I'm submitting my next order for Mississippi Records and Grouper vinyl by Thursday (tomorrow) midnight. If you wanted any of these titles, speak now. Here's a short breakdown:

Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Liz Harris has self-repressed this 2008 classic in a third run of 1000 copies. I've seen previous presses of this LP go for over us$100 on eBay and it's the only Grouper vinyl I'm personally missing so I'm quite giddy about this one. One of my favorite albums of the past decade. Should be around $20, give or take $2. "the kind of beauty that makes sailors run aground." -- MOJO; "a blissful, and sometimes eerie, haze ... Fragile acoustic and electric guitars and the occasional keyboard ... subtly, but stunningly, beautiful." --AllMusic Guide; "This remarkable album is actually what I personally always wanted 4AD records to sound like ... druggy and sexy and arty and pretty, but never pretentious." -- Pitchfork

Liz Harris - Divide
This is a book and DVDR. Edition of 500. Here's the description: After months of work we are very happy to finally announce 'Divide', a book of drawings and an accompanying video by Liz Harris. Harris' visual work runs in parallel to her music as Grouper, and often times overlaps into the same vision. 'Divide' maps out dense organic patterns, passages filled to the edges with overgrowth and fractured geometry. Minimal strokes are taken to maximal repetitions to form complex mazes in high contrast. Other images float in space like hex symbols from prehistory, portals to some other place & time. The accompanying video (with soundtrack) of black & white Rorschach voids should be familiar to anyone who has seen a recent Grouper show. Book is 7" by 7", 60 pages, soft cover with a color cover & black and white images. DVDR is all regions.

Marika Papagika - The Further The Flame The Worse It Burns Me
Marika Papagika was one of Greek music's greatest vocalists. She recorded 225 performances between 1918 & 1929. This LP features some of her most mystical & moving. Instrumental accompaniment is provided by various combinations of cymbalon, cello, violin & clarinet. Includes a booklet featuring all known photographs of Marika & extensive liner notes by Ian Nagoski which shed much deserved light on one of the deepest artists of the Rembetika & Greek folk music scene. Record is housed in an old school tip on sleeve.


Various - Been Here All My Days (Selections from the George Mitchell Archive)
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, George Mitchell recorded extensively in the South. Mitchell concentrated mainly on local blues traditions recording some famous bluesmen and many otherwise ignored artists. The George Mitchell Collection was originally released as a series of forty-five EPs on Fat Possum, this LP contains our favorite fourteen tracks. This LP represents songs from many well known blues musicians such as Fred McDowell, Furry Lewis and Joe Calicott as well as some from criminally under represented artists like Jessie Mae Hemphill, Rosa Lee Hill and John Lee Ziegler. Comes with a short booklet of photos, discographical notes and recollections.

L'Orchestre National A de la Republique du Mali - s/t
The National A Orchestra was founded by the new government at Mali's independence. They later divided into A and B formations. The A Orchestra was led by Keletigui Diabate a multi-instrumental virtuoso. An album of incredible Malian music reissued for the first time since the 1970s. Eight tracks with beautiful vocals and guitar work. This is the second in a series of six Mali music LPs we will be reissuing from Sterns.

Various Artists - I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore
This compilation is our tribute to the music made in the U.S. between 1927 and 1948. We decided not only to focus on traditional genres (blues, old-time, Cajun), but to also show the music that was brought by the boatloads of immigrants coming to these shores. Their music influenced and still affects our culture today. The album starts off with a heavenly example of Greek rebetica from Marika Papagika. Also featured is early Tex-Mex pioneer Lydia Mendoza and gospel duo Two Gospel Keys. The latter gives us our title track. Louisiana Cajun music is beautifully executed by artists Cleoma Falcon and Blind Uncle Gaspard with Dela Lachney. The Blue Sky Boys may be considered old-time, but their haunting, melancholic harmonies belong in their own genre. The Caresser and Wilmouth Houdini bring on the Calypso with that New York jazz flavor. Hawaiian slack key guitar is demonstrated by Mike Hanapi's Ilima Islanders and Mme. Riviere's Hawaiians. Aside from Calypso, NY was also a big hub for Jewish klezmer, as shown by Jacob Hoffman playing with Henry Kandel's Orchestra. Sexteto Bolona is a great example of the roots of salsa and there's even a mystery track by an unknown Indonesian folk singer of the time. The comp ends with blues performer Big Boy Cleveland with his oddly original 'Quill Blues.' A beautiful record from beginning to end. A limited edition repress of this early out of print Mississippi LP. "The cover is hand made locally in our own pre-industrial style cover factory (All hand assembled using jigs - no electricity) faux "folkways" leather trim with a letter press print pasted on. Similar to our Joseph Spence and Mata La Pena covers. Real pretty."

Wave the Ocean, Wave the Sea
In 1959 and 1960, at the height of the Folk Revival, Alan Lomax undertook the first-ever stereo field recording trip through the American South to document its still thriving vernacular musical culture. He traveled through Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina, making over 70 hours of recordings. The trip came to be known as Lomax's "Southern Journey," and its recordings were first issued for the Atlantic and Prestige labels in the early '60s. Those, however, as well as subsequent releases on New World and Rounder Records, are now all out of print. To remedy this, and to celebrate the Southern Journey's 50th anniversary, Mississippi Records and the Alan Lomax Collection have collaborated on five commemorative LPs, spanning the breadth of Lomax's '59-60 Southern recordings, drawing on new transfers of the original 1/4" tapes, and featuring a considerable amount of previously unreleased material. The five LP volumes feature singing siblings Hobart Smith and Texas Gladden from Saltville, Virginia; menhaden fishermen's chorus the Bright Light Quartet; the Young Brothers' Mississippi Hill Country fife and drum band; Blue Ridge instrumentalists Wade Ward and Charlie Higgins; Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers; work songs and hollers from Parchman Farm; congregational hymns from African American and white Appalachian meeting-houses; Alabama's singing washerwoman Vera Ward Hall; the 1959 United Sacred Harp Convention; and the debut recordings of bluesman Fred McDowell, among much else.

Worried Now, Won't Be Worried Long
Second installment in the Field Recordings From Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey", 1959-1960 series, featuring recordings from blues singer Sidney Carter, seventy year-old Norman Edmonds, Rosa Lee (or Rosalie) Hill performing on Fred McDowell's porch, two Mississippi gospel groups, the United Sacred Harp Convention in 1959 Alabama, the first-ever recordings of the fife and drum music of the Mississippi Hill Country and The Bright Light Quartet, a group of fishermen recorded in Virginia in 1960.

I'll Meet You On That Other Shore
Third installment in the Field Recordings From Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey", 1959-1960 series, featuring recordings from Fred McDowell, Carlos "Bookmiller" Shannon's rendition of "The Eighth of January" (another variation of which -- "The Battle Of New Orleans" -- was a Billboard charting hit by Johnny Horton in 1959), a medley of classic African American spirituals by Virginia's Union Choir of the Church of God and Saints of Christ, lined hymns from Kentucky's George Spangler and a Baptist Church congregation, Ozark balladeer Neal Morris, work songs from Mississippi State Penitentiary, a previously unissued version of "Moses Was A Servant Of The Lord" performed by Charles Barnett (vocal and washtub) and Arkansas' Almeda "Granny" Riddle performing "Rainbow Mid Life's Willows," based on a British broadsheet originally published in 1631.

I'll Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down
Fourth installment in the Field Recordings From Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey", 1959-1960 series, featuring recordings from Blue Ridge instrumentalist Wade Ward performing alongside an eighty-one year old Charlie Higgins, sought-after Mississippi church singers James Short and Viola James, more from Fred McDowell ("Woke Up This Morning"), a locally composed religious piece written from words spoken by Mountain View, Arkansas resident Joseph Looney while on his deathbed, Hillsville, Virginia's The Mountain Ramblers, spiritual singers from the Georgia Sea Island of St. Simons and banjo master Hobart Smith's "Banging Breakdown."

I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die
Fifth installment in the Field Recordings From Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey", 1959-1960 series, featuring recordings from North Carolina's Mountaineers, migratory labor songs from fishermen The Bright Light Quartet, a stark religious meditation on the end of days from Virginia service station owner E.C. Ball, Bessie Jones (later a touring performer) singing the spiritual "Daniel In The Lion's Den," an evening worship service at a Pentecostal Temple in Memphis, Emma Hammond's dance tune "Shout Lula," an excerpt from Alabama religious radio testimony and music performed on caned panpipes (or quills) at a country picnic in Senatobia, Mississippi.

Michael Hurley - Blue Hills
New recordings by Michael. On this LP we find Hurley stretching out on six longer than usual compositions that are heartbreaking & beautiful as anything he's ever done. Side one features Hurley on a creaky pump organ. Side two starts out with two newer compositions - just Michael on guitar & vocals. The record ends with a stunning version of Tea Song (which Michael originally wrote & recorded way back in 1963). A sustained feeling of loss & need for redemption haunts this record.

V/A - Fanajana: A Collection of Recordings and Photography from Madagasikara
Over a three year period in the late 1990s, Charlie Brooks embarked on two long field recording trips in Madagasikara. Brooks primarily concentrated on the more remote north and west regions of the island. Upon his return in 1999 he pressed 200 copies of a triple record and stored them under his bed for the last ten years. The three themed Lps: Vocal, Valiha Marovany and Miscellaneous Instruments were released as the now out of print MR-061 Fihavanana. This single lp collection compiles seventeen tracks from Fihavanana. Comes with a twelve page booklet of photography and notes.

Mirah - Don't / The Tears That Fall 7"
Mirah (K Records) has gratiously blessed the Mississippi label with a beautiful 45. This piece of wax contains two original Mirah songs, celebrating the classic girl group era of the '60's. Loosely following this format, and with the accompaniment of some individualistic musicians, something unique was born. Backing musicians from Evolutionary Jass Band, Pink Widower and Golden Bears. Recorded at The Pool Recording Studio in Portland, OR with Alex Yusimov. Old-Style Full Color Tip-On Sleeve.

CHIN CHIN -Sound Of The Westway
In 1985, Sound of the Westway was released on Chin Chin's own Farmer Records. As a progression from their first 7", SOTW proved to be a brilliant mix
of post punk and pop sensibility. The band's fierce DIY stance and girl-positive ethics have echoed down through the indie scene. Mississippi and Slumberland are excited to collaborate on this classic reissue. On vinyl only, remastered by Tim Stollenwerk and new original artwork by Alec Icky Dunn. Includes Free Download Card.

ERIS - The Feast of the Appetites of Eris (Domino Sound 026)
Each year, on the Sunday prior to Mardi Gras, a rag tag group of musicians assembles to provide the soundtrack for the progression of the parade of the Krewe of Eris. This past parade, a food based banquet, the sounds of this 62 piece band was captured on cassette and two microphones towering overhead. Brass and percussion working through seven originals and a cover through the streets of New Orleans, with accompaniment of paraders, bottles, sirens, and food. Field recording that sounds just like it sounded. A pressing of 1,000 with an insert and silk screened covers. And then they ate cake...