Since their founding just over a decade ago, the Milan based imprint, Black Sweat, has left an indelible mark on the landscape of recorded music, issuing a strikingly diverse array of efforts, spanning numerous fields and artistic disciplines - all rooted in a deep passion for and knowledge of music - ranging from crucial historical gestures by Futuro Antico, Ariel Kalma, J.D. Emmanuel, I.P. Son Group, Wayne Siegel, Zeit, Juri Camisasca, Frederic Rzewski, and numerous others, to contemporary offerings by Maurizio Abate, DSR Lines / David Edren, Al Doum & The Faryds, Everest Magma, and Langendorf United. This decidedly international and time-spanning temperament lays at the root of Black Sweat’s latest batch of LPs, the first ever vinyl reissue of the German multi-instrumentalist Klaus Wiese’s legendary 1982 cassette “Sabiha Sabiya” - the follow up to 1981’s “Baraka”, which Black Sweat lovingly reissued in 2023 - and the first ever vinyl pressing of the Michigan based, American quartet, Fling II’s krautrock infused self-titled debut, which was originally issued as a widely celebrated, digital only release back in 2022. A fascinating pairing, each exploring the hypnotic possibilities of music in radically different ways, as ever Black Sweat has blown our minds with the bridges that they build between adventurous creative journeys taken in the past and the present day.



Klaus Wiese "Sabiha Sabiya" LP

The German multi-instrumentalist, Klaus Wiese (1942-2009), was a fairly enigmatic figure in the history of 20th Century music. First appearing within the early 1970s krautrock scene as a member of Popol Vuh - contributing to the band’s iconic LPs, “Hosianna Mantra” and “Seligpreisung” - by the late '70s and early '80s his studies of Sufism and Mysticism had drawn him down an alternate musical path, eventually becoming regarded, alongside Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Constance Demby, and Jonn Serrie, as one of the most respected ambient and new artists of the era.

While Wiese would later gain note for his founding of the Nono Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to playing the large-scale sheetmetal instruments of Robert Rutman, the bulk of his recorded output is dedicated to his masterful focus on Tibetan singing bowls. While these are beautiful and noteworthy in their own right, they slightly skew the regard and understanding for his creative scope and the breadth of his talents and ambitions as an artist who also had a high proficiency on the zither, persian stringed instruments, synths, diverse percussion, and numerous other instruments from across the world, as well as the human voice. Drawing on the ground captured by his 1981 solo debut, “Baraka”, Wiese continued his musical, sonic journey the following year with the album’s follow-up, “Sabiha Sabiya”, issued as a cassette only release by the German new age publisher Aquamarin Verlag.

Like its predecessor, “Sabiha Sabiya” sprang from the period during which Wiese collaborated with Deuter on “Silence is the Answer” in 1980. While it is impossible to know to what extent he was responding to those experiences, the mood Wiese and Deuter’s respective work during this period is markedly different. Comprising two long form works - “Shaheena (The Falconess)” and “Shaira (The Poetess)” - composed and played solo by Wiese on vocals, harp, tambura, and harmonium, is a stunning immersion in the realms of ambience and rippling harmonics.

Effectively an early work of healing music that helped lay the groundwork for Wiese’s subsequent decades-long research into the mysticism of sound, “Sabiha Sabiya” bears unmissable unmistakable touchstones within the experimental temperaments from which most of the krautrock generation drew, in this case most notably Minimalism. While “Shaheena (The Falconess)” begins with a passage of shimmer, reverb drenched harp lines, the piece quickly evolves into a work of durational drone spanning the entirety of the remaining side, slowly evolving, through subtle shifts, in a spirally vortex of frequencies, that reach toward the otherworldly through sonorous vibration.

The album’s second piece, while largely underscored by drones and longtime, presents the artist's hand in a more forward and transparent fashion, through use of its acoustic instrumentation. Spacious and moving at a glacial pace, Wiese’s rippling tones on harp play against the dense harmonics produced by his harmonium, before entering a sustained and overwhelmingly beautiful period where the long reverberance of that instrument is used as a kind of drone, into which it plays and produces an immersive and captivating sense of harmonic interplay.

A stunningly beautiful cosmic bath of sound, Wiese’s “Sabiha Sabiya” is a high-water mark in ambient and healing music. Having remained out of print and nearly unobtainable for decades, it’s likely to hold a wealth of revelations, even for the most seasoned fan of ambient and New Age music. Once again, Black Sweat has done us an incredible service by bringing a lost and hugely important artifact back into the world. This first ever vinyl reissue of “Sabiha Sabiya” is truly amazing and not to be missed.



Fling II "Fling II" LP

As they say, the past is damned to repeat. But, in the case of music, the return of certain historical temperaments and inspirations often produces something incredibly exciting and entirely new. Such is the case for the Michigan based, American quartet Fling II’s krautrock infused self-titled debut, issued as a beautiful LP by Black Sweat, a handful of years after it met wide celebration as a digital only release.

Fling II is a group of longtime friends - Brad Gowland on drums and modular synthesis, Richard Murphy on guitar, Adam Narimatsu on Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer organ, and Justin Reed on bass and guitar - joined in their love of experimentation, with their hearts anchored in the golden age of 1970s Krautrock. Comprising five stunning tracks over its two sides, their debut, self-titled LP draws from a pool of inspiration taken from some of the best German music of the 1970s - the minimal, metronomic qualities of Neu!, the pulsing, hypnotic electronic textures of Cluster and Kraftwerk, and the complex, swirling progressive psychedelia of Can, all heightened by their deployment and use of the legendary Boss Super Phaser PH-2, the dual-circuit modulation pedal that shines and helps to sculpt that band’s sound across the entirety of the LP.

While Fling II unapologetically wear their influences on their sleeves, even from the outset it’s clear that these five tracks move far beyond the realm of homage or pastiche. Not only is there a striking sense of play and joyous experimentation - pushing outwardly into uncharted territory - but equally a sense of critical mindedness and distillation that each moment feel remarkably relevant, contemporary, and fresh. There’s no way to mistake this album for a lost artefact of the past. It’s very much of the now.

Pulsing and hypnotic, with each instrumental element reduced to an almost minimal utility which still collectively culminates as a dense tapestry of interactions, “Fling II” takes the listener on a profound and intoxicating series of intergalactic excursions driven by a sense of perpetual motion: each player doubling as a generator of both rhythm and harmonics. Ranging from more ambient and new age oriented pieces - driving into dream states through their bubbling tones - and those unquestionably cemented in driving cosmic rock, each moment is marked by a stunning sense of musicianship and rigour. Most of all, “Fling II” is an absolute blast to listen to, drawing us back to drop the needle on it again and again.

While Black Sweat is arguably most widely celebrated for its reissues and archival releases, alongside the incredible LPs they’ve released by the likes of David Edren, Addict Ameba, Lay Llamas, Giovanni Di Domenico, Langendorf United, and Al Doum and the Faryds, “Fling II” stands as yet another important proof of the label's important work excavating the present and illuminating the incredible music happening all around us today. Issued as a beautifully produced vinyl LP, we can’t think of a better record to get us through the dark winter months. Absolutely killer and not to be missed.