coming Gladness, the native rhythms of Blood Rushing, the somnambulist waltzes of I’m A Dreamer, and the Shaker primitivism of Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You. Self-accompaniment on guitar, piano, organ, harp and autoharp, with Victor Herrero (lead guitars), Gyða Valtýsdóttir (cello), Chris Scruggs (pedal steel) and Jon Estes (bass), as well as cameos by members of The Cherry Blossoms and others.’
Clear vinyl.
Originally released by Topic in 1974.
Her 1959 LP, with the first run out for signature classics like Hares On The Mountain.
Deluxe LP edition, with gold foiling on the sleeve, a four-page booklet, 140g vinyl.
Shirley and her sister recorded in concert in the late 1970s; and a handful of demos from the 1960s.
1978 recordings on acoustic and electric guitar, originally released on vinyl that year by the Morgue label in Japan.
Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey’s first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return.
The LP was issued in two versions over the years — Incus 2 and 2R — with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey’s performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars and Willem Breuker.
All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972; a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It’s a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence and wit.