New in our Collectible catalog:

New: First collated copy of Ira Cohen’s ‘From the Divan of Petra Vogt’

From the Divan of Petra Vogt was published in 1976 in an edition of 250 by Cold Turkey Press, Rotterdam. The handsome and sought-after edition contains poems and photographs from Kathmandu by Ira Cohen and artwork by Petra Vogt. During a stay in Rotterdam in the summer of 1976 Cohen put together his edition together with publisher Gerard Bellaart. This particular copy is the first collated one, the pages still uncut and some of them hand numbered. In Bellaart’s handwriting it says 17.VI.76 first collated above the colophon. Inside is one of the double-headed eagles (not the one that was printed in the book) that Evert Roos from Amsterdam cut for the title page of the edition that summer. This one-of-a-kind copy marks the moment when From the Divan of Petra Vogt came together and the order of the pages was decided upon: a rare document that offers a glimpse of the Divan’s genesis at Schietbaanlaan, Rotterdam, now almost half a century ago.

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New from Moloko+:

Catherine Marshall & Simon Johnson – Ordinary Stupid People

“… Joan Vollmer’s memory has long been framed within the narrative of the troubled five-year common-law marriage to the writer William S. Burroughs… her accidental death at her husband’s hand is unforgettable, the most enduring event of her short life. The shooting made her life a taboo topic for those who knew her well and a subject of fascination for those who did not. But the shooting tells us nothing about the 28 years of Joan’s life that preceded it… Joan Vollmer was extraordinary. The dean of her college knew it. Burroughs knew it. We knew it, too…”

(from the introduction to the book by the authors)

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Two new tapetopia tapetopia cassettes:

A.F. Moebius – Eine Auswahl and Nontoxic – Intoxication

Frank Bretschneider (1956) was active in the subcultural scene of the GDR’s Karl-Marx-Stadt (nowadays Chemnitz). The Karl-Marx-Stadt area was a nucleus of non-conformist activities in the GDR. Away from a prescribed socialist realism, a countercultural approach unfolded here as openly as was possible within a closed-off society. Inspired by mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius, Bretschneider adopted the alias A.F. Moebius. The Möbius strip quintessentially epitomized his tinkering with tape loops and machines; the infinite loops thus created also echoed the self-referentiality of musical structures…

The East Berlin dark wave band Nontoxic was initially known as Mildernde Umstände. In 1988 the state-run artists’ agency issued an ultimatum: Name change, or no more gigs! The band continued as Nontoxic, in a squatted practice room right by the Berlin Mitte police station, which some goths had also been “introduced” to. Nontoxic gigged a lot, sharing the stage with bands such as Zorn, Herbst In Peking or the Fellini Prostitutes… In 1989, Nontoxic played at the East Berlin HdjT. Intoxication is based on a recording of this show…’

(from the tapetopia liner notes)