Back catalogue: Folk/Americana

Review: Old Heaven Bookstore is in Shenzhen, China and it sells records as well as books. It is also a label that is more than 30 albums deep and this latest will show you why it has fans all over the world. Daulet's Halek is not only good-looking on a nice heavyweight gold slab of wax, but it is enchanting musically too. It was discovered on an old reel-to-reel that is through o have been recorded in the 80s and comes in two halves with the first being the artist's own interpretation of folk songs from other ethnic groups. The second is the guitarists' interpretations of Kazakh composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbaev.

Review: From his roots in Slowdive and Mojave 3 on to working with the likes of Seefeel, Neil Halstead has left a lasting impression on British alternative music. As a solo artist, he's returned focus to a more stripped down, folk-inspired approach, which was last explored on 2012's Palindrome Hunches. It's a heavy-hearted kind of singer-songwriter we hear on this beautiful album, echoing the work of the late Gravenhurst amongst others and nodding back to the sensitive sound of Nick Drake. It's beautiful and sad, like the best folk should be, and this reissue will be warmly received by long-term devotees of Halstead's work.

Review: Since first joining forces in 2017, Warren Hampshire and Greg Foat have released some of the most magical albums of recent times - sets that cannily combine their mutual love of pastoral music, jazz-funk, library jazz, soundtracks and heady downtempo grooves. The Upturned Glass, the pair's sixth collaborative full-length, is another genuine gem. Highlights come thick and fast, from the skewed, lo-fi jazz-funk warmth of 'Pool In The Rose' and the string-drenched beauty of opener '6,000 Drunks Clinging to a Landslip' (an amusing title for a genuinely moving track), to the chiming, low-slung brilliance of the two-part title track and the emotive, slow-motion ambient-folk beauty of 'Evening Song'.

Review: French-German duo Nina Harker are made up of Apolline Schoser and Nocola Henry, who have been testing at the fringes of folk across intermittent albums with an introverted brilliance about them. Now they make a cosy home on Aguirre Records with this extended excursion into their strange sound world, where skewed finger picking and disembodied vocal snatches lope around in a distorted soup, only for Schoser's singing to cut through the mix and bring your focus into a re-calibrated present. It's considered chaos played out with patience, constantly delivering the unexpected and leaving a strong impression from its very first notes to the last.

Review: Mick Harvey has collaborated with Mexican artist Amanda Acevedo on a series of duets that make up this new album, Phantasmagoria in Blue. The 14 tracks have been taken from a mix of already existing duets, songs that were not duets, as well as some translations from Spanish and one of two original new pieces. The themes running through out it are common to us all - mortality, love and our endless, hapless search for meaning. The resulting record plays out with lush melodies and lots of richly emotional sounds that provoke plenty of thought and reflection.

Review: The latest addition to the catalogue of Swiss label, Second Thoughts, John Haycock's Dorian Portrait is a striking fusion of jazz and ambient. Showcasing Haycock's Kora specialism - the 21 stringed instrument that has its roots in West Africa - this is an impressive debut studio album from the Manchester-based artist. The opening track, 'Mykes', fans out onto a rippling melody where the plucked strings of the Kora melt into the twin tones of Haycock's electronic components, striking an intriguing balance between a sound that feels age old yet resolutely new. Another standout track, 'Dissolution', grows out from a more prominent bassline, like a plant pushing through soil - leaves unfurling, stretching out towards the sun. This is a beautifully reflective album for quiet introspection and shared listening alike.

Review: Two brothers recently reunited by their love of music, the Hermanos Gutierrez make beautiful instrumental Latin and Americana, tempered by the aesthetic of atmospheric Western movie soundtracks a-la Ennio Morricone and/or film director Sergio Leone. On their new album El Bueno Y El Malo, a give-and-take, equitable atmsphere - shared lovingly between two chordophonal kin - is established on every track. Soft, spatious and tinged with the analogous, skippy texture of the vinyl record, even the album's forays into pop structures ('La Verdad', 'Tres Hermanos') don't waver from their warmth, nor do they sacrifice an ounce of sweet listenability.

Review: Re:Warm struck gold when they invited Paul Hillery to compile the first volume of Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours, so they did the right thing and invited him back for another round. Hillary started out documenting his arcane finds in this ill-defined thread of music via a blog, and now these shockingly rare gems from forgotten corners of 60s and 70s are given a proper airing for everyone to savour. This is a prime example of digging culture at its best, as a sharp curatorial ear cuts through the forgettable dross to find unbelievable tracks like effervescent jazz groover 'Weepin' by Cascada, a tune worth the price of entry alone.

Review: Once unsung but now enjoying a revitalised career as a compiler and curator, Paul Hillery began his musical journey as a tour DJ for The Polyphonic Spree. But even long before this, he'd a niche knack for tracking down obscure musical gems. The breadth of his curatorial talents are demonstrated once again on We Are The Children Of The Setting Sun, which has no explicit genre focus but sonically segues through folk, psychedelia, and new age obscurities - and only ones with the utmost pristine sound at that. From the beauteous harmonic dulcimers of Graeme Gash to the closing Chicago Soul paeans of Reggio McLaughlin, we're urged to "drop out to the musical pulse that unites us all."

Review: Julia Holter's sixth album Something in the Room She Moves might just be the Los Angeles songwriter's best work. In the past she has often explored memory and dreamlike futures but on this new outing she is very much more in the moment throughout. She explains herself hat "There's a corporeal focus, inspired by the complexity and transformability of our bodies." Musically the album mixes fretless electric bass pitches with her unique vocal melodies. The recognisable sounds of the Yamaha CS-60 interweave with more organic wind instruments and add up to a fluid, watery sound that flows smooth and carries you along with it amongst the gorgeous harmonies.

Review: Julia Holter has subtly shifted focus on new album (her sixth in total) Something In The Room She Moves, moving away from exploring memory and dream-like states to instead focus on (in her words) "the complexity and transformability of our bodies". To create this rather distinctive (and rather good sound world), she added her own ethereal vocals to self-created backing tracks rich in electric fretless bass, warming wind and reed instruments, and distinctive synth sounds plucked from a Yamaha CS060. The results are predictably immersive and soul-enriching, with highlights including stunning opener 'Sun Girl', the percussively inventive 'Spinning', and the pastoral, dreamy 'Evening Mood'.

Review: Julia Holter's sixth album, Something In The Room She Moves, is a dreamlike exploration of complexity and transformability, featuring flowing harmonic universes and fluid, water-like melodies. Her vocal register, reminiscent of Siouxsie Sioux, Nico, or Kate Bush, possesses a matchstick intensity, rekindling its own flame through the conversation in her voice. Holter's diaphragm shifts between instruments, creating a continuum of fretless electric bass pitches counterpointing with gliding vocal melodies. Glissing Yamaha CS-60 adds a touch of experimentalism, while her production choices and arrangements maintain a sense of simplicity and refinement. Holter's singing resonates in somatic frequencies, evoking a deep connection between mind and body. With its liquid, ever-changing nature, 'Something In The Room She Moves' invites listeners to immerse themselves in a world of sound that is both ethereal and profoundly human.

Review: The Window Is The Dream finds Jana Horn go ever deeper into her own personal inner space than ever before. It is a work that builds on her well-received debut Optimism and makes her well worth of the one-to-watch tag she received when it dropped. This one saw Horn go to upstate New York to record with "electro-primitivism of the Silver Apples, austere rhythm kings This Heat and The Raincoats' time-bending Odyshape" in mind and distill them into her own forms. Her transfixing voice is at the centre of each tune with skeletal rhythms and melodies making for a bewildering listen.

Review: Continuing with LITA's extensive reissuing and repackaging of Haruomi Hosono's massive backlog of music, 'Hosono House' comes in all its glory to a new wax pressing. Released in 1973, it was one of Hosono's many brief forays into acoustic Americana, breaking from the loopy ambient classical music he'd made his name for. An ebber and flower, this one moves through psychic rock inspirations and sonic allusions to historic acts such as The Band and The United States Of America, albeit with an additional, moody ambient flair. We love oddities like this.

Review: .The critical jury has certainly been out on Ben Howard's latest slice of soft electronic pop-dance-indie business, some slapping an Album of the Week label on it, others referring to it as "a little dull". Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, or in this case the ear, and from where we're sitting Is It? certainly is a thing of exceptional beauty. Only boring people get bored, blah blah blah.
Indeed, if there was a major criticism here it would be the most 21st Century, mind-ruined-by-tidal-waves-of-wireless-information criticism imaginable. Howard clearly expects us to listen and listen good, with such delicate tracks easily at risk of slipping into the background. Turn it up, then, and feel the full, subtle power of what's here - 1980s hued sophisticated lushness, lo-fi downtempo curveballs, postmodern art pop. Ace.

Review: This recorded autobiography of Catherine Howe, age 20, briefly appeared in 1971. Too young for memoirs, most artists have barely established any sort of musical competence by the age of legal adulthood, let alone compositions matching the maturity and complexity of Howe's. What A Beautiful Place, however, is a prodigious effort wrought from the melancholy ruminations of post-adolescence. The album's twelve songs unfold like a classic bildungsroman, beginning in the smoke-stained industrial county of Yorkshire, transformed by the electrified creative landscape of mid-century London, and retiring to the warm pastoral bliss of the county of Dorset on England's southern coast. Produced by noted jazz pianist Bobby Scott, the LP - oft-mistaken for a concept album - was available for only a month in the summer of 1971, disappearing after Reflection Records' shuttering in 1971.