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Category Archives: Freak Folk

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download I was asked to take it down for a while  (Anne)
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This must be the ghost of Syd Barrett who is recorded onto dictaphone.
32 tiny songs full of tape hiss and reverb. You always hear the click of the record button at the beginning, then some pretty remindable melodies, a whispering voice and ghosts that speaks through the tape hiss. Then clicks the stop button and the ghosts voices are still present in your room, in your head. But they would not harm you. They are like friends.
Released 15 April 2010

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“Y La Bamba makes fractured folk that sounds as if it comes from dog-eared diaries. The author is statuesque Luz Elena, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, whose vintage vocals seem to come from the 78-rpm era.” – Buzzbands LA

“…mixes Devendra Banhart-influenced art-folk with hazy femme vocals and traditional Mexican sounds to weirdly entrancing effect.” – LA Weekly

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Put together the unity of street punk and the instruments of bluegrass and folk and you get Dovekins, with just a bit more of a modern indie edge. Assemble the Aviary is fresh and aged at the same time – these guys are old souls making modern music.
As the clarinet takes the lead into the first song, “Great Eastern Sun,” I’m intrigued. It’s like a soundtrack to a modern-day tribal sacrifice ceremony: A harmonizing chorus of voices precedes an orchestral chiming in of many other instruments.

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This is the second Sproatly Smith release on Reverb Worship.“Pixieled” is a really superb and enchanting recording which takes its inspiration from folklore.Many tales exist of mischievous spirits of the dead or other supernatural beings such as pixies attempting to lead travellers astray so that the hapless traveller becomes hopelessly lost, even when they are on familiar territory .

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Singapore’s The Observatory totally blew us away with last year’s Dark Folke record, their fantastic debut, a difficult to describe sonic concoction of soft psychedelia, lush, dark mysterious free folk, all woven from synths and vocal harmonies and angular guitars and theremins, spare and minimal, slipping from slowcore dirge to psychrock freakout to dreampop bliss and back again, often in the same song…

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