LP +7" 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. Decisively more experimental compositions as Gli Antichi Colori, Nuovo Orizzonte or Kalimba are indicative of an unparalleled executive expertise that flows into meditative and introspective delights by resonances now more obscure or more solar. The conpresence of popular european and middle-east atmospheres as a strong reminder to the world of dance suggest once again the charm of the meeting between East and West, in view of brotherhood and solidarity among peoples. So, the "Circle" releaves itself almost like a sound tale of distant and ancient Byzantine, Arab and Christian novels, according to a nomadic spirit that finds in music the preferred journey to joy and love. In these re-issue also appear Kolo e Variazione and Corde D'Amore, two live tracks unreleased that further enrich the repertoire of one of the most original group that Italy has ever known.

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 member Andrea Tamassia who played and recorded with Aktuala. This first album of 1979, seems to be a continuation of Aktuala music, it presents a compendium of styles and shapes, a collection of letters, visual notes from various places (Greece, Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Maghreb, Balcan Area etc.) rearranged in the form of an hypothetical diary, in order to create an unknown narrative scenario. In the music of the Zeit there’s no formalistic or philological purposes but triumphs an attitude to imaginative incorporation always changing. The rich poly-instrumentalism brings the rhythms of dance and ancient melodies, but also results in a palette of more abstract and ecstatic sounds with rare experimental lyricism that approach the florentine ensemble to the significant european experiences of The Incredible String Band or Third Ear Band.  

Art Of Primitive Sound is a sensational journey to the origin of Music. In his crucial research chapter on the Paleolithic, Walter Maioli between 1986 and 1991 investigates the soundscape of different geographical, climatic and botanical environments, in which the mystery of the ancient human-nature relationship resides. What emerges is an expanded and unprecedented Paleorganology, with a range of acoustic and natural instruments from all over the World. Rubbing of fossils, animal artefacts, plant elements of all sorts, everything becomes sound and each object opens up forms of imaginary communication, psychic effect and unexplored languages. Whistles, flutes, leaf and shell rattles, rhombuses, horns, bone pipes, slate slabs, bamboo arches, stones, vertebrae, seeds, stalagtites etc...how great can be the Natural Orchestra inherent in the spirit of forests, rivers, caves, seas, swamps or Amazon jungles? Thanks to an interdisciplinary partnership (Anthropology, Archaeology, Botany, Ethnomusicology) of collaborating friends, Maioli directs an Opera of universal character inspired by the archaic essence of sound and infrasonic dimension.

If «Conversations» celebrates the memory, the artistic and spiritual heritage of bassist Fred Hopkins, - an historical member of the revolutionary AACM of Chicago - who died in January 1999, it also marks the amazing collaboration between the Ritual Trio of Kahil El'Zabar (with Ari brown and Malachi Favors) and the intrepid veteran Archie Shepp, the great voice of the '70 afro-free-jazz. Being a tribute that invites to an intimate memory, almost an antidote to exorcise the loss of a brother, the music is spiritual hymn to life. Between ballads, hard-bop and free-improvised accents, blow winds of vibrant pianistic chiaroscuros, which reminds the best Mccoy Tyner in the great blinding quartet of John Coltrane in the 60’s. Furthermore, when an angular rhythmic base decisively follows the typical hypnotic ostinato of the ancient tribal rituals, the voice is expressed in the purest black spirituals (Big Fred and Brother Malcolm), pervading some moments of that “Holiness” culture dear to the dawn of Afro-American identity. Here, Shepp brings back the flaming shivers of the golden age, when his message of freedom resonated the true spirits of primordial Africa.

The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and the faint percussive reverberation of stalactites and stalagtites. Rocky sediments are played as tubular organs, glockenspiels, xylophones or stone marimbas. Crystalline timbral variations and subtle microtonal passages recall the chimes of Tibetan gongs and bells, of the scales of Java and Bali. Amidst muffled pauses and silences, trills and rings, echoes and tremolos, hisses and pops of vibration, Maioli builds his most imaginative niche of sound, a magnetic and telluric chant that is pure symphony and archetypal synaesthesia. Co-produced with Holidays Records.

"I made the basic recordings of Tim Goss's voice during a recent return trip to England. Despite some initial reservations Tim ended up giving an animated and robust reading, drawn exclusively from work of his own creation. These tapes were then transported back to Poughkeepsie, NY, where the project was teased to completion." (Original LP sleeve notes)

'Salmon Run' is Graham Lambkin's most acclaimed full-length and it's easy to see why. The ex-Shadow Ring outsider has made a name for himself over the last couple decades with a slew of solo sets and heady collaborations (with Áine O'Dwyer, Moniek Darge, Joe McPhee, Keith Rowe and others), but few records capture his craft as effortlessly and joyfully as this one.     Here he combines narrative storytelling with outsider art, daubing classical music recordings with filthy ferric paint strokes that drip with mischievous human eccentricity. The album began as tape recordings of Lambkin listening to music while photographing himself, then these pieces were manipulated and accented with additional sounds. It makes for a more-human-than-human listening experience: we all know the feeling of listening to music alone as sounds of people laughing, running water and whatever random acts of living permeate the scene almost imperceptibly. All that is brought into the foreground: wind chimes are amplified to sound like church bells and laughs, coughs and bird chirps like horns. The reality of Lambkin's listening environment is impossible to ignore, making us think more deeply about our own ritual of listening.     Lambkin's use of the room or the situation as an instrument brings a storyline and a glorious hyperreality to the record. It's impossible to listen to "Salmon Run" and not consider our own listening habits; in making something so completely personal, Lambkin allows us to reflect effortlessly. Striking a bizarre mid-point between peaceful and chaotic poles, "Salmon Run" is a truly unmissable record and a shining beacon in an ocean of experimental DIY recordings.      

Taped largely in a Honda Civic, Amateur Doubles (Kye, 2011) is a portrait of an oft-overlooked domestic stage: the car. Graham Lambkin captures the sounds of a family-in-motion as they fiddle with windows, play with toys, bicker, pass traffic, and listen, as the track titles reference, to French prog artists Besombes/Rizet and Philippe Grancher. While the set-up at first appears simple—a car ride taken by the artist and his family through upstate New York—Lambkin subtly and slyly manipulates the recordings, and even the background music itself, to unsettling effect, assembling a hazy, disorienting simulacra of a journey and quintessential domestic scene.

A study in anticipation, Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) repurposes the expectant rumblings of an audience-in-waiting, lifted by Lambkin from various concert recordings of the German kosmische band Tangerine Dream. These bootlegged clips provide a skeleton for various sonic scraps and interludes—including distorted and abandoned fragments from Lambkin’s archive, new recordings on guitar and violin by Austin Argentieri and Samara Lubelski, respectively—that, together, form a composition suffused with the atmosphere of potential energy. With this Blank Forms reissue, Softly Softly Copy Copy is available on LP for the first time.

These recordings were made in Bombay in 1968 by Bengt Berger (Bitter Funeral Beer Band) during a stay with Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Rudra Veena as a solo concert instrument. His home in the suburb of Chembur was at the time the magical haunt of a plethora of fantastic musicians, including Ritwik Sanyal and K. Sridhar, who took part in the session. In perfect and stern Duphrad vocal style, these two Raga lead us to different atmospheres and perceptions : Malkauns is the contemplative state of the evening, of the abandonment of the senses before the breaking of the silence in the night; Miyan Ki Todi is the first breath of the morning, the gentle awakening of the limbs before a puja. The two Dagar brothers, Mohiuddin on the Rudra and Fariduddin on the chant, complement each other, become ocean and fire, stillness and storm, in an intimate and tight dialogue of exploration and expressive subtlety, in which the purity of an Indian summer becomes the highest symbol of beauty and freedom of spirit. Originally released on CD by Country & Eastern.

This at length awaited CD version includes contents from the original 1983's LP Autumn Resonance / Domino Figures released by danish label Paula. Inedited Voices Recurrent and Music for 21 Clarinets are available along with linear notes written by the author, echoing the current value of his experimental approach to the sound practice. 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 technique, letting it to become over time his nutritious obsession.

Edition of 500 copies, screen printed cover. Includes two inserts: a replica of the original insert and the english translation Henry Krutzen is a relatively shadowy figure in the history of experimental sound. Between the early 80s and the 2010s, there are only a handful of albums that bear his name, and very little information about them. A multi-instrumentalist and composer who studied percussion, saxophone, and harmony in various schools and jazz clinics across Belgium, over the years he played in a diverse range of musical projects across the idioms of jazz, new wave, heavy metal, experimental, chanson française, world music and progressive rock, before relocating to Brazil during the early 2000s. “Silances”, originally released by Igloo Records – the Belgian imprint founded in 1978 by Daniel Sotiaux – sitting alongside astounding and remarkably unique albums by Leo Küpper, Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Arthur Pétronio, André Stordeur, and numerous others, is an entirely singular gesture at the borders of sound poetry, musique concrète, and radical electroacoustic practice that draws upon disparate elements of drone, jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditions of music from across the globe. Decades on from its original release it remains as striking, unique, and compelling as it did upon its release. In a note that Krutzen penned in 2022 when he was contacted for the reissue of “Silances”, Krutzen recalls: “Since I was 16, I had been experimenting with concrete music with a technician friend and we used all a teenager’s room could offer to make sounds into music: faucets, glasses of water, metal springs on ladders, objects of any kind… I had hours of recordings I pitched to Daniel [Sotiaux], to see if he was interested in making an album. I also had other ideas I wanted to be able to develop. What a joy when he accepted to work on the project! So I got to work. First, I set up a vocal improvisation quartet, and we spent long afternoons rehearsing using input I provided… We went into the studio and recorded almost two hours of improvisation, from which I then chose the best moments for the final product”.

n 1986, the vibraphonist Tom Van Der Geld composed his personal ode to creation, a tonal poem for all natural beings. Small Mountain reveal a pure minimalist inspiration, a vibrant style of sound variations that is decidedly more Zen-Impressionistic than the mathematical-metaphysical works of Steve Reich. This music, for four marimbas and other percussion instruments suggests an emotional osmosis with all the elements, a flow of ecstatic progressions that is more immanence than transcendence. It's the rain that falls softly on fragrant moss or the fog that hides the frost on the grass; an exotic spectrum of mutliform colours, dances of leaves, branches, sticks, fronds, lianas, swirls of petals and bark. Ode to the wind, to the rainforest, a psalm to the waters energy that opens the portals of the temples of Nature. As in the aboriginal songlines, every place or being on Planet Earth becomes, through music, space for the sacred.

The LP release presents the reissue of a little-known, but extremely beauty, Post-Minimalism album composed by Wayne Siegel when he was mid-twenties. Moved from US 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. These 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 technique, letting it to become over time his nutritious obsession. Black Sweat Records proposes the awaited reissue of Siegel’s LP. Compared to the original 1983’s release by Danish label Paula, are now included authentic pictures from the performance of Domino Figures, so that finally return visual results of SIegel’s works as part of his contribution to contemporary arts. Moreover, the present reissue presents precious liner notes written by the author, echoing the current value of his experimental approach to the sound practice.

Coupla Triples is a collection of two recordings made by MP Hopkins in 2014. The first piece, Spins, Groans, Tones, was previously self-released as part of a CDR/chapbook edition, while the second piece Waves, Feedback, Thoughts, has remained unreleased until now. Both pieces were created using a simple compositional method, in which random word prompts were selected from a list of sounds and ‘interpreted’ in an immediate manner with only basic recording equipment - a microphone, a tape loop, a voice recorder and an amp. Three sounds, twice. Arranged carelessly but carefully. A coupla triples, nothing fancy. Recorded and mixed on the land of the Gadigal people, Sydney, 2014. MP Hopkins is a sound artist and musician working on Wangal land in Sydney, Australia. He uses voice, feedback, recording/playback devices, and text scores within different acoustic environments, which are deconstructed and presented to the listener in delicate and degraded ways.

Blending Native American references into a body of sonority that draws on free improvisation, experimental electronic music, and spiritual jazz, Pygmy Unit’s “Signals From Earth” - originally self-released by the band in 1974 - forges a singular and almost entirely unknown path, and stands almost entirely on its own in the history of west coast American jazz. First appearing on the San Francisco scene sometime during the early 1970s, almost nothing is know about the Pygmy Unit, a seven piece band steered by Darrel De Vore, who contributed flute, bass, percussion, piano, and vocals to the band's lone LP, first appeared with percussionist Terry Wilson within the psychedelic folk rock band, The Charlatans, who belonged to the legendary Family Dog scene. Jim Pepper, a Native American tenor saxophonist known for being a member of the Mal Waldron Quartet, played with Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and numerous others, and produced the cult favourite, “Pepper's Pow Wow”, for Embryo Records in 1971. John Celona, who contributes parts on sax, synthesizer, and percussion, would later go on to be regarded as an electronic composer of some note. Of the remaining members, saxophonist Frank Albright, bassoonist Ron Grunn, and percussionist Marvin Kirkland, very little else is known. It seems this LP is more or less all they recorded. While undeniably jazz - riding a remarkable line between avant-garde electronic music, spiritual jazz, and free improvisation - the band was very much a product of the diverse creative ferment that developed in their hometown of San Francisco during the 1960s. Embodying the raw spirit of DIY (many of the instruments used in the recordings were made by DeVore himself, self-described as an “itinerant flute-maker”) the ensemble channels references - via passages of chanting and percussion, as well as conceptual underpinnings - from Jim Pepper’s Native American roots, intuiting them with the soulfulness of spiritual jazz, wild moments of avant-gardism centred around synths and electronic effects, and explosions of wild free improvisation.

An amazing document of the life experiment that was the Organic Music Society. This super quality audio, recorded by RAI (the italian public broadcasting company) in 1976 for television, documents a quartet concert focused on vocals compositions and improvisations. Here, Don Cherry and his family-community’s musical belief emerges in its simplicity, with the desire to merge the knowledge and stimuli gained during numerous travels across the World in a single sound experience. Don's pocket-trumpet is melted with the beats of the great Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the Italian guitar of Gian Piero Pramaggiore, and the tanpura drone of Moki. A pure hippie aesthetic, like in an intimate ceremony, filters a magical encounter between Eastern and Western civiliziations, offering different suggestions of sound mysticism: natural acoustics in which individual instruments and voices are part of a wider pan-tribal consciousness. A desert Western landscape marries Asian and Latin atmospheres. Indigenous contributions with berimbau explorations find fossil sounds of rattles and clap-hands invocations. Influences of Indian mantra singing are combined with eternal African voices or with folkish-Latin guitar rhythms , while flute and drums evoke distant dances. In the Organic Music everything becomes an act of devotion and love, an ecstatic dwell in the dimension of a sacred free-rejoice.