Brand new (first edition) compilation in Mississippi’s insanely popular and highly collectable series of American Primitive compilations. This one has a sanctified theme and features great-sounding cuts from Bukka White, Kid Prince Moore, Bessie Johnson, Blind Joe Taggart, Blind Mamie Forehand, Willie Williams, Bo Weavil Jackson, Mother McCollum, Edward Clayborn, McIntorsh and Edwards, Alfred G. Karnes and Louise and Joseph. In classic Stoughton hard card sleeves. Highly recommended.

Exact repro reissue of the second album from The Rats, Fred Cole’s classy punk/trash trio. Unlike the first album, this one sees Rod Rat vacate the drumstool in favour of Sam Henry of The Wipers. Henry has a more ‘lubricated’ style than Rod but Rod was one of the most primitive drum visionaries ever to wrassle the skins so that ain’t saying much. The addition of Henry gives em a little more propulsion and it sounds fucking great . No one so explicitly and so intuitively joined the dots between original garage punk aesthetics and the new punk rock scene quite so quickly and so stupely as Fred Cole and this album is a monument to his vision, combining classic 60s song-writing with ultra-stripped down guitars-as-guitars rock/roll action and DIY snot. Rod does actually appear on the album’s final track, the amazing “Animal” which features a cool freak out section at the end complete with Funhouse-style saxophone blurt. So, yeah, another fantastic installment in one of the greatest non-corporate rock sagas of the under-the-counter culture. Highly recommended.

A beautiful compliment to Mississippi’s recent issue of Hurley’s classic Armchair Boogie LP, Parsnip Snips reissues an album that was originally released in 1995 but was actually recorded between the years 1965 and 1972 and works as Armchair Boogie’s perfect partner. Hurley’s style is supremely laid back and possessed of an odd melancholy warmth that you could bask in for days. The performances on Parsnip Snips were all recorded at home on a mono Wollensak and the feel is extremely up-close and personal. When Hurley played at Brattleboro’s legendary Free Folk Fest he made connections across several generations of DIY folk art and it’s his early recordings in particular that set a flame beneath performers like Matthew Valentine and Joshua Burkett. Parsnip Snips is a perfectly-nuanced collection of Hurley at his best, singing to himself and with friends, making music simply for the sake of making music, all captured on this remarkable LP. Massively addictive and highly recommended. 

Cool reissue of a bunch of key sessions from ‘Mississippi’ Fred McDowell, who was discovered in 1959 by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. This album was originally issued under the name Fred McDowell – Volume 2 on Arhoolie and features material drawn from four sessions across 1964-65. Track listing is choice, with “I Ain’t Gonna Be Bad No More”, “Where Were You”, “I Looked At The Sun”, “Do My Baby Ever Think Of Me”, “Brooks Run Into The Ocean”, “Bull Dog Blues”, “I Walked All The Way From East St. Louis”, “Red Cross Store Blues”, “Gravel Road Blues”, “Frisco Lines”, “You Got To Move”, “I Wish I Was In Heaven Sittin’ Down”.  

Great reissue of a major obscurity in the back catalogue of Fred and Toody Cole aka Dead Moon/The Rats et al. Range Rats were a post-punk country and western group that used a Roland drum machine, confusing timelines and genres so completely that it couldn’t really be anyone else. Fred Cole is one of the great rock vocalists and it’s a stone pleasure to hear that voice wrap ping itself around some downer country and outlaw balladry, all played with the primitive elan and feel for non-flashy rock/roll aesthetics of Dead Moon et al. From 1985. Recommended.

Compilation of the best of the privately pressed triple LP that Charlie Brooks put together in 1999 that featured his field recordings gathered on trips to Madagasikara in the late 1990s. The three LPs were originally themed around Vocal, Valiha Marovany and Miscellaneous Instruments but this LP compiles highlights from all three, taking in traditional and modern instruments including the jejy voatavo, jejy lava, accordion, sodinas, harmonica, the kabosy and the guitar. Comes with a twelve page booklet of photography and notes.

Reissue of the third Dead Moon LP from 1990. No one makes such powerful rock/roll music with the purity of intent of Dead Moon. Vocalist/guitarist Fred Cole has had one of the most fascinating journeys through the belly of the beast, from The Weeds and The Lollipop Shoppe to Zipper, The Rats and Dead Moon and he remains one of the most original vocal stylists, with an umbilical to first generation garage/psych while internalising the lessons of punk and DIY. Defiance is a veritable manifesto for crude-writ rock/roll, ranging from the trio’s inspired demolition of “Milk Cow Blues” through classic originals like “Unknown Passage” and “Dagger Moon”. Still one of the most legendary underground runs of this or any age, all of the early Dead Moon albums are a mandatory purchase.