★Black Sweat Records
Live in Frankfurt 82
2019 small repress. First of all, Bengt Berger -- a pioneer of the Swedish underground of the '70s and historical member of bands such as Archimedes Badkar and Arbete Och Fritid -- is a versatile drummer-percussionist and well-educated ethnomusicologist with several research sojourns in India and Ghana. Deeply influenced by Hindustani, Carnatic, and West Africa music, he founded the Bitter Funeral Beer Band in 1980, an ensemble of 12 elements, basing his ideas on the traditional funeral music of…
Het Jakoba Prieel
**CD edition** While the Sound Reporters imprint, which ran intermittently between the early 80s and 90s - specializing in the sounds of anthropology, ethnomusicology, religion, travel and history, hailed from Amsterdam, those aware of this obscure cassette label will probably only be the most developed fans of Italian avant-garde. It was Sound Reporters that issued the incredible collaboration between Pit Piccinelli, Fred Gales, and Walter Maioli, Amazonia 6891, reissued by Black Sweat in 2016,…
Ethnoelectronics
CD Edition. Ethnoelectronics, issued on cassette by Sound Reporters in 1986, exists beyond the realm of easy definition. Very little information about the album exists, other than the fact that it involved the contributions of a remarkable group of sonic explorers - Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the sculptor Edward Luyken, and was conceptualised as the soundtrack for an obscure science-fiction saga. Or was it?The title makes clear allusion to the ide…
Taraxacum
**CD version** Incredible 1986 lost recordings, an amazing adventure of a musicological and botanical research on the psychoacoustic qualities of the green world. It's the investigation of an organic symbiosis, real and mysterious at the same time, between the pharmacological properties of the plant and the sound emitted by the same material essence. From the single natural element comes the vibration permeating the whole universe; an indissoluble binomial for which "everything that makes up exi…
In Fa
In Fa is an enchanting meeting of phantasmagorical improvisation, a dialogue between two generations that makes every expressive boundary overcome. Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico) remains faithful to the idea of a collective work, where musicians are only instruments crossed by musical energy. He provides his pioneering experience, with excellent control of electronic sounds, realized with the eternal cosmic Farfisa and the synths (Moog Sonic Six, Synthi EMS). Their lysergic fluidity support…
Venndiagram
Back in 2017, Black Sweat produced a lovely reissue of DSR Lines Spoel. It was easily one of our favorite records of that year. Continuing their dedication to its creator, the label now brings us yet another stunner - a reissue of a little heard tape only release from 2013, Venndiagram. Like its predecessor, we can already tell that this one is going to top our year end lists. DSR Lines is the moniker of David Edren, an artist based in Antwerp, who, since coming into view during the late 90’s, …
Five Dramas For Swollen Emotions
The histrionic Swedish artist Isak Sundström (Pascal and Skriet) embraces the fascinating sound world of the "spoken word", infusing new expressive perspectives to this genre with original sensitivity. These five vocal dramas are based on the subtitles of some films by Douglas Kirk, texts that describe the sound effects and events that occur outside the screen. But the result is rather that of a new dissolved narrative, of another space that explores the boundaries of emotional imagination. In t…
Attica / Coming Together / Les Moutons De Panurge
This milestone of the avant-garde music, published in 1974 by the historic Opus One, was a very significant political awareness. With Coming Together and Attica, Frederic Rzewski celebrates in music the famous revolt of the American prison in 1971. The texts of Sam Melville and Richard X. Clark make pulsating and alive the invocations of the prisoners; full of pathos, these fragments of life oscillate between a confessional tone and the hymn to freedom, in a touching emblem of compassion. The fi…
Your Own Self
Garrett List’s work for Opus One, in 1972, was a remarkable creative effort, conceived like a celebration of a higher self-consciousness. The context is avant-garde minimalism, but the music is enriched by a deep spiritualism; it echoes the most meditative jazz of the age, taking also advantage from the mystic lesson of La Monte Young. Everything is solved in a free, moderate and brilliant language, pure and elegant. It’s quintessential, in these rare moments of beauty, the instrumentation of th…
Spirit Rejoin
CD version. Listening to the music of Al Doum & The Faryds is always like staying in the pristine nature of an exotic island, in the sacred harmony of a new organic society; imaging all brothers and sisters singing and dancing in the unity of the brotherhood. This is the message of love and joy that pervade this fourth album, Spirit Rejoin. Moving towards accents of jazz ancestry, the Faryds absorb and re-elaborate -- with remarkable insights -- disparate elements and influences of electric jazz…
Evoluzione Interiore
**CD edition** Juri Camisasca is one of the towering artists of Italy’s remarkable musical avant-garde. Evolving across the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, as it continues today, this movement suffered under a long-lasting, one sided isolation - unheard by the world beyond. Recently, under the care of labels like Black Sweat, it has begin to emerge from the shadows, gathering a momentum of marvel and praise. Over the years, beginning with 1974’s legendary La Finestra Dentro, Camisasca has released a slow tr…
Princess of Dawn - Soundtracks
Of all the artists to fall under the sweeping banner of Kosmische / Krautrock - a movement which has benefited from continuous attention from the reissue market since the 1980’s, Georg Deuter remains among the most unacknowledged and under-appreciated. The reasons remain slightly behind reach - the likely consequence of his association with the New Age movement across the 1970’s and 80’s, the lingering effects of stigmas which were later applied that movement’s efforts, and the reissue ma…
Standing Waters
The Italian guitarist Maurizio Abate is a rare breed - an experimental musician from Europe working within, and expanding the American tradition of Guitar Soli, an idiom first pioneered by John Fahey. Abate initially emerged within a diverse series of collaborative released over a decade ago, but, as the years passed, a love for his instrument, with inspiration provided by Fahey’s indication of its potential for application as a one man orchestra, prompted to him to embark on a pursuit of solo …
French Archives 1977-80
** Small repress available ** It’s an incredible moment in the history of recorded music. At SoundOhm we’re lucky enough to hear it all. Within such a stunning landscape, it’s impossible to pick favourites, but Milan based imprint Black Sweat always comes out at the top. And they return with what may be their most ambitious effort yet, a stunning four LP box set of previously unreleased archival recordings by Ariel Kalma. The life and work of Ariel Kalma is a remarkable journey in sound - an emb…
Spoel
Appeared only on cassette in 2014, this new edition in double Lp features 3 unreleased tracks. David Edren's organic minimal electronics are never majestic or magniloquent (like Klaus Schulze or Froese) and never neurotic or aggressive for that matter. It is a soft music, delineating echoes of sacred geometry in the emotional balance between oscillations, frequency modulations, and rhythmic pulsations. Diamonds, mineral combinations, emerald luminescences, hydrogen cascades and stratospher…
Early Works
A selection of the most radical impressive works composed by Wayne Siegel when he was mid-twenties. Moved to Denmark, between 1979 and 1980, he began to investigate possibilities of a very personal language, contributing to mould the heterogeneous kaleidoscope of Post-Minimalism results. The early works are constructed around a relentless musical process that consists of delaying and repeating every element in a certain measure, without intentional alteration. Siegel called this process canon te…
Un Giorno in una Piazza + Il Cerchio degli Antichi
Special bundle. In the late 70’s the Italian music scene recorded a renewed interest in a sound research involved to a stimulating fusion of popular elements, jazz improvisation and suggestions of the middle-oriental classical heritage. Starting from the experience of Aktuala the idea of a common "Mediterranean air", that could compare and harmonize rhythms and timbres of various regions, enlivened a large number of musicians. In this context, it also placed the short history of Zeit and of his …
Un Giorno in una Piazza del Mediterraneo
In the late 70’s the Italian music scene recorded a renewed interest in a sound research involved to a stimulating fusion of popular elements, jazz improvisation and suggestions of the middle-oriental classical heritage. Starting from the experience of Aktuala the idea of a common "Mediterranean air", that could compare and harmonize rhythms and timbres of various regions, enlivened a large number of musicians.
In this context, it also placed the short history of Zeit and of his main mem…
Il Cerchio degli Antichi Colori
With their second album of 1981, the ensemble Zeit re-propose their own vision of a new cultural multi-geographical mosaic without boundaries. The sound confirms the inspired and eclectic vein of previous work suggesting even a greater conviction and maturity of intent. The arrangements tend to dilate in more alchemical and hypnotic sequences, while the range of inspirations (Balkan music, Greek, Turkish, Persian, African etc.) and the poly-instrumentalism are even more precious and varied. Dec…
1972 Blues Jazz Session
Unreleased recordings of future members of Aktuala and I.P. Son Group! The history takes us back in the alternative Milan of the early 70’s, to the flavour of the first jam-blues of that era when musicians from different parts of the world (India, Africa or South-America), of disparate background and culture were used to gather to experiment just with an authentic sense of stay together. Here, the devotion to the blues roots remains strong but leaks in the compositions an aerial and wandering c…