Bis Aufs Messer Weekly New 03 Dez 2023
Hi. Welcome to another newsletter for 2023 and the year is going to an end. It has been a difficult year with all its up and downs. So thank you for all your support and helping independent record stores to stay alive. This means a lot to us. So Thank you for this!!!
Here are our top 10 this year
Norman
Tongue Depressor - Bones For Time (Worried Songs)
Mike Majkowksi - Coast (Fragment Editions)
Ossuary - Forsaken Offerings (Darkness Shall Rise Productions)
MV & EE - Green Ark (Ramble Records)
Lise Barkas & Lisa Käuffert - Le Becat (Morc Records)
Roman Norfleet & Be Present Art Group - s/t (Mississippi Records)
Blue Lake - Sun Arcs (Tonal Union)
Ambassade - The Fool (Optimo Music)
Historically Fucked - The Mule Peasants Revolt Of 12.067 (Upset! The Rhythm)
Khanate - To Be Cruel (Sacred Bones Records)
Robert
75 Dollar Bill - Power Failures (Karlrecords)
Lewsberg - Out And About (DIY)
Loopsel - Öga For Öga (Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox / DFA)
The Necks - Travel (Northern Spy)
Tara Clerkin Trio - On The Turning Ground (World Of Echo)
Soccer Committee - ♥️/Lamb (Morc Records)
Razen - Hier L'an 4000 (Hands In The Dark Records)
Chris Dreier & Tim Löhde - MK - CT (Fang Bomb)
Natural Information Society With Ari Brown - Since Time Is Gravity (Aguirre / Eremite)
Facs - Still Life In Decay (Trouble In Mind)
We also got a few cool new releases and restocks like MYRIAM GENDRON - Not So Deep As A Well LP restock, MINOR THREAT - Out of Step Outtakes 7“ along with a couple Dischord Restocks, Restock of the new SAMUEL LP and the 7“ collection, CHI TO SHIZUKU - Je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas LP, CIVIC - New Vietnam + Singles LP, THE NECKS - Mindset LP, STEVE LACY & JOSEPH MARTIN - Coastline LP, SAD LOVERS & GIANTS – In The Breeze LP, Native Nod restock, Karate Restock, Sunny Day Real Estate restock, JOANNA BROUK - Sounds Of The Sea LP, C-CLAMP - Dream Backwards 3xLP-BOXSET,
And if you are in Berlin on DEC 17th we have a little Christmas Shopping event with Ghost Bag And Len Bluevan (of Lawns, Rope etc) will play and maybe some more surprises. We are there from 13°° until 18°°
And we also added (adding) a few more second hand LPs and 7“s to our discogs
https://www.discogs.com/seller/XMESSERX
Thank you as usual
Til then thank you for all your orders & support.
Robert & Norman
mailorder@bisaufmesser.com
www.adagio830-records.bandcamp.com
7“
COMA REGALIA / DREI AFFEN - split 7“ (back in stock - A sensational screamo split with Spain and the U.S. uniting to create a stunning collection of songs. Spain’s DREI AFFEN (members of OsoLuna) follow up their 12″EP with two more songs of punishing, screamy and crusty hardcore while the almighty COMA REGALIA offers up another three tracks of themed screamo very much in line with Funeral Diner and Orchid.) 6.00
MINOR THREAT - Out of Step Outtakes 7“ (dischord- CLEAR VINYL - In January 1983, Minor Threat went into Inner Ear Studio for the first time as a five-piece (Brian Baker had moved from bass to second guitar and Steve Hansgen was now playing bass). They had six new songs that would end up being the center piece of what became the Out of Step 12" EP. The band had also decided to re-record the song "Out of Step" with some extra language to try to clarify the lyrics, as well as "Cashing In", a tongue-in-cheek song about the DC punk scene which they had only played live once. After much debate, "Cashing In" was added as a hidden track on the original vinyl release though not listed on the cover or label. There was still blank tape on the reel, so they decided to record an instrumental with the working title, "Addams Family" and then recorded new versions of "In My Eyes" and "Filler" to hear what they sounded like with two guitars. "Addams Family" ended up being used as a coda to "Cashing In", but the other two songs were never mixed and largely forgotten for over 35 years until the multitrack tapes were taken into the studio to be digitized in 2021. Surprised by the discovery, Ian and Don Zientara mixed the two songs along with the complete take of "Addams Family". These outtakes are now being released on a 7" to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Out of Step. ) 11.00
LP
AMALIA BLOOM - Picturesque LP (dingleberry - “Picturesque” is the new album by Italian emo hardcore band Amalia Bloom, a wide-ranging work in which the band finds a new balance between melody and harsher sounds. A record dedicated to their beloved yet suffering city, an outlet with which the band gains momentum and reacts to the last two years spent in isolation. This album sees the light among the places that inspired it, trying to paint its true essence. Vicenza is a small Italian city, characterized by majestic architecture and a cumbersome history, that often suffers from its own limitations and unexpressed potential. The lyrics imagine and reconstruct the events of everyday life: on an ordinary morning, in the middle of a crossroads, a woman suddenly falls off her bike, all the present people react differently and in some ways each song focuses on a different character.) 15.00
ATOMIC FRUIT - Play Dough LP (Blending psychedelic rock, trip hop and desert blues, Atomic Fruit from Berlin defies the divide between rock and electronic music. Atomic Fruit’s debut album Play Dough is a joyful feast of contradictions. It is mysterious yet catchy, dark but playful. Samples, sound design, and ear-worm riffs. Atomic Fruit's ambient-trip-hop-psychedelic-rock blend intoxicates and mutates over time.) 25.00
CHI TO SHIZUKU - Je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas LP (An’archives - "Je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas" (I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji HIGH, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the unique, quartz-like character of Chi To Shizuku’s music is writ large, the bleak bliss of their songs carved onto twelve-inch vinyl. Perhaps the best-known member of Chi To Shizuku, at least for audiences with an ear turned to Japanese psychedelia, is drummer Takahashi Ikuro, known for his membership of almost every group worth a damn from that scene – Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te, Ché-SHIZU, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March, the list goes on. But the core of Chi To Shizuku’s music is the collaboration between vocalist, bassist and lyricist Morikawa Seiichirou, and guitarist and arranger Yamagiwa Hideki. Morikawa is a member of long- running punk/goth group Z.O.A., and has also played with YBO2, Zzzoo, and as collaborator with Takeshi and Atsuo of Boris in A/N; he’s also recently been performing with Mitsuru Tabata. Yamagiwa’s history takes in stints with Katsurei and Cock C’ Nell, and he also recently guested with la scene 裸身. All this contextual information does relatively little, though, to prepare you for the unique vibration of Chi To Shizuku’s lustrous songs. They shimmer in the same half-light, perhaps, as Shizuka and the quieter moments of LSD March, sharing a similar poise and classicism, and there’s a tenderness and wracked poetry to Morikawa’s voice that reminds of the emotional intensities both of traditional Japanese folk, and of British folk music: on “Musuu No Nemuri No Naka De Kumo Wo Tukamu”, the combination of his singing, backed with gorgeously plangent guitar, reminds of no-one so much as it does The Pentangle or Spriguns Of Tolgus. Chi To Shizuku’s love for the ballad as form gifts their music an archaic, sometimes arcane resonance, and from what you can hear on this album, it’s clear they’re in love with graceful melancholy. But this is not a folk album, by any means; it just shivers with the same eternal spirit. There are also hints of prog rock, and you can catch some passages of scratchy, distended free rock, on the extended spirit invocation of “Nanhito Hanhito”. je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas is an extraordinary album, a melancholy surprise, that reminds dedicated listeners of the seemingly bottomless well of great music to be found via the Japanese underground in its many forms. Perhaps Michel Henritzi says it best, though, in his liner notes, when he writes, “Chi To Shizuku’s music reminds us that our life is a dream that lasts only a season, and that oblivion will follow.”) 35.00
CIVIC - New Vietnam + Singles LP (ATO - CLEAR Civic’s breakthrough first EP, New Vietnam, plus a collection of early singles originally released between 2018-19, available for the first time outside of Australia. Track listing: 1. New Vietnam 2. Satellites 3. Street Machine Dream 4. Call The Doctor 5. Shackled Man 6. Burning Steel 7. Flick The Station 8. Pleasure 9. Heat 10. Needle In The Camel's Eye 11. Selling, Sucking, Blackmail, Bribes 12. Velvet Casino 13. New Vietnam [Live]) 27.00
C-CLAMP - Dream Backwards 3xLP-BOXSET (numero - Percolating in the same watery diner coffee that spawned American Football and Hum, C-Clamp shrugged on and off the ’90s slowcore and emo scenes in a hurry. Compiled here are the band’s two albums for the venerable Ohio Gold label—Longer Waves and Meander + Return, plus a third LP of singles and compilation tracks, and a meticulously annotated book stuffed with lyrics, photos, flyers, and ephemera from their all-too-brief existence. This one’s colder than a Chicago winter—better plug in that space heater.) 52.00
JOANNA BROUK - Sounds Of The Sea LP (numero - Joanna Brouk’s most ambitious recording, Sounds of the Sea is a concept album full of mystery and eroticism. An immersive world populated by pulses, swells, drones and voices, Sounds of The Sea taking us on Hindustani-tinged journey with shimmering lines executed on synths, threaded by Joanna’s vocal drones, while Celestial Lake weaves imagistic expanses from slowly evolving melodies, culminating as immersive and meditative world of its own. A conch shell bookends this journey into the deep, going down and down and down further, never reaching bottom. Drawing inspiration from various legends of mermaids and sailors, Brouk weaves circling flutes, vocals, drones and whale songs to describe a sense of unfathomable longing more clearly than words could ever express. Sounds of the Sea is a hypnotic and profound achievement by one of new age's greatest composers.) 28.00
J. ROBBINS - Un-Becoming LP (dischord - WHITE VINYL J. ROBBINS has been the guitarist/singer and primary songwriter (or pushiest collaborator) in several bands since the early ’90s, including JAWBOX, BURNING AIRLINES, CHANNELS and OFFICE OF FUTURE PLANS. He has also played bass for GOVERNMENT ISSUE and the Vic Bondi project, REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY. For the bulk of that time, he has also been active as a recording engineer/producer, working with musicians from around the world at his Baltimore-based studio, the Magpie Cage. J. started performing as a solo artist around 2010, making occasional low-key releases on Bandcamp and contributing to two benefit compilations that were released on Germany’s Arctic Rodeo Records. Un-Becoming—which came together in short bursts of activity spread out over the long stretch between 2016 and 2019—is his first full-length solo record. On 11 of the LP’s 12 songs, J. is joined by PETER MOFFETT on drums, BROOKS HARLAN on bass, and GORDON WITHERS on cello and guitar.) 23.00
JULES REIDY – Trances LP (shelter - Trances, Jules Reidy’s follow-up to the celebrated World in World (2022), takes place in between states, tracing a kind of restless movement in search of—or is it away from?—a center. The twelve tracks shift between fragment and epic, returning to familiar phrases between forays outward into uncertain expanses. Through its exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence, Trances produces a sonic world as raw, absorbing, and surprising as anything Reidy has created to date. Trances’ primary instrument is a custom hexaphonic electric guitar tuned in Just Intonation. Reidy’s combination of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, and corrugated processing push on the grammar of guitar-driven experimentalism, locating expressive heft in open-ended harmonics and the odd angles formed by overlapping elements. Chords are slowed and stretched as if to examine their resonance, then overtaken by subterranean motion. The effect is that of oceanic depth, but the rippling that passes between the compositions’ sedimentary layers often takes on a metallic edge. The addition of synthesizers, sampled 12-string guitar, field recordings, and half-submerged autotuned voice further denaturalize the compositions. Reidy’s vocal interjections—their particular linguistic content rendered inaccessible—are based on counting and self-observational techniques for bringing oneself back into the present; at times Reidy’s picking also assumes a mantra-like quality, though ultimately the flow of the composition subsumes both.There is a heavy sense of the strange throughout these songs, which bleed at their edges into a continuous, questioning whole. That Reidy’s compositions here have a tendency to engulf the listener, like a wave or a squall, can be variously comforting and disorienting. Either way, we are fortunate to follow Reidy on such a journey.) 30.00
LUCY RAILTON - Corner Dancer LP (modern love - Lucy Railton trusts in the nuance of her own creative instincts on an intensely modern, quietly radical new album, her second for Modern Love. Following her 2018 solo debut »Paradise 94’« and countless collaborations in the time since, Railton’s diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. The multi-instrumentalist further articulates her own tonal register, embracing her solo strengths and trusting the process to reveal vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure expression. On the simplest level, »Corner Dancer« is a record that revels in the momentum of creation. Through a range of approaches, Railton gradually loosens her grip and allows her identities to expose themselves; cut to the bone, sinew and spirit of music making. Reaching outside tried and tested zones, she lands at a charged space characterised by unmetered pacing and an embrace of imperfection, using cello, viella (a medieval cello), Buchla, 808, a fan, synths, horse hair whips, a hand held harp and her own voice, across 8 tracks that arc from an opening sequence of ruptured asymmetries, to something bordering the sublime on »Blush Study’« the album’s masterful closing flourish.In between, Railton invokes psychoacoustic, heady spins and repetitions, while also allowing space for live performance, a mode to which she feels most attuned, and here captured best on »Held in Paradise« (her violin debut) and »Rib Cage«.Collapsing boundaries, Railton harnesses a lifetime of formal training in order to patiently trace more ambiguous, intimate and sometimes deviant shapes, operating to a fuzzed logic that loops back to themes with an ingenious underlying dramaturgy of energies, dismantling the form from the inside out, in a way that bends through feeling, rather than design.) 30.00
THE NECKS - Mindset LP (restock - Long awaited re-issue of The Necks 2011 masterpiece. Always different, here the Necks resolutely layer polyrhythmic material to form seething blocks of sound - in two long pieces, one more stripped back to the live trio, the other featuring multiple strata of swirling Hammonds, noise-guitar and electronics. Their 16th release still resonates on its own.) 24.00
NOVERTE - Con Uno Sguardo Solo LP (dingleberry - Italian based "Noverte" take influence from USA and European bands alike to create lyrically forward heavy screamo. Tackling issues through a personal introspective lens, the band brings an emotional weight to their songs that you can feel while you listen. Bordering on emoviolence, while still holding onto a melodic through-line, this is reminiscent of many records we consider classic. FFO: Daitro, Suis La Lune, Raein, Orchid) 17.00
PALI MEURSAULT & THOMAS TILLY - Melt LP (fragments - In 2020, Pali Meursault and Thomas Tilly collaborated to create Radio Glaces, a fourteen-part sound collection featuring recordings of glaciers in the Alps and testimonies from people who have a close relationship with this environment: glaciologists, geomorphologists, hut wardens, mountaineers and high-mountain guides. As a continuation of this first project, Melt* was a series of improvised performances by the duo of sound artists, playing back the sounds and vibrations of the glaciers as they conducted a microphonic auscultation of the crevasses, rimayes and torrents of the Oisans mountain range. The outcome of a research project that began over three years ago and is still ongoing, Melt* is based on the recording of a concert at GMEA (Albi) in early 2023, and is available as a vinyl record published by Fragment Editions.) 25.00
RADURA - Effetto Della Veduta D'Insieme LP (dingleberry — "My reality is limited to a few things that no longer bring me joy for a long time, which I have been dealing with for a long time. I put them on hold for 36 minutes and at the end of listening I feel as if I had a reason to more to react, to respect myself to whom I have unjustly wished ill, despite everything. Few records make me love myself a little more when I think I don't deserve it. “Effetto della vista overall” is one of those. We're just in April but I have no doubts: record of the year." (Sound Impact)) 15.00
REGARDING AMBIGUITY - Abyss LP (dingleberry - After one full length and a split 7" this is the second album by this danish Screamo band. ) 15.00
SAD LOVERS & GIANTS – In The Breeze LP (lantern - Re-issue for the iconic post-punk band coming all the way from Watford. The album showcases a collection of unreleased recordings – mostly conceived between 1981 and 1983 – and it is a right companion to their two studio masterpiece: "Epic Garden Music" and "Feeding The Flames“.) 26.00
SAMUEL S.C. - High Places LP (ORG - New album from the 90's melodic punk band formerly known as Samuel. Recorded at Ivakota in Washington, DC, released in early 2023. Clear & black swirl vinyl.) 26.00
SAMUEL S.C. - 94-95 LP (ORG - Red & black swirl vinyl. 94-95 anthologizes the 7 songs from the EP and 7"s released by Art Monk Construction and Simba Records in the mid-nineties. Remixed from the original analog masters. ) 26.00
SG - For Lovers Only / Rain Suite LP (faitiche - SG is none other than Andrew Pekler returning to faitiche with an album of sentimental guitar escapism. For Lovers Only / Rain Suite features ten tracks made using only an electric guitar and a handful of effects pedals (plus some additional recordings of rain) and finds Pekler once again attempting to reconicile his tendencies towards kitsch, experimentation and minimalism.) 26.00
STEVE LACY & JOSEPH MARTIN - Coastline LP (eargong - Recorded Live in Italy in October 1985 and mastered directly from the old dusty cassette, here's a previously unheard Steve Lacy recording from a rare duo appearance with pianist Martin Joseph, a little known yet fascinating British musician who had worked with Harry Beckett, John Surman, Ian Carr, Tubby Hayes among others, and who later became a regular presence on the Rome mid 70's creative Jazz scene. This recording gives us an opportunity to listen to the soprano sax giant in a repertoire not frequently found on his other duo recordings with pianists. The set list includes some of Lacy's finest compositions like "Prospectus", "Flakes" and "Coastline", plus Thelonious Monk's classic "Bemsha Swing" a tribute to Monk's visionary mastery where Joseph's contrapuntal response to Lacy's angular lines leads the music towards a multidimensional space, a quality to be found throughout the whole album, This is a wonderful discovery! and a significant addition to Lacy's discography and legacy. Contains printed inner sleeve with archival photos and extensive liner notes by two Italian soprano saxophone specialists Roberto Ottaviano and Eugenio Colombo, and pianist Martin Joseph himself.) 24.00
ZMAR - Napořád LP (dingleberry - Blackened emotive hardcore from the Czech Republic. Amazing stuff!) 17.00
