Black Sweat Records

17/07/2024

Roberto Laneri - Magister Perotinus Meets The Jedi Masters LP

Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia) further radicalizes his formal research path in the field of harmonic singing, with a highly rigorous compositional practice of scores and rhythmic placement of overtones. At the dawn of Western counterpoint and the birth of polyphony, he imagines as in a dream the famous Magister Perotinus (XII century) in ecstatic contact with higher entities (Jedi Masters) who would introduce him to those secrets of the vocal art, further developed in later centuries. Among the mysteries of subtle acoustic phenomena such as resonance, phasing and interference, the criterion of harmonic convergence (i.e. the convergence of different fundamentals on common overtones) emerges as a powerful compositional tool. The strength of this music lies in the vibrational power of sound, in an expanded archetypal liturgy, where lights and shadows of ancient Gothic cathedrals infinitely amplify the imaginative transformation of the real, as in the vesica piscis-shaped crevice of Noura Tafeche's sensational cover.

16/07/2024

Zia Mohiuddin Dagar & Zia Fariduddin Dagar - Raag Malkauns and Ragini Miyan Ki Todi - Bombay 1968 (3LP) photos.

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.

27/06/2024

ROBERTO LANERI - MAGISTER PEROTINUS MEETS THE JEDI MASTERS (LP/CD) BS084

Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia) further radicalizes his formal research path in the field of harmonic singing, with a highly rigorous compositional practice of scores and rhythmic placement of overtones. At the dawn of Western counterpoint and the birth of polyphony, he imagines as in a dream the famous Magister Perotinus (XII century) in ecstatic contact with higher entities (Jedi Masters) who would introduce him to those secrets of the vocal art, further developed in later centuries. Among the mysteries of subtle acoustic phenomena such as resonance, phasing and interference, the criterion of harmonic convergence (i.e. the convergence of different fundamentals on common overtones) emerges as a powerful compositional tool. The strength of this music lies in the vibrational power of sound, in an expanded archetypal liturgy, where lights and shadows of ancient Gothic cathedrals infinitely amplify the imaginative transformation of the real, as in the vesica piscis-shaped crevice of Noura Tafeche's sensational cover.

26/06/2024

OUT NOW! ZIA MOHIUDDIN DAGAR & ZIA FARIDUDDIN DAGAR - RAAG MALKAUNS & RAGINI MIYAN KI TODI (3LP) BS087

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/zia-mohiuddin-dagar-zia-fariduddin-dagar-raag-malkauns-ragini-miyan-ki-todi-bombay-1968/

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.

22/05/2024

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/lay-llamas-sunburned-dreamlike-safari/

A floating drift toward a mysterious reality, between Nature and Cosmos, poised between sleep and wakefulness, temporal co-presences and impossible spatial ubiquities. In this phantasmagorical saga, inspired by TV science-fiction as well as 60s and 70s horror movies, Nicola Giunta/Lay Llamas creates a miraculous balance between original inserts and retrievals of freely chosen fragments from old audio documentaries on vinyl, perfecting the art of sound collage in an absolutely psychedelic way. Nonlinear dream textures become labyrinths of sudden openings, empty rooms, interstellar platforms, narrating voices from other worlds or ghostly churches from beyond the grave. A piercing electronica of cosmic synths, dense with the mists and dusts of distant times, past and future at the same time, where lysergic percussions merge with echoes of flutes vibrating in endless tropical forests and natures. Until the final awakening, in the reality of the first light of dawn. Originally released on cassette by Pond.

21/05/2024

Lay Llamas is a project founded and ran by sicilian composer and graphic artist Nicola Giunta since 2012. A ‘project’, not a band, but an open project. Open to always changing sonic worlds, escapist exoticism, across past and future to evolving into something different every time. Open to kindred spirits and lovely humans that joined the project along the way

15/05/2024

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/addict-ameba-caosmosi/

After their debut album the most multifaceted and unpredictable musical collective in Italy – Addict Ameba – come back with their sophomore album, “Caosmosi”. Faithful to the aim of bringing together different paths, traditions and horizons in their music, the band moves between desert-blues and afrobeat landscapes, with latin rock rides and ethio-jazz parentheses. The vision of the album is further enriched by two absolutely valuable features: Joshua Idehen, Anglo-Nigerian poet and singer and pen of Sons Of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, is the author and lead voice in “Look At Us”, a poem – or perhaps it would be more correct to say a prayer – an invitation to be protagonists and change this time, before it changes us; Rabii Brahim, Tunisian actor and musician, who in “Ya Bled” gives birth to a love song for his land, telling the nostalgia and disorientation of migrant, even when he returns to his homeland. To approach listening to this album you should project that state of melancholy euphoria that you would experience when taking part in the last great party before the disappearance of the human race… Caosmosi!

14/05/2024

Addict Ameba come back with their sophomore album, “Caosmosi”... from the Milanese neighborhood of Casoretto, with eyes and hearts open to the rest of the world, Addict Ameba - which over the years have hosted almost twenty musicians and currently have eleven - start again from their base at Guscio Studio, guided by Lorenz, artistic producer of the album and pirate by Al Doum & the Faryds.

08/05/2024

Walter Maioli - Caverne Sonore (LP/CD) pictures

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/walter-maioli-caverne-sonore/

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

07/05/2024

Walter Maioli (born 1950 in Milan) is an Italian researcher, paleorganologist, poly-instrumentalist and composer. Specialized in experimental archaeology and music, in particular that of archaic civilization. He has been researching the music of antiquity and prehistory for more than thirty-five years. Always interested in the music of the Mediterranean, he has gone on journeys to discover the folkloristic Italian and Mediterranean traditions learning the Arabic, African, Oriental, and European music since the beginning of the seventies.

12/04/2024

OUT NOW: LAY LLAMAS - SUNBURNED DREAMLIKE SAFARI (BS083) LP

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/lay-llamas-sunburned-dreamlike-safari/

A floating drift toward a mysterious reality, between Nature and Cosmos, poised between sleep and wakefulness, temporal co-presences and impossible spatial ubiquities. In this phantasmagorical saga, inspired by TV science-fiction as well as 60s and 70s horror movies, Nicola Giunta/Lay Llamas creates a miraculous balance between original inserts and retrievals of freely chosen fragments from old audio documentaries on vinyl, perfecting the art of sound collage in an absolutely psychedelic way. Nonlinear dream textures become labyrinths of sudden openings, empty rooms, interstellar platforms, narrating voices from other worlds or ghostly churches from beyond the grave. A piercing electronica of cosmic synths, dense with the mists and dusts of distant times, past and future at the same time, where lysergic percussions merge with echoes of flutes vibrating in endless tropical forests and natures. Until the final awakening, in the reality of the first light of dawn. Originally released on cassette by Miracle Pond.

11/04/2024

OUT NOW! WALTER MAIOLI - CAVERNE SONORE (LP/CD) BS069

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/walter-maioli-caverne-sonore/

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

10/04/2024

PRE-ORDER NOW! ADDICT AMEBA - CAOSMOSI (BS085) LP

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/addict-ameba-caosmosi/

After their debut album the most multifaceted and unpredictable musical collective in Italy – Addict Ameba – come back with their sophomore album, “Caosmosi”. Faithful to the aim of bringing together different paths, traditions and horizons in their music, the band moves between desert-blues and afrobeat landscapes, with latin rock rides and ethio-jazz parentheses. The vision of the album is further enriched by two absolutely valuable features: Joshua Idehen, Anglo-Nigerian poet and singer and pen of Sons Of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, is the author and lead voice in “Look At Us”, a poem – or perhaps it would be more correct to say a prayer – an invitation to be protagonists and change this time, before it changes us; Rabii Brahim, Tunisian actor and musician, who in "Ya Bled" gives birth to a love song for his land, telling the nostalgia and disorientation of migrant, even when he returns to his homeland. To approach listening to this album you should project that state of melancholy euphoria that you would experience when taking part in the last great party before the disappearance of the human race... Caosmosi! Co-produced with La Tempesta

08/04/2024

Something new on the launch pad soon!

04/02/2024

Here a mix I did for Battiti (Radio 3) with some of my favourite records ever! Thanks to Chiara Colli and Pino Saulo

Una notte costruita attorno al mixtape realizzato per noi da Dome, al secolo Davide Domenichini, componente della formazione Al Doum & The Faryds e produttore discografico alla testa della Black Sweat Records.
Un viaggio sonoro che si apre con le meditazioni pianistiche di Emahoy Tsegue Mariam Guebru e si chiude con le melodie della The Incredible String Band. In mezzo c’è spazio per il minimalismo e l’elettronica di Mort Garson e di Roberto Cacciapaglia, riproposizioni di album visionari degli anni ‘70 come quelli a nome del collettivo italiano Living Music o dei britannici Cosmic Eye o ancora Blo, Phil Cohran e Jeanne Lee, non possono infine mancare numi tutelari come Can, Moondog e Jon Hassell…

23/11/2023

Klaus Wiese - Baraka LP special mirroring/olographic cover.

16/11/2023

https://blacksweat.bandcamp.com/album/baraka

In 1970 Klaus Wiese (1942) was introduced to music by his first teacher, a Qalandaar sheik named Fazal Innayaat Khan. In 1972 he joins the Munich-based group Popol Vuh, as a special assistant of Florian Fricke, who credited him as a Popol Vuh member (on tamboura) on the cover of the famous 1973 Lp “Hosianna Mantra”, the third Lp of the group (but he never played a single note, all the tamboura parts being played by Florian Fricke himself). He traveled extensively through Persia, Afghanistan and India during the 70s and the 80s, and studied with many Sufi teachers of different orders. He plays the Himalayan singing bowls with a revolutionary technique that allows long, sustained and spaced-out tones, and his main focus is to create resonances, vibrations and deep overtones; his music has a timeless quality and knows the power of silence. It should be heard at a low volume, as a background for meditation activities or as a powerful healing tool.

15/11/2023

https://blacksweat.bandcamp.com/album/superlike

Giovanni Di Domenico, pianist, was born in Rome on the 20th July 1977. Following his father’s consecutive assignments as a civil engineer he actually lived out his first decade in Africa – until he was five in Libya, from then until his eight anniversary in the Cameroons and until ten in Algeria. Musically self-taught until the age of 24, when he finally enrolled in Royal Conservatory in Den Haag, Holland (Koninklijke Conservatorium, 2001-2006) – majoring in ‘jazz piano’. He aspired to develop an an encyclopedic technique, with rhythm, harmony and tone informed by non-western traditions yet equally sensitive to Debussy’s “Préludes”, Luciano Berio’s “Sequenzas”, to the ‘ambi-ideation’ heard in Borah Bergman’s Soul Note recordings, Cecil Taylor’s polissemic density, Paul Bley’s bruised transparency and of course, the most radical manifestations stemming from the underworld of pop music, invariably tied together by his own original praxis. He currently lives in Brussels.

08/11/2023

KLAUS WIESE - BARAKA (LP)

Music and shop: https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/klaus-wiese-baraka/

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh’s Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.

07/11/2023

GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO - SUPERLIKE (LP)

Music and shop: https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/giovanni-di-domenico-superlike/

Giovanni Di Domenico has now achieved a personal and unmistakable style within contemporary minimalism. His music always expresses a state of concentration, of recollection and contemplation toward a focal node. Repetition is experienced as alchemical state, as truth contained in the small nuances of change, in a crescendo that never reaches a climax. The atmosphere is intuition and is made up of a few compositional touches. To compose is to make synthesis, to unearth purity, simplicity and exactness. This new work for solo piano is almost an imaginary novel…the notes seem to tell of deserted streets, lonely walks in the night or runs down stairs. In this sense the musician is the writer of silence and the fleeting moment. And so, amid slow chords like Chopin or Satie, moods oscillate between brio and allegro, evoking the lightness of love, greater sadness and melancholy, as well as more restless and agitated ostinatos, the product of a more cathartic worldview.

17/10/2023

Intervista su Il Manifesto, grazie a Guido Festinese

(Visioni) Storia di un’etichetta milanese che scova gemme nascoste tra jazz, art rock e colonne sonore. La scommessa fuori da logiche commerciali di ‘Dome’, il suo fondatore. Di Guido Festinese

11/09/2023

The Fabulous Trickster
A beautiful documentary about Antonio Infantino (Sub ENG)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa060S-gfpg

05/09/2023

Photos: Antonio Infantino ed il Gruppo di Tricarico LP / CD

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/antonio-infantino-ed-il-gruppo-di-tricarico-i-tarantolati/

In the late 1960s, Antonio Infantino linked his name to the Beat world and to italian performance and gestural music circles (Bussotti, Chiari, Curran). A poet and singer, a tireless devotee of the musical traditions of Southern Italy, he focuses his research mainly on the mysterious phenomenon of Tarantismo, a cultural syndrome of hysterical type found in the Mediterranean air and made famous by the studies of Ernesto De Martino. With his group, Infantino twists and reinvents the traditional repertoire of Basilicata, creating an entirely new and original songbook. The music reflects the states of Trance induced by the bite of the spider tarantula, with obsessive and hypnotic rhythms characteristic of the incandescent blood of the peasant world. A deep and universal human sound, it also takes its cues from Dylan’s folk revolution and the frenetic drums of North Africa.

31/08/2023

Photos: Folk Magic Band LP / CD

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/folk-magic-band-folk-magic-band/

Folk Magic Band represents one of the most interesting and original, yet lesser-known experiences of the italian jazz scene of the 1970s. In the legendary alternative environment of the Folk Studio in Rome, an open 18-members lineup is inspired by the free jazz of its time, a music that encompasses the whole world and its polychromy of sound. The echo seems to resonate the pan-ethnic motifs of Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society, but also the spiritual jazz of Pharoas Sanders and the orchestrations of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The textures chase a chinese melody, ignite with african scents and south american jungles, flow into fusion violin drifts a la Archie Shepp’s Attic Blues or Mingus-like orchestral sections. The fascination of this collective affair still strikes for its playful and ironic nature, still impressing for its strength and willingness to open and influence new directions.

12/07/2023

OUT NOW! FOLK MAGIC BAND - ST (LP/CD)

music and shop: https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/folk-magic-band-folk-magic-band/

Folk Magic Band represents one of the most interesting and original, yet lesser-known experiences of the italian jazz scene of the 1970s. In the legendary alternative environment of the Folk Studio in Rome, an open 18-members lineup is inspired by the free jazz of its time, a music that encompasses the whole world and its polychromy of sound. The echo seems to resonate the pan-ethnic motifs of Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society, but also the spiritual jazz of Pharoas Sanders and the orchestrations of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The textures chase a chinese melody, ignite with african scents and south american jungles, flow into fusion violin drifts a la Archie Shepp's Attic Blues or Mingus-like orchestral sections. The fascination of this collective affair still strikes for its playful and ironic nature, still impressing for its strength and willingness to open and influence new directions.

11/07/2023

OUT NOW! ANTONIO INFANTINO ED IL GRUPPO DI TRICARICO - I TARANTOLATI (LP/CD)

MUSIC AND SHOP: https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/antonio-infantino-ed-il-gruppo-di-tricarico-i-tarantolati/

In the late 1960s, Antonio Infantino linked his name to the Beat world and to italian performance and gestural music circles (Bussotti, Chiari, Curran). A poet and singer, a tireless devotee of the musical traditions of Southern Italy, he focuses his research mainly on the mysterious phenomenon of Tarantismo, a cultural syndrome of hysterical type found in the Mediterranean air and made famous by the studies of Ernesto De Martino. With his group, Infantino twists and reinvents the traditional repertoire of Basilicata, creating an entirely new and original songbook. The music reflects the states of Trance induced by the bite of the spider tarantula, with obsessive and hypnotic rhythms characteristic of the incandescent blood of the peasant world. A deep and universal human sound, it also takes its cues from Dylan's folk revolution and the frenetic drums of North Africa.

17/05/2023

PHOTOS Riccardo Sinigaglia & Mario De Leo - Lettera Cosmica LP

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/r-sinigaglia-m-de-leo-lettera-cosmica/

Since the 1970s Mario De Leo works as a musician and visual artist. His mechanical paintings are hybrid works that reveal the cosmic spiritualism hidden in the meanders of electronics. With Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders) De Leo consolidates an artistic and human partnership with Lettera Cosmica, a work unpublished to date, produced and recorded in 1981. In a wacky electronic vision of the succession of time, the tracks trace the four seasons in a fine process of analog loops, prepared tapes of strings and piano, time and pitch shifts, filtering with Synthi Ems and Teac 3340 4-track recorder. On this seemingly cold palette, De Leo deploys his own personal Mediterranean fingerpicking, with vocal timbres peculiar to the music of the South of Italy, but no longer circumscribed to the origins of his Pugliese regionalism, as much as to an expressive range seasoned also with irony and avant-garde.The sound writing harmonizes with the evocative cover, in which emerges a warmest human note of “technological peasant”.

13/05/2023

🗓 2,3 e 4 giugno
🥚 Festival dell'Uovo Cosmico da CasciNet
3 giorni di musica e performance.
Prodotto insieme a Chullu Agency
In collaborazione con .
Artwork di

03/05/2023

RICCARDO SINIGAGLIA & MARIO DE LEO - LETTERA COSMICA (LP)

music and shop: https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/r-sinigaglia-m-de-leo-lettera-cosmica/

Since the 1970s Mario De Leo works as a musician and visual artist. His mechanical paintings are hybrid works that reveal the cosmic spiritualism hidden in the meanders of electronics. With Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders) De Leo consolidates an artistic and human partnership with Lettera Cosmica, a work unpublished to date, produced and recorded in 1981. In a wacky electronic vision of the succession of time, the tracks trace the four seasons in a fine process of analog loops, prepared tapes of strings and piano, time and pitch shifts, filtering with Synthi Ems and Teac 3340 4-track recorder. On this seemingly cold palette, De Leo deploys his own personal Mediterranean fingerpicking, with vocal timbres peculiar to the music of the South of Italy, but no longer circumscribed to the origins of his Pugliese regionalism, as much as to an expressive range seasoned also with irony and avant-garde.The sound writing harmonizes with the evocative cover, in which emerges a warmest human note of “technological peasant”.

28/02/2023

Langendorf United - Yeahno Yowouw Land 2LP pictures

https://www.blacksweatrecords.com/prodotto/langendorf-united-yeahno-yowouw-land/