A late night of doing paperwork for an upcoming trip to Hungary and move to Czechia brought me to this absolute gem of a folk-prog album. Yoshiko Sai released a few albums in the mid-1970s which were not well-received at the time, but listeners’ tastes have finally caught up with her mellow, trippy, slightly psychedelic songs.
Progressive Folk
[Music] 稷廬 / jì lú – 阿笈暮鈔歌集 / Songs of Agama
When I see music tagged with the term ‘neofolk‘, I expect to hear something like Death In June, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud or Current 93, not this. I’m not entirely sure where jì lú hail from in China, but the label who released this disc, Raflum, hail from Sichuan, home of some seriously good food. If you remember the Japanese psychedelic band Ghost, fronted by guitarist Masaki Batoh, this might be a corollary. It’s exceptionally psychedelic, and has the feel of the Incredible String Band on even more acid, feeling more placid. This is gorgeous.
I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous that I haven’t heard anything this good in Beijing yet.
[Music] ʻĀina – Lead Me To The Garden
Aloha Got Soul’s latest release is a reissue of a rare psychedelic Christian folk record by a Hawaiian project called ʻĀina, which, according to their Bandcamp album site, “means land or earth in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language.”
It’s definitely a product of the 1970s, full of hippy vibes, a naïve sense of idealism, and themes which would be recognizable to people who go to Pentecostal Churches. There was nothing bad about this release at all. It was a smooth, mellow and enjoyable listen.
[Music] Folque – Fanteguten
Folque were a Norwegian folk-prog band who were active in the early 1970s. According to some comments I’ve read recently, though they didn’t make much of a dent in the American market, they were quite popular in Brazil, of all places.
[Music] Marie Yacoub et Malicorne – Une fille dans le désespoir
Beautiful prog-folk from the legendary French band Malicorne.
[Music] Love (Japan) – Time Gives Life
Folk-psych from 1977. The band Love is not the legendary Los Angeles band fronted by Arthur Lee, but a Japanese group who churned out at least one magnificent album before disappearing into the aether.
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 