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Nommos
CD edition (mastered from the analog tapes). First appearing incongruously on John Fahey's Takoma label in 1981, Nommos remains enshrouded in impenetrable mystery – from its understated artwork to the rich assemblage of analog synths contained inside. According to Head Heritage, Nommos is the "missing link between the proto-industrial rhythm and drone of Suicide and the whole minimalist drone / static / repetition method of Terry Riley and La Monte Young." Best known as a producer, Craig Leon wo…
You'll Never Come Back
Reissue of Harry Pussy's Ride A Dove, originally released on Siltbreeze in 1996. "By 1996, with one LP, a handful of 7"s, and a couple dozen gigs under their collective belts, Harry Pussy had thoroughly scrambled the mid-90s scuzz-rock ecosystem. Their acclaimed first LP, described by David Keenan as 'a black hole that devoured genre and flattened any attempt to classify it,' fused Japanese noise, '80s hardcore and post-Ayler jazz into a dense, white-hot ball of punk anger and insanity. The band…
Moon On The Water
**CD version** A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. Moon On The Water were a trio of percussionists based in Italy - David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, both American tympani players in the Scala Philarmonic Orchestra, with the legendary Italian jazz drummer Tiziano Tononi, who worked with everyone from Roberto Musci, to Muhal Richard Abrams, Pierre Favre (who later joined the group), And…
Gagaku Suites
Tip! Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century.
The recordings partly reflect …
Om Shanti Shanti Om
**Never-before released document of Don Cherry blowing cool fire in Rome, 1976. First official release. Mastered from the original master tapes.** 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, w…
I Tarantolati
Huge Tip! **300 copies, comes with a printed insert** The second LP in Black Sweat’s latest batch, ‘I Tarantolati’ the first outing of Antonio Infantino with his band, Il Gruppo Di Tricarico, while very different in its musical approach, belongs to the same wild ferment around Folk Studio in Rome, and was issued by the Folkstudio label the year prior in 1975.
Antonio Infantino was poet and singer, who operated in circles connected to Beat literature and Italian performance and gestural music cir…
Collines / Racines
Tip! Rarely has the term "soundscapes" seemed as appropriate as for 'Collines' and 'Racines,' these two long, captivating pieces for cello and Loopstation, respectively inspired by the landscapes of Gaume and the Forêt de Soignes. Gwen Sainte-Rose superimposes the sound layers of her compositions and sculpts the sound material. This CD nestled in a wooden box which, like a small cabinet of curiosities, also contains multiple photographic inserts by Beata Szparagowska and the graphic designer Cor…
Jesus
Two confrontative icons. Two artists willing to go where those icons point. Jesus is one of the most extreme and conceptually charged releases in the Von catalogue - a double LP that documents and extends a collaboration between Prurient and Nico Vascellari built around the figures of GG Allin and Klaus Kinski: two men who treated the stage as a site of absolute exposure, who understood performance as a form of self-destruction, and who attached to the name of Jesus a weight that had nothing to …
Resonant Cuts
Concert and Sound Installation, edited by Carsten Seiffarth and Michael Moser. 21x16 cm, 63 pages, b+w and colour fotos, English-German texts. Limited to 500 copies. CD-1 Concert Installation. Ensemble Polwechsel and guests: Burkhard Beins: percussion, Martin Brandlmayr (percussion), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass), Axel Dörner (trumpet), Theo Nabicht (contrebass, clarinet), Wolfgang Musil (live-electronic). Recorded live on July 24 2008 at Kleiner Wasserspeicher, Berlin. CD-2 Sound Inst…
Freedom of Choice (Book)
Finally, after all that waiting, The Future arrived in 1980. Ohio art-rockers Devo had plainly prepared with their 1979 second LP Duty Now for the Future, and now it was go time. Propelled by the new decade's high-tech, free-market, pre-AIDS promise, 1980's Freedom of Choice would rocket what Devo co-founder Gerald Casale calls his "alternate universe, hermetically sealed, alien band" both into the arms of the Earthlings and back to their home planet in one scenic trip.Before an artistic and com…
Histoire de Melody Nelson (Book)
Outside his native France, the view of Serge Gainsbourg was once of a one-hit wonder lothario. This has been slowly replaced by an awareness of how talented and innovative a songwriter he was. Gainsbourg was an eclectic, protean figure; a Dadaist, poète maudit, Pop-Artist, libertine and anti-hero. An icon and iconoclast.His masterpiece is arguably Histoire de Melody Nelson, an album suite combining many of his signature themes; sex, taboo, provocation, humour, exoticism and ultimately tragedy. C…
Paris 1919 (Book)
John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate hearings and the oil crisis, and Cale was at a crossroads. The white-hot rage of his Velvet Underground days was nearly spent; now he was living in Los Angeles, working for a record company and making music when time allowed. He needed to lay to rest some ghosts, but he couldn't do that without scaring up others. Paris 1919 was the result.I…
Suicide (Book)
New York City in the 1970s was an urban nightmare: destitute, dirty, and dangerous. As the country collectively turned its back on the Big Apple, two musical vigilantes rose out of the miasma. Armed only with amplified AC current, Suicide's Alan Vega and Marty Rev set out to save America's soul. Their weaponized noise terrorized unsuspecting audiences. Suicide could start a riot on a lack of guitar alone. Those who braved their live shows often fled in fear--or formed bands (sometimes both). Thi…
Sorrow Tears And Blood (Book)
Sorrow Tears and Blood offers a glimpse into the complicated social, cultural, and political phenomenon that is Nigeria.
Clyma Est Mort (Book)
The Dead C's Clyma est mort (1993) is the record of a live gig for one person. Tom Lax was running the Siltbreeze label in Philadelphia and had come to New Zealand to meet the artists he was releasing. He heard The Dead C at their noisy, improvised best, turning rock music on its head with a free-form style of blaring, loosely organised sound. Leading a second wave of music from Dunedin, New Zealand, The Dead C were an assault against the kind of jangly pop that had made the Dunedin Sound famous…
Saudades (Book)
The story of Afro-Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos stitches together histories of 1960s-1980s jazz, psychedelia, world music, experimentalism and post-punk. Based in Recife, Rio de Janeiro, New York City and Paris, Naná played with musicians as varied as Egberto Gismonti, Don Cherry, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Arto Lindsay, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Os Mutantes, and Milton Nascimento.This book traces the 15 years (1964-1979) leading up to Naná's …
Tropicália (Book)
This comprehensive portrait of Tropicália, exploring everything from influences and results to context and main players, demonstrates how the genre helped reinvent Brazil's cultural identity in a post-colonial world.
Sound Art
**Massive hard-cover catalogue, nearly 800 pages, big size** This milestone volume maps fifty years of artists' engagement with sound. Since the beginning of the new millennium, numerous historical and critical works have established sound art as an artistic genre in its own right, with an accepted genealogy that begins with Futurism, Dada, and Fluxus, as well as disciplinary classifications that effectively restrict artistic practice to particular tools and venues. This book, companion volume t…
Krautrock (Book)
Krautrock is not a music genre. Krautrock is a way of life. Its sonic diversity and global reach belie the common culture from where it emerged. This is a band-by-band history.
In May 1945, the Allies defeated Nazi Germany, putting an end to the European front of World War II and the Third Reich. In the immediate aftermath, German youth were tasked to create their own culture. Krautrock is this unlikely success story, as hundreds of bands-including Kraftwerk and Can-seemed to sprout overnight in…
Inside the Studio - Spaces of Electronic Music Production Berlin/Cairo (Book)
When you think of techno and electronic dance music, you first think of clubs and festivals, ecstatic dancers and enraptured DJs. But in which spaces is this music actually created? Artists' studios and writing rooms of authors and composers have long been the focus of public attention and research. The studios of DJs and electronic music producers, however, have so far remained largely hidden. They can be found in darkened basements, abandoned factories, garages, and backyards, in magnificently…