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If you are ordering more than 4 items international shipping, please contact me to get the correct postage amount. If you are having difficulties placing your order, please email us at littleaxerecords@gmail.com. Let us know if you would like to join our mailing list.
If you are ordering more than 4 items international shipping, please contact me to get the correct postage amount. If you are having difficulties placing your order, please email us at littleaxerecords@gmail.com. Let us know if you would like to join our mailing list.
DOMINO SOUND
DS-042 SALUM ABDALLAH AND CUBAN MARIMBA BAND – NGOMA TANZANIA
Sweet and joyful sounds from the first half of 1960’s Tanzania. Salum Abdallah and Cuban Marimba Band were at the forefront of “muziki wa dansi”, the emerging dance music scene influenced by Cuban 78’s, dance music crazes like the twist and cha cha cha, and the local sounds of their home country. Hailing from the smaller town of Morogoro, they rose to be stars across the country. Out of over 100 sides recorded for local labels, mostly Mzuri Records of Kenya, these twelve songs are the cream of the crop. Only a few of these have ever been re-released in any form, and that hasn’t happened for several years. Lots of toe tappers, smile enhancers, and downright dancers, with a few slower and simpler songs to round it out. Taken from 1961-65, these twelve songs shine a brighter light on an already bright light that was Salum Abdallah, taken away from this earth all too early at the age of 37. The 12 song LP comes in an old style tip-on sleeve with lyrics in Swahili with English translations on the inner sleeve.
$
14.00
DS-035 V/A - Remolino De Oro : Coastal Cumbias 1961-1973
A follow up to "A Orillas del Magdalena", twelve more cumbias from Colombia's most prolific label, Discos Fuentes. Hailing, by all accounts, from the Northern coast of Colombia, Cumbia is the offspring of the musical melding of three cultures—the Indigenous, Spanish and African. Shaped by bright cymbals, an insistent bass line, eclectic percussion and brilliant accordion playing, these Discos Fuentes recordings remain raw, loose and unpolished. From dance floor hit to nostalgic ode—they come straight from the heart.
$
14.00
DS-037 V/A - Wedding Songs
Originally released on Philips Ethiopia in 1973, this seemingly impossible to find LP is available once again to the lucky humans of the world. With a mix of modern and traditional instruments these fourteen songs go through the progression of an Ethiopian Amhara wedding sung in Amharic. With the trio of singers, Lemma G. Hiwot, Zenebech Tesfaye, and Selamawit G. Selassie, alternating turns at the microphone, and sharing call and response duties, a relentless frenzy of hand clapping incites dancing and smiles. The consumption of tedj (honeywine) and the swirling love of a wedding was captured in the studio with euphoric energy to take away to play over and over again when the festivities are over. With hand screened covers and an insert of wedding photos accompanying the liner notes, this is the next best thing to an invitation to the real thing. A co-release with Mitmitta Musika of Addis Abeba, Ethiopia.
$
14.00
SAHEL SOUNDS
Lingo Seini et son groupe - Musique Hauka LP
One of the first full-length recordings of Hauka ritual music. Praise songs and sacred incantations to the spirits to inhabit the body. Call and response chants, the pluck of a monochord lute and relentless pounding percussion combine in a dizzying nonstop session.
The Hauka movement started nearly a century ago and has persisted on the fringes of Nigerien society. Documented in the 1955 Jean Rouch film Les maîtres fous, the Hauka are a pantheon on spirits mirrored on colonial and military figures. Central to the religion is the “Holley Hori” possession ceremony, a ritual driven by militaristic percussive music, wherein spirits come into the body in powerful and violent manifestations.
Lingo Seini has played ritual music for almost 60 years, learning from his father. He is joined by his son Youssouf on the calabash and Issaka Moulla, playing his homemade kuntigi. The group regularly accompanies Hauka priests in ceremonies. Recorded with a single microphone in the outskirts of Niamey.
Limited edition of 500, with old school offset printed hand-glued covers.
$
20.00
Music from Saharan Cellphones - Volume 2
Contemporary pop music from the Sahara desert, where songs are stored on cellphones. Collected in Northern Mali in 2010 (since taken over by extremists who've banned music on cellphones) the second volume expands into new sonic territory - from dreamy Niger guitar ballads, Bamako club juke, and hi energy Moroccan child Raï - with a focus on the Autotuned DIY creations circulating the desert.
$
15.00
SS-055 El Wali - Tiris
An amazing and rare studio recording of 1990s Polisario music! The album is a standout example of the Sahrawi political folk style that mixes traditional modes with Western scales and instrumentation. response vocals, The repertoire of El Wali is fiery and inspirational, a call to arms - with national anthems, celebrations of political anniversaries, and religious pleas for peace, with call and response duets, backed with a synthesizer, programmed drums, and electric guitar.
Nomadic inhabitants of Western Sahara, the Sahrawi movement for liberation began in the 1970s and has continued until today. Sahrawi political folk music dates back to the origins and has played an integral role in the struggle, with political anthems creating a national identity. One of the first Saharan music to incorporate the electric guitar, the style was hugely influential on the better know Tuareg guitar genre. The later addition of synthesizer and programmed rhythms further transformed the sound, becoming a foundation of Sahrawi music.
Recorded in Belgium in 1994 while on tour, this version of El Wali performed a style reflecting the popular music of the refugee camps. “Tiris” is a refreshing production with none of the typical World Music polish of the 90s. This evidently led to its unsuccessful release in the West. Originally released only in as a small run CD for OXFAM Belgium, the CD quickly disappeared and is impossible to find. In West Africa, however, it became a viral success and the defining representative Sahrawi music. In 2012 a track was released on “Music from Saharan Cellphones Vol 2” and only after an arduous search over 8 years (leading through Spain to the Canary Islands to Tindouf and eventually to Belgium) the artists, the studio, and the original recording were tracked down. A co-release with Badawi Archives, the first Sahrawi run record label led by dj/producer Bedouin Sahrawi.
$
15.00
SS-040 Luka Productions – Fasokan - 2nd Pressing
New age music from West Africa. Lush and hypnotic dreamscapes combine traditional instrumentation with sweeping electronics, field recordings, and soothing affirmations. Bamako based composer Luka Productions delves into avant-griot, transforming ancient music into the 21st century. The songs are meditative and sage, as voices guide the listener through ways of living, from the village life to the modern world. Inspired from early electronic music, library records, and new age, this is easily one of the most left field recordings to ever come out of Mali. In Bambara.
$
15.00
SS-052 Luka Productions - Falaw
Luka Productions presents Falaw, an innovative take on West African Hip Hop and sample-based folktronica. A follow up from the acclaimed Malian “new age” inspired Fasokan (2017), Luka Guindo turns his focus to the rich cultural heritage of Manding music. Eschewing wholly PC-based sequencing, Falaw invites a number of traditional performers to join him in the studio. Griots recount sage stories over Luka’s sweeping synth pads while ngonis shred pentatonic solos to the crash of sequenced drum samples. Paying homage to the storyteller, combined with regional styles of lyrical Hip Hop, Falaw offers advice on modern living, with heartfelt songs about loss, love, and life.
Luka Productions is the creation of Luka Guindo, based in Bamako, Mali. With a musical training in West African gospel music, Luka is one of Bamako’s hardest working producers, churning out tracks for scores of popular artists in the regional scenes of thumping electro Balani Show and lightning hi-energy Hip Hop, and he brings this varied experience to Falaw. Tracks like BBNI offer Luka’s version of the melodic Bamako Hip Hop banger, while Forêt features lush acoustic ngoni with looping call and response. In addition to his work sequencing and producing, Luka plays a variety of instruments across the tracks, performing vocals, djembe, synthesizer, guitar, and bass.
The effect is both otherworldly while seemingly organic. Creating at the confluence of electronic and tradition, Falaw is destined to be a future classic, both at home in Mali and abroad. In a genre where all too often “modern” is used exclusively to indicate Western collaborators, Falaw is a groundbreaking entry into homemade fourth world music and a suggestion of the future Malian sound. Comes with full lyric translations.
$
15.00
SS-049 Hama - Houmeissa
Nigerién composer Hama presents a groundbreaking album of traditional electronic desert folk songs, hovering somewhere between early 90s techno and synthwave. Nomadic herding ballads, ancient caravan songs, and ceremonial wedding chants are all re-imagined into pieces seemingly lifted from a Saharan 1980s sci-fi soundtrack or score to a Tuareg video game. With a deep love and respect, Hama effortlessly takes back and re-appropriates fourth-world ethnoambient music.
One of only a handful of electronic musicians in West Africa, Hama a.k.a. Hama Techno follows in the footsteps of avant-garde electronic pioneers like Mamman Sani Abdoulaye, Francis Bebey, and Luka Productions. His debut release was a huge success on the underground mp3 networks of West Africa and was featured in The Wire, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone. Hama continues with his signature digital folk with an expansion into computer-based compositions. Painstaking crafted on the spotty electric grid in Niamey with earbuds and a hacked copy of FruityLoops, Houmeissa is the result of remarkable passion. Inspired by diverse sounds spanning Tuareg guitar to second wave Detroit Techno, Saharan folk songs are transformed into atemporal works that defy categorization.
Hama builds patterns of varied time signatures and distinct polyrhythms, deconstructing and rebuilding ancient traditions on drag and drop virtual keyboards. Airy sweeping pads evoke the open desert while rumbling dark undertones warn of a coming dust storm. Instrumentals layer looping pentatonic melodies into a blissed-out trance, while soft synths and fake electric guitars cry out a call and response. The effect is charmingly unexpected, as the plastic sounds of early PC music are imbued with a new life. A singularly unique production, Hama's Houmeissa stands to be a future classic and an embodiment of the digital Sahara to come.
$
15.00
AUDIKA RECORDS
Arthur Russell - Iowa Dream
Amazing new 2 x lp of Arthur Russell recordings......
After ten years of work inside the Russell library, Lee and Knutson bring us Iowa Dream, yet another bright star in Russell’s dazzling constellation. Blazing with trademark feeling, these nineteen songs are a staggering collection of Russell’s utterly distinct songwriting. And although Russell could be inscrutably single-minded, he was never totally solitary. Collaborating here is a stacked roster of downtown New York musicians, including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Saltzman, and David Van Tieghem.
$
25.00
GROUPER / YELLOW ELECTRIC RECORDS
Grouper A I A : Alien Observer
A I A is a two-part release comprised of songs written and recorded over four years. Both albums are low, both discuss: being an other to one’s own self, to other humans; ghosts and aliens, both literal and metaphorical; other worlds to escape to. Fourth pressing now on Kranky
$
16.00
Grouper A I A : Dream Loss
A I A is a two-part release comprised of songs written and recorded over four years. Both albums are low, both discuss: being an other to one’s own self, to other humans; ghosts and aliens, both literal and metaphorical; other worlds to escape to. Fourth pressing now on Kranky
$
16.00
Grouper - Grid of Points
Not long after recording her 10th album, Ruins, Liz Harris traveled to Wyoming to work on art and record music. She found herself drawn towards the pairing of skeletal piano phrasing with spare, rich bursts of vocal harmony. A series of stark songs emerged, minimal and vulnerable, woven with emotive silences. Inspired by "the idea that something is missing or cold," the pieces float and fade like vignettes, implying as much as they reveal. She describes them as "small texts hanging in space," impressions of mortality, melody, and the unseen – fleeting beauty, interrupted.
$
15.00
Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Recent Kranky pressing)
$
15.00
Grouper - Ruins (Kranky edition)
The new record by Grouper. This is the Kranky edition.
$
15.00
Grouper - The Man Who Died In His Boat
$
15.00
GR-013 Roy Montgomery - 324 E. 13th Street #7 2xlp
New Release from Yellow Electric. Double LP compilation of The Shallows 7" and other Roy Montgomery recordings. Originally released as a cd only compilation in the late 90s, issued for the first time on vinyl
$
20.00