Latest on Bo'Weavil, the label that brought you high-quality reissues of sides by Shirley Collins, Richard Bishop and James Blackshaw is Dale Berning's The Horse Stories, a soundtrack to a film by Hiraki Sawa, commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Bloomberg London, for Waterloo Sunset, the Dan Graham Pavilion at the Hayward in November 2004. Dominated by slow, melancholic piano runs, the music has the feeling of a long-abandoned doll's house, with the muzz of chimes, water dripping from taps, the march of wind-up clocks and the sound of manipulated record players all conspiring to birth an atmosphere heavy with the feel of sad nostalgia. Hand-numbered edition of 500 in textured sleeves.

Great set of improvised acoustic guitar face-offs from avant Japanese guitarists Tetuzi Akiyama and free New Zealander Donald McPherson. Various hypnotic strategies cohere to wildly variant effect, with beautiful - almost Fahey-esque - melodies squatted by wayward, Jandek-style string navigations, percussive stops and melancholy clumps of chords. First ever CD from Bo’Weavil too, in deluxe fold-out art card sleeve and limited to 1000 copies. Very beautiful.

Anyone who has ever spent any considerable time in the UK's godforsaken capital will immediately concur with the sentiment expressed in the title - some has gotta liberate that place from the clutches of style-mag/media-centred mediocrity and soon. Bo'Weavil, a label that has done a lot to upgrade a host of key folk sides to deluxe vinyl, is the first to strike a blow with this nicely presented double LP in a hand-numbered edition of 550 copies on heavyweight vinyl that gives a side each to four artists dedicated to expanding free/folk tongues. Rob Mullender plays acoustic guitar instrumentals that fit nicely into the whole post-60s Pentangle/Davey Graham school of sorcery. Wooden Spoon plays acoustic and electric guitar and banjo and his banjo playing is particularly strong, stubby percussive forms that sound like rusty ragas nailed to tiny wooden crosses. The Eidetic Band are a trio that work non-idiomatic allusion that vaguely touches on Volcano The Bear/People Band style notions of freedom while still referencing established UK modes of improvised dialogue via bass, cello, tone generator, zither, laptop, guitar, power tools, sax, keyboard et al. Ladyswoodsman are the duo of Luke Garwood and Paul May who play guitars, clarinets, percussion and un-nameables across a series of rhythmic, improvisatory modes.

"Zadik Zecharia's zorna playing is a powerful relentless blast of beauty. The drone like qualities that engulf both the listener and player are unyielding in their intensity from start to finish. The instrument, well known in the middle east, particularly in Kurdistan, Iraq and Turkey, is similar in sound and intensity to the Scottish bagpipes. Zadik takes few pauses for breath, but wildly plays a continuous flow of melody weaving around the Dola drum that provides a pulsating rhythm. Zadik Zecharia was born in the Sharnash Village in Kurdistan and moved to Israel in 1950. Zadik has dedicated his whole life to playing the zorna - a traditional, trumpet like instrument, (but longer and narrower) that has been identified with the Kurdish people. "There are two kinds of melodies: Chopie and Shechni. The Chopie are the fast melodies, tunes for dancing with the high notes of the Zorna. The Dola drum always accompanies the Zorna on Chopie tunes. The Shechni are slower melodies in the background, sad tunes that are usually played while the celebrators are sitting around the table. It reminds them of their Motherland, Kurdistan, and serves as an intro to the partying and dancing." - Tzadik Zecharia, Jerusalem 2005. Beautiful CD in a fold-out art card sleeve with liners featuring unearthed recordings from the 1980s. Recommended.

Vinyl edition of what was previously a CD, hand-numbered in an edition of 550 copies with wraparound card sleeve and insert: Great set of improvised acoustic guitar face-offs from avant Japanese guitarists Tetuzi Akiyama and free New Zealander Donald McPherson. Various hypnotic strategies cohere to wildly variant effect, with beautiful - almost Fahey-esque - melodies squatted by wayward, Jandek-style string navigations, percussive stops and melancholy clumps of chords. First ever CD from Bo'Weavil too, in deluxe fold-out art card sleeve and limited to 1000 copies. Very beautiful and highly recommended.

"These songs were written over the course of a year, starting at midsummer 2005. Sharron's aim was to create songs that could be sung to celebrate the seasons and mark the turning points of the year; songs with choruses that were easy to pick up and that would sit comfortably alongside traditional wassailing songs, carols and May songs. 'Each song was written in its season: at midsummer I awoke at dawn, climbed a hill and looked out over Oxfordshire and imagined the battle between summer and winter; at midwinter I made holly wreaths, wrapped up warm and went for brisk wintery walks and then huddled in a warm pub with my favourite traditional singers, sang 'To Shorten Winter's Sadness' for the first time and was rewarded with a rousing chorus. Following and marking the seasons was important to rural communities whose lives depended on a good harvest. I believe that it's just as important for us to do the same: to rejoice when spring comes each year; to be thankful for 'good harvests', whatever form they take; to confront death and the return of winter, and to take comfort in each other's company through the cold months. I hope that these songs will be sung by folk singers in sessions and folk clubs, around bonfires at midsummer gatherings, by choirs, and by ramblers and anyone who takes joy in nature.' - Sharron Kraus. (SK) The singers and musicians joining Sharron on this record are all connected through the Oxford folk scene. Ian Giles, Claire Lloyd and Graham Metcalfe sang together as Folly Bridge and Ian and Graham now sing with Ian Woods as GMW. John Spiers and Jon Boden started playing together at the Elm Tree. Through Jon they gained Fay. Giles Lewin is an occasional visitor." "I like this CD very much, and I loved Wake up Sleepers, and The Wedding song in particular. Sharron has a great voice - it's very strong and clear and with a hard edge that is both beautiful and compelling to listen to." - Shirley Collins 2007.

Edition of 350 copies that presents a live drone ritual from Tel Aviv in 2009 from long-term duo partners Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim: the title inevitably suggests the psychoactive minimalism of LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate and while there’s a similar approach to laminal vertical strata this feels closer to the skullfuck style of Phill Niblock or even Maryanne Amacher with percussion, guitar and electronics generating a miasmic field of microtonally complex power-drone with alla the violence of UK power-psych ala Total/Ramleh or the zoned interactive aspect of Japan’s Marginal Consort. Ambarchi’s recent work as part of the Haino/O’Rourke/Ambarchi trio nailed a bunch of people’s jaws to the floor. If you’re looking for something to follow it, then this is the spot. 

Excellent new album from this major guitar innovator who straddles classic UK folk complexity with a feel for third and fourth world sonorities and a tactile, exploratory style that makes him more of a spiritual kin than an actual promulgator of the world-gobbling form of the late John Fahey. In his excellent sleeve notes Bruce Russell of The Dead C lists Joynes alongside Guitar Roberts (aka Loren Connors), Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls and Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy as the only other contemporary guitarists he rates as much as Joynes, especially highlighting the common ground shared with Bishop. It’s true, both guitarists are fairly omnivorous in terms of their magpie proclivities, but Joynes vision of raga guitar owes as much to the drone at the heart of the UK folk revival – Steeleye Span circa Ten Man Mop, Bert Jansch/John Renbourn, Davy Graham – as much as it does to Sumatran – or Congolese – ritual music. As such it feels as profoundly alien as Fahey’s re-wiring of The Blues, presenting a music that is at once immediately recognisable and expressively idiomatic as it is exaggerated, undermined, inflated and otherwise dicked with. Which is to say that Joynes is one of the few original voices to come out of the post-Fahey void and this fantastic record that flashes between revenant re-thinks of traditional material, melancholy slow-mo string pickers and travelling, hallucinatory drone works, is a remarkable testament to the endless evolutionary potential of Guitar Soli. CD edition of 500 copies. Recommended.

Excellent new album from this major guitar innovator who straddles classic UK folk complexity with a feel for third and fourth world sonorities and a tactile, exploratory style that makes him more of a spiritual kin than an actual promulgator of the world-gobbling form of the late John Fahey. In his excellent sleeve notes Bruce Russell of The Dead C lists Joynes alongside Guitar Roberts (aka Loren Connors), Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls and Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy as the only other contemporary guitarists he rates as much as Joynes, especially highlighting the common ground shared with Bishop. It’s true, both guitarists are fairly omnivorous in terms of their magpie proclivities, but Joynes vision of raga guitar owes as much to the drone at the heart of the UK folk revival – Steeleye Span circa Ten Man Mop, Bert Jansch/John Renbourn, Davy Graham – as much as it does to Sumatran – or Congolese – ritual music. As such it feels as profoundly alien as Fahey’s re-wiring of The Blues, presenting a music that is at once immediately recognisable and expressively idiomatic as it is exaggerated, undermined, inflated and otherwise dicked with. Which is to say that Joynes is one of the few original voices to come out of the post-Fahey void and this fantastic record that flashes between revenant re-thinks of traditional material, melancholy slow-mo string pickers and travelling, hallucinatory drone works, is a remarkable testament to the endless evolutionary potential of Guitar Soli. Vinyl edition of 350 copies. Recommended.