This thought appealed to me and has since taken me over in that I’ve begun to hear a similar quality in a lot of music as well as in photographs, except with music there is a far better chance of finding out about the people involved.

John Fahey’s Revenant Records have come to be my favourite ‘ghost music’ label – even the artists still alive and kicking have that mysterious, rarefied quality to them which I find so appealing and are able to instantly capture my imagination. Spanning the ancient traditional to the modern avant-garde, there is a peculiar cohesiveness to their output which makes it hard to isolate an individual recording from the rest of the catalogue. No other label could so comfortably house recordings of a 1920s banjo picker with a voice that could corrugate reinforced concrete, a naked Japanese dancer leaping around a disused warehouse in the poring rain accompanied by acoustic abstractions, a band locked together in a pink house for a year while submitted to torturous brain-washing sessions, or a Cherokee steel guitarist who may perform his Hawaiian tunes in either Indian headdress or a Stetson. Have I made it sound like a freak-show? It isn’t – it’s an astonishing collection of raw and enchanting American music from any era and genre at its very best, thankfully preserved for evermore.

It is the rare quality of such raw musics that chiefly aroused Fahey. Fascinated in his youth by Charley Patton, Blind Willie Johnson and the other musicians featured in his collection of obscure old blues / country blues and gospel 78s, and then in later years by the experimentalism of Sonic Youth and John Cage, it is these two sides of the John Fahey coin that we find complementing each other beautifully across the releases on Revenant Records. It is surprising how well the traditional and the experimental, the ancient and modern, sit together all raw and raggedy as if they were cut from the same cloth.

They don’t come much rawer than Dock Boggs (pictured above), the aforementioned banjo picker whose voice is described in the accompanying hard-backed book as sounding "as if his bones are coming through his skin". Saved by Revenant from what could have been an eternity of obscurity, Country Blues documents a weirder, rougher aspect to the American folk tradition that has nothing to with Pete Seeger’s wholesome idealistic protest. Boggs’ songs concern themselves with death, heartbreak, lonesomeness and some serious hard travelling and fit his extraordinary voice like a glove. Boggs quit music on his wife’s insistence in 1930 and searched fruitlessly for three decades for something to fill the void before finally picking up his banjo again, playing constantly until his death in 1971.

Still fitting in nicely with the ghost music theme, although very much alive, is Jim O’Rourke’s Happy Days. This is one continuous piece of minimalism spanning 45 minutes which gradually progresses from repetitive gently plucked notes on an acoustic guitar, through what may be either a hurdy-gurdy or the biggest bumble-bee in the world, to an electronic fiesta of layers and layers of throbbing drones as the guitar gradually resurfaces towards the end.

Then there’s the Stanley Brothers, a fine bluegrass duo whose congenial Earliest Recordings collects their Rich-R-Tone releases on 78s from the late 1940s / early 1950s, the period before they fully hit their stride but an incredible example of some swinging, occasionally gospel-tinged bluegrass which frequently floors this listener.

The title of the first (and as yet only) volume of American Primitive further helps to define Revenant’s field of expertise and moves deep into the world of "raw pre-war gospel". Many black musicians from this era found themselves caught somewhere between heaven and hell, depending on the slant of their music – sinful blues or redemptive gospel. Charley Patton, interestingly, was forced by record company executives to record the gospel tunes included here under the pseudonym of Elder Hadley, presumably to avoid tarnishing the sacred, redemptive songs with his blues association. The music on this collection is some of the rawest, most soulful gospel – you need to listen to the beautifully sincere "Honey In The Rock" by Blind Mamie Forehand today. Fahey’s sleeve-notes bring a fascinating insight into the music, and into the lives of the musicians as well, bringing the ghosts that little bit more into focus.

My personal favourite of Revenant’s releases is the two CD and book set celebrating the never-famous Charlie Feathers’ glorious rockabilly country, Get With It: Essential Recordings (1954 – 69). The splendidly relaxed country tunes which kick off the set boast Feather’s deliciously full-flavoured voice – think of a less-lonesome Hank Williams – until the rockabilly and its accompanying vocal inflections start to creep in. Recording at Sun, writing for Elvis Presley and claiming to teach him everything he knew ("I arranged all of Elvis’ stuff"), Charlie’s photograph was even used on the sheet music to "Blue Suede Shoes" because he was better looking that the song’s author Carl Perkins, yet stardom always unfairly eluded him. Sadly Feathers died within weeks of the release of this exceptional collection.

Zipping back up to the end of the 20^th Century again, and possibly the rawest of all of Revenant’s catalogue is the striped down electric blues of Bassholes on Blue Roots. Featuring only guitar, feedback, vocals and drums this is crudely though perfectly recorded material. The songs sound as if they had been buried in the middle of hay-barn by Dock Boggs to be dug up and brought back to life again during the time of The Pixies and Giant Sand. Or perhaps a snare, bass drum, badly tuned electric guitar, big amp and Iggy Pop were somehow transported back seventy / eighty years. The sleeve-notes from Dick Rosenthal only enhance the mystery with their tales of working all day to buy a silver bullet to "shoot the boss at the shucking barn". Great, gritty, gnarly, combustible stuff.

Sir Richard Bishop, otherwise know as the Sun City Girls’ guitarist Rick Bishop, has produced something far more polished in terms of clarity of sound with Salvador Kali, yet no less raw in its near hour of improvisations on guitars, piano and harmonium. There is such an astonishing range to his repertoire, from the Cage-esque through Spanish flamenco to Django Reinhardt and jazz / classical traditions gleaned from all corners of the world. The long piano improvisation "Al-Darazi" is startlingly atmospheric, perfect listening in a darkened room on a rainy night.

As is Derek Bailey’s Music and Dance, part of which was recorded during a rainstorm, providing the perfect setting for the two near-half-hour pieces on the album. As mentioned above, this features Bailey’s stark and abstract acoustic wrestling to the accompaniment of Min Tanaka, a naked Japanese dancer who you can hear shuffling and leaping around the disused warehouse in which the performance took place. In "Rain Dance", by an exceptional stroke of luck, it started raining heavily outside and you can also hear the water leaking / pouring through the neglected ceiling and splashing in puddles on the floor for Tanaka to dance and splash in, thus giving the piece its title. The music is simply beautiful.

Revenant’s primary foray into atonality occurs on Cecil Taylor’s dizzying Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come, a live recording of Taylor’s trio featuring Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray in 1962. The band are excited, flexible and highly dextrous and many people list this as one of their favourite Cecil Taylor albums due to its extraordinary complexity which never loses sight of its delight and sense of fun.

Dripping in fun is the chipper Jenks "Tex" Carman’s Chippeha!, the cross-cultured oddity mentioned in the opening paragraphs above. Carman’s delightful Hawaiian steel guitar zips all over the place in this sprightly set of tunes. It’s hard to imagine from listening to the music that Carman is a Cherokee and would frequently perform in full Indian headdress if he didn’t have his Stetson with him. The three tunes from his appearance on Country Music Time in which he attempts to recruit youngsters into the US Air Force with his perky steel guitar and Jolson-esque voice is an unmissably surreal moment.

Finally, Revenant’s two highest-profile yet releases, volume four of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Captain Beefheart’s Grow Fins have both been widely dissected and highly praised and I suspect that readers of this article will need little encouragement to go and check them out here.

The label’s coalescence through great diversity is remarkable, and it’s dedication to preserving forgotten or otherwise lost raw, honest, important music from America’s history (past and present) explains the respect with which the label is widely held. It is a great shame that Fahey has not lived to see his label release their upcoming extensive Charley Patton set, containing his 1970 dissertation on Patton’s music which was so emotive for Fahey due to its inherent anger and fear.

Long may Revenant’s apparitions continue to haunt us.