Bo' Weavil Recordings is a London-based imprint dedicated to releasing onto vinyl and CD great music that has long been out-of-print, or that has never had a release before. The label's intention is to put out some lost gems from the wealth of traditional folk music and avant-garde/free music, while also releasing records cataloguing the current scene of avant-folk music from around the globe. The label's prolific output includes classic folk reissues by artists Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs and Roscoe Holcomb, modern folk releases by Josephine Foster and Sharron Kraus, '60s avant-garde releases by Henry Flynt, '90s avant-garde releases by artists Oren Ambarchi and the Peter Brötzmann & Alan Wilkinson Quartet, acoustic guitar releases by the late Robbie Basho, and new releases by Basho's contemporary counterparts James Blackshaw and Wooden Spoon, and more.
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viewing 1 To 25 of 55 items
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WEAVIL 055LP
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2022 restock; The trio of Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards, and Steve Noble continue to plot their course ever outward and ever upward. These new songs, recorded in South London at that wonderful performance space -- at the heart of the improve scene here at this moment -- Iklectik, are the very beating heart of improvised music. It's not that they are good, or even representative -- such relative terms fail to express the continuum of which these sounds are a key part. This is music that evades the strictures of scientific measurement or critical theory. It just is. Wilkinson is a master of the tribal, balls-out approach to sax playing. He lets it all hang out. But there is great subtlety in what he does with his horn, in the range of inflection, the space between the phrases, the singing tone. At times he sounds like a tight knit sax section in a swinging big band all on his own. There is definitely jazz in there. Edwards and Noble form the rhythmic base for much that is good and beautiful in the improv scene today. Years of playing together and individual brilliance mean they mesh like the gears of a micro-tuned machine. Together the trio make music. And that is all that needs saying. Personnel: Alan Wilkinson - alto, baritone saxophones, bass clarinet; John Edwards - double bass; Steve Noble - drums.
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BW 005EP
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The final installment of C Joynes' epic series of singles featuring collaborations with a weird and wonderful selection of fellow travelers. The series comes to the end of its run of remarkably consistent, yet each very different, five-volume set with possibly the most diverse selection yet. Phil Tyler sits on banjo alongside the skewed pop and lo-fi grumbling of Pete Um, while the reverse is totally different again, with the bubbling analog sound world of Woodcraft Folk, yet both as ever underpinned by the eternally wonderful guitar work of C Joynes. Beautiful die-cut sleeves and a numbered pressing of 300 copies.
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BW 004EP
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This is the fourth installment of the C Joynes collaborative 45s project released by The GPS and Bo Weavil. "To Samarkand for Prester John" features the crude instrumentation and brute choir of The Dead Rat Orchestra -- beautiful drone and wailing vocals in perfect tandem with C Joynes' expressive, thumb-led picking. "Joynes Norwich Cathedrals" features the found sounds and homemade instruments of Babygrand with Glen Hall, broadcasting from Toronto on tenor saxophone. Handsomely dressed in die-cut sleeves and hand numbered in an edition of 350 copies.
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WEAVIL 049CD
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This is the first recording for Bo Weavil by English folk singer Stephanie Hladowski, coming together with regular recording artist, C Joynes. The Wild Wild Berry is a highly individual record that accents both of their respective styles. Chris' melodic beauty is equally matched by Stephanie's turn of phrase. The album contains their renditions of 11 British traditionals, some better-known than others. All the songs were mostly selected from archive recordings at Cecil Sharp House, and chosen on the basis of something unique about the original recording, rather than the song itself. Nothing about the record is a let-down -- the simple melodies and powerful authority make this a recording that one will play a thousand times over.
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WEAVIL 050LP
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LP version, limited to 500 copies. Bo 'Weavil is totally psyched to have the opportunity to release the second album by Reines d'Angleterre -- this time, a thoroughly studio affair. Reines d'Angleterre is a fascinating collaboration between avant-outsider musician Ghédalia Tazartès and two electronic botanists, èlg and Jo aka Opéra Mort. This album covers more of the wild ground the band started with on 2010's Les Comores (SIDRA 003LP), but going further into a musical terrain that defies definite description -- a slow trip into wizard's intimacy, synthetic jungles, undersea zoos and Tibetan-industrial complexes. It feels like one has stumbled into disturbing dreams from a different realm. A quality of mystery, trickery and hallucinatory movements slip and shift across the recording. This is out-there, experimental music with no fixed idiom, with a unique quality that defies most of today's recordings. Embossed card cover.
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WEAVIL 049LP
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LP version, limited to 350 copies. This is the first recording for Bo Weavil by English folk singer Stephanie Hladowski, coming together with regular recording artist, C Joynes. The Wild Wild Berry is a highly individual record that accents both of their respective styles. Chris' melodic beauty is equally matched by Stephanie's turn of phrase. The album contains their renditions of 11 British traditionals, some better-known than others. All the songs were mostly selected from archive recordings at Cecil Sharp House, and chosen on the basis of something unique about the original recording, rather than the song itself. Nothing about the record is a let-down -- the simple melodies and powerful authority make this a recording that one will play a thousand times over.
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WEAVIL 050CD
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Bo 'Weavil is totally psyched to have the opportunity to release the second album by Reines d'Angleterre -- this time, a thoroughly studio affair. Reines d'Angleterre is a fascinating collaboration between avant-outsider musician Ghédalia Tazartès and two electronic botanists, èlg and Jo aka Opéra Mort. This album covers more of the wild ground the band started with on 2010's Les Comores (SIDRA 003LP), but going further into a musical terrain that defies definite description -- a slow trip into wizard's intimacy, synthetic jungles, undersea zoos and Tibetan-industrial complexes. It feels like one has stumbled into disturbing dreams from a different realm. A quality of mystery, trickery and hallucinatory movements slip and shift across the recording. This is out-there, experimental music with no fixed idio, with a unique quality that defies most of today's recordings.
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WEAVIL 048LP
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Raga Ooty unearths three previously-unreleased works (each titled with reference to the area in south India where his mother was born) from Australian sound artist Oren Ambarchi's archive, showcasing the rawer side of his solo work between 2006 and 2011. The side-long "Raga Ooty" unspools a twisting, skittering thread of gritty guitar harmonics over a bed of buzzing tambura drone, creating the same paradoxical impression of simultaneous stasis and forward propulsion achieved by minimalist masters such as Henry Flynt, to whom this work is dedicated. "The Nilgiri Plateau" generates an eight-minute wash of gleaming overtones from a 12 string acoustic guitar played with motors, continuing the experiments first made public on the 2007 Stacte Motors LP. The closing "Raga Ooty (Slight Return)" returns to the distorted guitar harmonic hysterics of the opening piece, this time elaborated over a wash of Ambarchi's signature Leslie cabinet tones, building relentlessly over the course of 12 minutes, recorded live in Basel in late 2011.
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SIDRA 007LP
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Tom James Scott's two previous CD releases for Bo'Weavil Recordings both featured acoustic guitar as primary voice. His first LP -- while maintaining similar melodic sensibilities and a feeling of hushed expanse -- sees piano become the main focus, with the title "Drape" (defined in literature documenting past and present dialect native to what is now Cumbria, as, "to speak slowly") determining pace and durations across the four pieces presented. Strings of single notes become humming, shadowy resonances within the body of the instrument, echoing into frequent pause and fragmentation. Initially conceived on guitar and voice, photograph and title were also principal catalysts in the formation of the final work. The image of an older relative as a child holds a likeness through subsequent generations. A now largely-extinct colloquial definition of a word still in common use marks change through evolution and loss. Both convey a past unknown at first-hand, yet both are reflected in the present, fragmented and imagined.
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7"
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BW 003EP
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The 3rd installment in this series of C Joynes 45s, featuring collaborative pieces with a disparate group of fellow travelers. This time around, contributions come from ethno-noise heroes Harappian Nights Recordings, Fredericksburg VA's Sacred Harp, and Gavin Prior of United Bible Studies. Edition of 300 copies.
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2LP
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WEAVIL 047LP
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2LP version. Having played together in Æthenor for the last couple of years, Steve Noble and Stephen O'Malley came together to play as a duo at Café OTO in 2011. These recordings are the result of these two hot and sticky nights in East London. Noble is a regular at Bo' Weavil Recordings, having appeared on over nine recordings for the label, and a linch pin in London's improvising community. So it was bound to be a memorable night of music to see these two meet. Steve Noble studied with Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde in the early 1980s and over the last 20 years has played with most of the great players from all four corners of the globe. Stephen O'Malley is predominantly a guitarist, producer and composer who has been at the center of avant-garde/drone metal, best known for his group Sunn0))), and also a prolific collaborator with many of the finest improvisers. Noble sets the recording off with a full tribal charge, while Stephen, instead of firing off a shard of ecstatic notes and chords, coaxes his guitar into singing a slow, ever-growing roar. But soon the two are off into some wild, creative rampages -- exciting drum and guitar territory sounding at times not too dissimilar to Haino's Fushitsusha, brutally beautiful, shredded riffs from O'Malley meet with Noble's exuberant rhythmic force . On St. Francis Duo, the memory of these two nights can be heard in full violent sonic attack. Last copies on vinyl...
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WEAVIL 047CD
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Having played together in Æthenor for the last couple of years, Steve Noble and Stephen O'Malley came together to play as a duo at Café OTO in 2011. These recordings are the result of these two hot and sticky nights in East London. Noble is a regular at Bo' Weavil Recordings, having appeared on over nine recordings for the label, and a linch pin in London's improvising community. So it was bound to be a memorable night of music to see these two meet. Steve Noble studied with Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde in the early 1980s and over the last 20 years has played with most of the great players from all four corners of the globe. Stephen O'Malley is predominantly a guitarist, producer and composer who has been at the center of avant-garde/drone metal, best known for his group Sunn0))), and also a prolific collaborator with many of the finest improvisers. Noble sets the recording off with a full tribal charge, while Stephen, instead of firing off a shard of ecstatic notes and chords, coaxes his guitar into singing a slow, ever-growing roar. But soon the two are off into some wild, creative rampages -- exciting drum and guitar territory sounding at times not too dissimilar to Haino's Fushitsusha, brutally beautiful, shredded riffs from O'Malley meet with Noble's exuberant rhythmic force . On St. Francis Duo, the memory of these two nights can be heard in full violent sonic attack.
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WEAVIL 046CD
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Continuing further into the territories of domesticated English voudou sketched out by 2009's Revenants, Prodigies & The Restless Dead (WEAVIL 039CD), UK guitarist C Joynes' Congo is dominated by notions of landscape, imagination and personal ritual. However, while elements of introspection and intensity do appear, the mood is one of simple, uplifting joy. Warm, woody sounds and themes for a variety of donated, rescued and homemade instruments contrast with occasional stark arrangements, bursts of blossoming electricity, and passages of dense improvisation. Contributions from friends and colleagues generate momentum and interplay at key points, enabling these recordings to site the loner aesthetic within the traditions of social music for dancing and communion.
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WEAVIL 046LP
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LP version. Continuing further into the territories of domesticated English voudou sketched out by 2009's Revenants, Prodigies & The Restless Dead (WEAVIL 039CD), UK guitarist C Joynes' Congo is dominated by notions of landscape, imagination and personal ritual. However, while elements of introspection and intensity do appear, the mood is one of simple, uplifting joy. Warm, woody sounds and themes for a variety of donated, rescued and homemade instruments contrast with occasional stark arrangements, bursts of blossoming electricity, and passages of dense improvisation. Contributions from friends and colleagues generate momentum and interplay at key points, enabling these recordings to site the loner aesthetic within the traditions of social music for dancing and communion.
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WEAVIL 043CD
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Bo 'Weavil presents the solo recordings of Simon H. Fell, one of the UK's finest bassists. Although currently based in France, Simon has been and still is the bass player of choice for many. These tracks were recorded over the last 10 years, which was the last time that he released some solo material (a cassette release) on his own Bruce's Finger imprint. This recording covers almost every aspect of Simon's playing -- the rhythmic strength and melodic structure of his music, to the outer regions of extended technique -- ekeing out all manner of sounds from his bass. It is a privilege to be able to release such great music. Limited to 300 copies.
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WEAVIL 045CD
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Saxophonist Alan Wilkinson's first solo release Seedy Boy was released on Bruce's Fingers in 1994, which consisted of a collection of solo recordings made in a variety of situations over a number of years. Practice, on the other hand, is from two recording sessions, the first to mark the end of the carpeted cell Alan used as a practice space for some years in an old hospital in Dalston, London. The second is from the purpose-built rehearsal studios. It seemed an injustice that such a great and underrated saxophonist should not have a CD release cataloging his solo performances, so it was natural for Bo' Weavil to ask Alan to record such a project. The results are an outstanding number of pieces showing where Alan got the nickname "Iron Lungs Wilkinson," while also showing the more subtle jazz side to his playing as on Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." Limited to 300 copies.
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WEAVIL 042CD
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Bo' Weavil is excited to present the second album from the Sydney trio Roil. All three of the members of Roil, James Waples, Mike Majkowski and Chris Abrahams have been active in the Australian jazz and improvised music scenes for many years; James is possibly best known for his work in the Mike Nock Trio; Mike performs regularly with such musicians as Jon Rose and Clayton Thomas; many people would know of Chris through his work with the three-piece group The Necks. Together they have been playing as Roil since 2007, and this is their first release outside of Australia. Their music draws upon a varied palette; at times, it comes close to free jazz, at other times to experimental improv, while also referencing other styles such as minimalism, reductionism and ambient music. A Roil piece incorporates aspects of textural improvisation, bringing extended techniques to bear on a collective sound world while also being melodic and conventionally rhythmic. Bringing together the abstract and the figurative. Limited to 500 copies.
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SIDRA 005LP
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Warehouse find, last copies. Bo Weavil presents a sublime duo recording from old sparring partners Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim, recorded live in Tel Aviv in 2009. This is a single edit of the performance which perfectly captures the chemistry between Robbie's busy percussive maneuvers and Oren's textural overlay. A previous performance of the pair was documented on the Clockwork CD (re-issued by Room40) and prior to this the notorious The Alter Rebbe's Niggun CD was released on Tzadik. Here, the two come together with an energetic performance of free interplay. Steeped in rock, electronics and feedback, the duo conjures an ecstatic instrumental journey. Momentum builds while shifting around a variety of sonic styles until the entire patchwork is laid bare, exposing all the nuance within. Edition of 350 numbered LPs, housed in a heavyweight silkscreened sleeves.
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SIDRA 006LP
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...Without A Rest Forever Onward. Firstly, this is not for the faint-hearted, but fear not, this is not another noise record. This LP is something else altogether. This is a massive, glorious psychedelic din, a thick fog of dramatic sound events. Starving Weirdo's latest offering promises to enfold the listener who will experience the ecstatic grandeur of Anton Bruckner as much as the rich industrial drone of David Jackman. This is Lhasa in California -- a world drenched in ecstatic thrills and intense ethereal exploration. There are sounds, there are drones, there are rhythms and there are songs -- a glorious concoction that moves in a vertical fashion. As we live today, in all this murk; all this twisted history and convoluted present, we can be thankful that these folks in California came together to create such a glorious record for all to bathe in. But this, like all good things, is limited and will not be around forever. Step in now or forever remain the great unwashed. Edition of 350 numbered LPs, housed in a heavyweight silkscreened sleeves.
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7"
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BW 002EP
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Volume 2 in the ongoing joint release with Great Pop Supplement, a series of five 7"s by C Joynes and collaborators, all limited to 350 copies, with die-cut sleeves and colored vinyl. This time collaborators include Wooden Spoon's electric guitar and piano and The Doozer's synths, keyboards and percussion. These will be gone in a matter of moments, so don't dilly dally.
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WEAVIL 041CD
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In its short life, London's Café Oto has played host to more than its share of memorable gigs by such improvisers as John Tchicai, Marshall Allen and Evan Parker, but surely none more remarkable than the December 2009 meeting of the veteran American saxophonist Joe McPhee and the British trio Decoy: the organist Alexander Hawkins, the double-bassist John Edwards and the drummer Steve Noble. It was a night of unceasing reward from music distinguished by such intensity of spirit and richness of timbre. Hawkins is a young composer and keyboardist with a rapidly growing reputation and a clear interest in working with musicians of diverse backgrounds. His early training as a pipe organist surely encourages him to exploit the full range of textures offered by the Hammond C3 and its accompanying Leslie speaker. John Edwards may well be the busiest musician on the improvising scene, his near-ubiquitous presence an infallible guarantee of vitality and substance; only his noted ability to bring a sagging session to life is not required here. Steve Noble, who is among Edwards' regular partners, provides a fine combination of stealth and swing, of drama and discretion, although the dexterous aplomb with which he negotiated a solo passage for small, untethered cymbals really had to be seen as well as heard. McPhee may be a man of an earlier generation, but he shares their absolute devotion to cliché-free spontaneity. Listening to him working in this unusually stimulating context, and appreciating his eloquence, sensitivity and pronounced gift for timbral variation, it is difficult to understand why he is not spoken of more often in the same breath as some of the more renowned free saxophonists. His ability to sing through the trio's array of pointillist textures, or to launch himself full-tilt into the churning maelstrom, adds a significant element to an already remarkable organism.
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7"
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BW 001EP
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Joint release with Great Pop Supplement, in an on-going series of five 7"s by C Joynes, and collaborators. All limited to 350 copies, with die-cut sleeves and pressed on colored vinyl. The first in the series features Joynes' solo guitar together with a series of contributors and collaborators, including the avant-garde harpist Rhodri Davies, sound artists Babygrand, who work to create intimate pieces using household objects and field recordings, and saxophonist/flautist Glen Hall, a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist.
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SIDRA 003LP
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LP release. Reines D'Angleterre (trans. "Queens Of England") is a band made up of French avant-garde legend Ghédalia Tazartès and a couple of hyperactive young Parisian upstarts, Jo Tanz and él-g. Both of these characters are steeped in subversive operations covering psych-folk and "toon-psych" films (él-g), and the Tanzprocesz label (Jo Tanz). They also both perform under the moniker of Opéra Mort and have made work as Lö Jengi. Reines D'Angleterre are a damaged conglomeration of live concrète, sound poetry, faux ethnicity and sincere eccentricity. Les Comores (a reference to the island off the eastern coast of Africa which France still administers as an "overseas collectivity") is comprised of inexplicable ethnic residue and feasts on duality: chaos and order, narrative and anti-narrative, construction and destruction, comedy and dread. The glottal panoply of vocals ride in tandem with electronics: cracked, beaten, weathered and bruised. This is a brain-meltingly dark, gloriously unstable affair, but not one devoid of emotion. Edition of 400 hand-numbered LPs, housed in a heavyweight matte black embossed sleeve with insert.
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SIDRA 004LP
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LP release. Determined to continue collaborating with revolutionary blitzkrieg musicians in perpetuity, Brooklyn's Talibam! (Matt Mottel and Kevin Shea) were set up on a blind date with Alan Wilkinson by Bo' Weavil Recordings for a London basement show in May 2008. Like a late '60's Sadean love-in ripe with Joycean epiphanies, Talibam! heard in Wilkinson's tone the strength and grit of a fine British pint served cool and fresh... a perfect energy to swing-bounce their roly-poly hieroglyphic dance mayhem. A second gig happened in fall 2008, followed by this recording in winter 2009. If Talibam! and Wilkinson were a rugby team, they'd be in first place, trouncing competitors with more riff-hard tenacity and more powerful/declarative end-zone dances. Balancing contradictory cultural fragments into a psychedelic yin and yang power drive of glitch emission, sprezzatura horns, Zarathrusta organ drone launch, and sayanora-rama drum spills, Wilkinson, Mottel, and Shea turn animatronic nihilists into veritable musicological sexphorisms -- they cut the tension on the dancefloor like that abrupt liminal point between peace and footsie, between donuts and bagels, between lizards and turtles. These three dangerously handsome myriad-men from the future have materialized mixed signals into sharp-fanged foreign accents on this red-eye voyage to vinyl metropoly, a 2-sided ecosystem of Gatsby-killer morph-prov entitled Dem Ol' Apple Pie Melodies. Limited edition of 350 hand-numbered copies. Lavish heavyweight matte sleeve with insert, designed by Damien Beaton.
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WEAVIL 016CD
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2022 restock. Bo' Weavil releases Leaves From Off The Tree: a three-way project of Sharron Kraus, Meg Baird (Espers) & Helena Espvall (Espers). This is a beautiful recording of traditional folk material, with the most stunning singing and arrangements of some of England and Appalachia's finest songs. The songs on this record were recorded after many an evening swapping songs (and beers!) in Fishtown, Philadelphia, where Sharron had moved from her native England, and Meg and Helena were already installed. Meg and Sharron both had traditional music backgrounds and would meet up and teach each other Appalachian and English ballads, and improvise harmonies and alternate melodies. At some point, Helena was invited along and her voice and cello added a rich new layer. All nine songs were recorded live in one afternoon, so as to capture the relaxed atmosphere of the group's gatherings.
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