Revenant Records S/D

The Cecil Taylor one (Nefertiti) and the Derek Bailey disc both look tremendous too.

Revenant do a bit of a dressing up job; extravagantly packaged so-so recordings of "important" artists, but obsessive attention to detail and the wholesale outrageousness of their project wins out, that is when their ultimate non-concern for the original authors doesn't cripple them. They could focus a bit more on sequencing, more on the music. Pressed flowers are nice, but living flowers are better.

cecil taylor 'nefertiti...'
derek bailey/min tanaka 'music and dance'
sir richard bishop 'salvador kali'
if you're gonna download one of the beefheart discs then its gotta be no.5.
the bassholes record (whatever it was called).
NNCK.

what? no way duder.

anybody gotten the new "american primitive" set? is it as good as the first one?

Given that my favorite Anthology disc was always the spiritual one, the fact that this is making my spine tingle was to be expected, I guess, but this is really quite something.

Also love to: Beefheart box, Richard Bishop, Dock Boggs, Anthology 4. I think those are all I have. Great label.

A Fahey box would FRY me.

A heads up for those in the UK that the distributor Cargo is doing the Charley Patton "Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues" box set and the Albert Ayler "Holy Ghost" box set at a special mid price to be released on July 28th.

Given the dealer price, they should be retailing for about £35 each, depending on the shop's mark up, so it's a pretty major saving from the normal price (and they're generally not even in stock at Cargo either).

So, if you're at all interested then definitely get along to your favourite local independent record shop and encourage them to order copies from Cargo. I'm definitely jumping at the chance for both box sets.

£35 for the Charlie Patton boxed set is crazy cheap?!?!

I know, they're crazy prices. I swore profusely (with joy) when I found out. I thought I should pass on the love.

man what happened to that fahey fonotone set anyways :[

Do you mean the one on Dust To Digital? That's still listed on their forthcoming page, with a release date of 2008:

http://www.dust-digital.com/forthcoming.htm

John Fahey: The Fonotone Years (1958-1962)
Release Date: 2008
Description: A 3 CD set to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John Fahey's first recordings for Joe Bussard's Fonotone Records. Remastered from the original reels of tape, this will mark the first time this music is available on CD.
Genre: Blues guitar.

Get the Patton set! It's insanely good, plus it's packed with all sorts of goodies.

Is there any new Revenant stuff stuff coming out?

@krakow - thats the one, i thought revenant was doing it for some reason

back in the late 90's, Revenant mentioned the desire to put out this set of tapes, specifically adamant about the genius of the Frazier & Patterson numbers. now it's out on Spring Fed, which isn't quite making the same sort of ripples.

Arse...

Due to an extended holiday by the chaps at Revenant these box sets [Charley Patton & Albert Ayler] will now be delayed and released mid to late August…as soon as we have confirmation of the date then we’ll let you know…

...from Cargo

revenant is basically a done deal, from what i understand. odd--they released numerous things in 97–98, then dropped down to one or two a year, then finally just disappeared. i understand it was always a part-time deal for dean blackwood, and probably the wind was taken out when fahey died (since the label's selling point had long been "curated by john fahey"), but they did have ambitious plans for releases than never came to fruition.

the newer (few years' back) charlie patton reissues on yazoo sound 5x better than anything previous including the big revenant box set. unfortunately yazoo is also finished (at least, they're finished with releasing new things) and they basically didn't bother to promote those releases (along with other remastered collections of washington phillips, blind blake, etc.).

frankly i find the box set beautiful but a little ridiculous in its overkill. granted, it costs less than what one charlie patton 78" would cost you these days.

revenant is basically a done deal, from what i understand.

that's a shame.

when they launched in 1996 they listed a milford graves/derek bailey duo album (i want to say live from 1977, but i'm not positive) on their release schedule. sucks that it never happened.

really? i remember them having a bailey album in catalog, and then promising to release some milford graves, separately. also sad the buell kazee and harmonica frank reissues never happened.

i may still have the flyer around someplace, but yeah, it was definitely bailey-graves duo. they toured at least once with min tanaka...don't know if it was from those shows or not.

when they started up they took out ads in some magazines like stay free (RIP), the wire, etc. announcing all this stuff that never happened. overambitious i guess.

the 4th harry smith thing is pretty pointless. good music, but pointless. i should probably sell it.

i think this label was real influential in determining young hip folks' way of appreciating old folk/blues/country music, for better and for worse (worse in the case of propagating greil marcus' "old weird america" BS). other music used to have (do they still have?) an "american primitive" section. the implications of that phrase always bugged me. it started as a somewhat-ironic label that fahey used for himself, in which context it's like, OK, whatever dude; but applied to, say, dock boggs, it's pretty irksome. boggs would NOT have liked to be labeled as "primitive."

anyway i get the sense that some indie folk nowadays (some "freak folk" or whatever, some stuff on drag city and the like) would have sounded very different had there not been a wave of interestingly-marketed reissues of old-time music ca. 1997–98.

the 4th harry smith thing is pretty pointless. good music, but pointless. i should probably sell it.

explain pls

(i haven't heard it.)

Search: Jim O'Rourke Happy Days; Sir Richard Bishop Salvador Kali.

Haven't heard anything else.

explain pls

it's a random assortment of old country and blues stuff (much of which has been anthologized elsewhere), allegedly based on comments harry smith made to people about what might be on a projected 4th volume of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

the liner notes have a few things by dick spottswood about the songs but more of it is taken up with semi-indulgent remembrances of harry smith himself. and the packaging seems fairly grandiose considering the nature of the project.

just seems to indulge a cult-ish appreciation of harry smith-as-compiler that i guess spins off from the success of the folkways reissue of AAFM. nothing to get riled up about, but again, kind of pointless.

amateurist multiply otm!!!

whoops on _78"_ == that would be a BIG disk indeed

78rpm more like (10")

i do like the idea of someone putting, say, the entire wagner ring cycle on a 78-inch disc spinning at 78 rpm.

actually i think i saw that in a matthew barney movie

So, it wasn't a mythical story after all...

http://krakow.zenfolio.com/img/v0/p1001731043-3.jpg

Perhaps the best £40 I've ever spent.

I've just opened them up and OMG!

it is weird that NNCK aren't mentioned here-- 'sticks & stones' is probably their best proper 'studio' album.

should i buy that charley patton box set for $130?

and what about american primitive vol. 2 for $32?

both are out of print.

The Charley Patton box set is such a crazy artifact that I can see overpaying a little for it (not sure what a good price is at this point, but for a while it was gettable for ~$50, but that was three years ago so....) American Primitive 2 is just a very good collection, but that's all it is so I don't know if I'd pay $32 for it.

$130 seems a bit steep for the patton box, but it IS a great set... We sell it for around $75 when it comes arond... American Primitive 2 is cool but inessential, in my view.

anyway i get the sense that some indie folk nowadays (some "freak folk" or whatever, some stuff on drag city and the like) would have sounded very different had there not been a wave of interestingly-marketed reissues of old-time music ca. 1997–98.

I'm sure this is true, but that seems like part of the fun with this stuff. How this music is transmitted. You could say the exact same thing about the original Anthology.

We sell it for around $75 when it comes arond.

dude, can you hook me up next time one comes in? do you do stuff by mail?

one problem is that i keep finding sets that don't have all the parts--they're missing the book, the stickers, or in one case, the CDs (!).

i'll be happy to let you know when one comes in again, but i've only seen two copies come through in the last 3-4 years... so, who knows. but if you still need it the next time i see one, it's yers.

:-D

http://thewire.co.uk/articles/9553/

Revenant records is planning a return to the fray. Dean Blackwood, who founded Revenant with John Fahey in the mid-1990s, says that the last five years has seen the label lie dormant, still selling existing titles and working with Dust To Digital on the John Fahey Fonotone box set, but not releasing anything itself.

One of the first records to be released on the resurrected label will be a two volume set of words, images and music titled The Rise And Fall Of Paramount, which documents the Wisconsin based record label from the period 1922–32, and includes tracks by Son House, King Oliver, Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, Charley Patton, Jelly Roll Morton and Blind Lemon Jefferson among others.

Blackwood says: "The set will be a narrative, aural and visual history of this peculiar enterprise, which despite being run out of a chair factory, with cheap recording and production processes and inferior record-pressing materials, by cynical people with little idea of what black audiences were interested in, nevertheless managed to create an archive of American art which we believe is singular in its depth and power."

The packaging will be hand made, with a large format book, 200g vinyl records and digital download.

http://revenantrecords.com/

there was a book about paramount with the same name, no?

ah, close to it, anyway.

nice :D

ian otm

ooh that sounds excellent.

Revenant + Jack White = Paramount Wonder Cabinet.