Bis Aufs Messer Weekly News 02/04 2021
hi. Welcome to another newsletter for April. A couple new records arrived like the ADULT BOOKS - Grecian Urn LP, GO LAMBORGHINI GO - low LP, COOL GHOULS - At George's Zoo LP, LUCA YUPANQUI - Sounds Of The Unborn LP, WILL GUTHRIE & JAMES RUSHFORD - Real Real World LP, ERAI - Only Future LP, NIKOLAIENKO - Rings LP, LAEL NEALE - Acquainted With Night LP, PHOEBE BRIDGERS restocks, GODSPEED restocks, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE restock, ROSE CITY BAND - s/t LP restock, MATS ERLANDSSON - 4-Track Guitar Music DLP, MASON LINDAHL restock and more
We also got a few ADAGIO830 returns like a handful copies of the COLD LEATHER LP, two copies of the GHOST BAG & TINE FETZ LP etc …
Also a bunch of stuff is on its way like more Mount Eerie restocks, EXEK LP on castle face, HUM DLP, PAINTED SHRINES LP, WOODS - reflections … LP, Loren Connors & David Grubbs - Arborvitae LP, new RYLEY WALKER LP and more. Daily updates at the webstore
Thank you for your support in those difficult times
Norman & Robert
www.adagio830-records.bandcamp.com
LP
ADULT BOOKS - Grecian Urn LP (Adult Books is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based writer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Winfrey. With the help of childhood friends Sina Salessi (drums) and Alex Galindo (guitar/synth), Winfrey crafts lyric-driven dark pop gems that recall the hook-heavy guitar work of Johnny Marr, the just-below-the-collar angst of Mission of Burma, and the doomsday bellow of early Echo and the Bunnymen. After a well-received string of bedroom demos and cassettes, Adult Books released their first full-length album, Running from the Blows , in 2016, trading in their previous home-recorded sounds for a cleaned-up act that allowed Winfrey's pop savvy and understated lyrical wit to shine through. Two years of heavy touring followed, after which Winfrey found himself both burned out and uninspired by the business of music.) 23.00
BEATRIZ FERREYRA & NATASHA BARRETT - Souvenirs cachés / Innermost LP (It would be hard to find a better-suited combination of contemporary acousmatica on one record. Beatriz Ferreyra and Natasha Barrett are known for their intense exploration of the movement of sounds through space. Ferreyra has been at the cutting edge of developments in acousmatic music and sound morphology since she joined Pierre Schaeffer’s small team of researchers in his tape experiments at the GRM Paris studios in 1963. She continues to compose and perform internationally. Schaeffer’s concept of ‘allure’ (the unique quality of any sound according to how it behaves) features as an influence in Barrett’s development of the concept of the ‘gait’ of her sounds, identified by how they move, change shape and occupy space rather than by their source. Her multi-dimensional installations and concerts have featured in museums and festivals globally since the 1990s. Ferreyra and Barrett share an interest in musique concrète over pure electronics. Ferreyra prefers the ‘aliveness’ of natural or environmental sound recordings, and Barrett talks of ‘hovering in that point between something from the real-world and the totally abstract.’ Both composers focus on recreating the most natural listening experience possible during performance. For Barrett, this is a question of using higher order ambisonics (the encoding or recording of spatial information which is then decoded across multi-loudspeaker configurations). For Ferreyra, it is a question of playing her stereo recordings live from the mixing console across eight or more loudspeakers depending on the space. ) 26.00
COOL GHOULS - At George's Zoo LP (Cool Ghouls - a band fledged in San Francisco on house shows, minimum wage jobs, BBQ's in Golden Gate Park and the romance of a city’s psychedelic history turns 10 this year. What better a decennial celebration than the release of their fourth album, At George's Zoo! How did San Francisco's fab four arrive at George's Zoo? The teenage friendship of complimentary spirits Pat McDonald (Guitar/Vox) and Pat Thomas (Bass/Vox) serves as square one. The Patricks were munching on Eggo-waffle-sandwiches and downing warm Taaka in suburban Benicia years before McDonald would hear George Clinton address his fans as "Cool Ghouls". The boys played their debut gig as Cool Ghouls at San Francisco's legendary The Stud in 2011, but there's no doubt the musical moment cementing the band's trajectory was much earlier at the 18th birthday party for boy-wonder Ryan Wong (Guitar/Vox) - at the Wong household. You might remember the Ghouls' earliest days... McDonald’s hair hung luxuriously past his waist, Thomas dreamt of no longer having to crash on friends' couches to call SF home and Wong looked forward to turning 21. Cool Ghouls' Pete Best, Cody Voorhees, thrashed wildly - but briefly - on the drums and Alex Fleshman (Drums), who still claims he's not really "a drummer", turned out to be a really good drummer. Thomas would sleep pee on tour. Those were golden days! Flash forward to today and everything is up in flames. No shows, parties or bars. Cool people are streaming out of SF. It's been 2 years since the last time Cool Ghouls have even played. The STUD is gone, The Eagle Tavern is for sale and The Hemlock has been demolished for condos. Your boss is an app. Fascism is no-knocking down the door. There's a pandemic. Fortunately for us, the ghouls got an album in before it all went to shit, and they made it count. At George's Zoo includes 15 of the 27 tunes they managed to eke out while simultaneously working through major life moves. It was a 5-month, all out, final sprint down the homestretch (to Ryan's moving day) with affable engineer Robby Joseph, at his makeshift garage studio in the Outer Sunset (pictured on the cover). Instead of recording the entire album over a few consecutive days - like they'd done with Tim Cohen, Sonny Smith and Kelley Stoltz for the first three LPs - the band took it slow by working through a few songs each weekend after rehearsing them the week before. Robby would cue up the tape, McDonald would throw some steaks on the grill and they'd get to work - much to the neighbor, George's, chagrin. These guys have a real commitment to elevating as songwriters, musicians and ensemble players. It's always been for the music with Cool Ghouls and this long-awaited self-produced outing is a track by track display of the ground they've covered and heights they can achieve. Their vocals and trademark harmonies are front and center and out-of-control-good. Ryan's guitar solos are incredible. The horns by Danny Brown (sax) and Andrew Stephens (trumpet) hit in all the right places. Maestro, Henry Baker (Pat Thomas Band / Tino Drima), plays keys throughout. There's even a mesmerizing string section ("Land Song") by sonic polyglot, Dylan Edrich. ) 25.00
ERAI - Only Future LP (Life is a funny - With most of the band members being in their 40s, the band itself considers their music a nod to 90s emotive hardcore and 90s diy attitude, embracing open-mindedness, positivity, communal spirit and fun. After a rather melancholic and regretful look at what’s now over (“Before We Were Wise And Unhappy”), the new EP centers around the idea of allowing oneself an undimmed look towards all that has not yet happened. Recorded in August 2020 at Tonmeisterei Oldenburg with Roland Wiegner in the most intense heat (middle-European speaking here), the songs draw minor influence from mid90s bands on Gravity Records, Indian Summer, Policy of 3, Chino Horde and add some more recent post-hardcore vibes (aka guitar delay).) 14.00
GO LAMBORGHINI GO - low LP (mangel - Go Lamborghini Go is a 6 piece band from Berlin and Leipzig.What started spontaneously as a stand-in for a missing band, grew into a improv-band with more or less fixed line-up.Logically, this record is also all-improvised, only vocals were added afterwards.Recorded by Telio Garfive at Funkhaus Berlin Additional Recordings at Allee der Kosmonauten Berlin - Mix and Master by Alexander Günther at Studio Tutti in Leipzig Artwork by Lisa Hansemann (uncool1111) Cover printed by Studio Goof) 14.00
GUIDED BY VOICES - Under the Bushes Under the Stars DLP (matador - Under the Bushes Under the Stars is the ninth Guided by Voices album overall, and the last until 2012's Let's Go Eat the Factory[6] to feature the "classic" lineup including Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, and Kevin Fennell in addition to leader Robert Pollard. The album is noted as Guided by Voices' first stab at professionalism, being recorded in 24 track studios rather than their customary 4 track. Sessions for the album were reportedly arduous, spread as they were across at least four studios and as many sets of producers, and many titles and configurations were vetted before a final sequence was reached. ) 26.00
LAEL NEALE - Acquainted With Night LP (sub pop - First pressing on limited-edition WHITE VINYL. It is the simple thing that is so hard to do. This is the paradox that musician Lael Neale has lived within throughout her development as an artist. It is the reason she became enthralled with poetry. Poems are a distillation. Lael says, "this challenge to winnow away what is unessential is the most maddening and, ultimately, rewarding part of writing a song." Lael's new album Acquainted With Night is a testament to this poetic devotion. Stripped of any extraneous word or sound, the songs are lit by Lael's crystalline voice which lays on a lush bed of Omnichord. The collection touches on themes that have been thread into her work for years: isolation, mortality, yearning, and reaching ever toward the transcendent experience. Lael grew up on a farm in rural Virginia, but for nearly 10 years called Los Angeles home. Those years were spent developing her songwriting and performing in venues across the city, but the right way to record the songs proved more elusive. She says, "Every time I reached the end of recording, I felt the songs had been stripped of their vitality in the process of layering drums, bass, guitar, violin, and organ over them. They felt weighed down." In a moment of illumination the solution presented itself: do the simple thing. ) 21.00
LUCA YUPANQUI - Sounds Of The Unborn LP (sacred bones - Luca Yupanqui was not yet born when she recorded her debut album. The music on the aptly titled Sounds of the Unborn is the expression of life in its cosmic state — pre-mind, pre-speculation, pre-influence, and pre-human. It is the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb, the expression of a soul that hasn’t yet seen the light of day nor taken a single breath of air. It is a message that comes from a different realm, a sublayer of our existence. Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology, which translated Luca’s in utero movements into sound. With the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee Scratch Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé, Luca’s prenatal essence was captured in audio. They designed a ritual, a kind of joint meditation for the three of them, with the MIDI devices hooked to Elizabeth’s stomach, transcribing its vibrations into Iván’s synthesizers. They let the free-form meditations flow without much interference, just falling deeper into trance and feeling the unity. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge. Elizabeth and Iván then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, respecting the sounds as they were produced, trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form. This cosmic soul summoning created new sounds, striking into uncharted territory for Elizabeth and Iván as musicians. A new language was being created, a new form of communication. It was a music without intellect or intentionality behind it, with no preconception or attempt to create any specific sound or melody. Every note on Sounds of the Unborn occurred naturally. It is human nature to wonder what life is like inside another human being’s consciousness. How does it feel? What does it sound like? All these questions became stronger and more important to Elizabeth and Iván while they were waiting for Luca to come into the world. At a certain point the questions turned into, What would she say if she could speak? How would she react to the outer world? And ultimately, What kind of music would she play if she was able to? This album is an attempt to answer those questions. Elizabeth and Iván mixed the album in 2020. Luca, now an infant, sat in the studio with them while they worked. Her awareness of what was happening was astounding. She would open her eyes wide and stare at her parents, seemingly recognizing her own sounds from the womb, knowing that they were revisiting those rituals that made them come together as one. Those mixing sessions were technically the first time Luca had heard her own music, but her reaction made it clear that that wasn’t really the case — she had already lived it. ) 24.00
MASON LINDHAL - Lissing Rosy In The Rain LP (tompkin square - Mason Lindahl is a guitarist and composer originally from Northern California residing in New York City. Growing up in folk and country music, originally learning guitar from his father at a young age. 'Kissing Rosy in the Rain' was recorded with long time friends Jay Pellici (Dilute, 31 Knots, Natural Dreamers) and Robby Moncrieff ... and a bit in Brooklyn with Ben Greenberg (Uniform/ Hubble).) 26.00
MATS ERLANDSSON - 4-Track Guitar Music DLP (4-Track Guitar Music is the unassuming title of a cassette by Swedish composer Mats Erlandsson, which was originally released on Kali Maloneʼs and Maria W. Hornʼs XKatedral label in 2018. Composed using only, as the album title implies, a 4-track tape deck and an electric guitar, the music was later modified on the computer and re-amplified in the machine hall of Ställbergs Gruva, a disbanded Swedish iron mine. The music is primarily composed using melodic motifs and canonical structures in which a set of pitches are transposed in octaves and delayed, creating an ever-evolving cyclical polyphony. Contrary to the albumʼs modest title, the music is a tour-de-force of exuberance and stoic catharsis, continuously bordering on a sense of ecstatic serenity, sincere contemplation and restraint. Now Vaagner is proud to present the work on vinyl for the first time via a fully remastered reissue of 4-Track Guitar Music, with the Double LP including a bonus track titled "Cellar" by Mats Erlandsson which was not included on the original release. ) 27.00
NICK CAVE - Idiot Prayer (Nick Cave Alone At Alexandra Palace) DLP (Double vinyl LP pressing. Includes digital download. 2020 live release. Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace is a concert film and live album by musician Nick Cave. It was filmed by cinematographer Robbie Ryan and features Cave performing solo on piano at Alexandra Palace in London. Idiot Prayer serves as the final film in a trilogy-along with 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) and One More Time with Feeling (2016)-and was described by Cave as "it's luminous and heartfelt climax.“) 36.00
NIKOLAIENKO - Rings LP (Faitiche - Fortunately for us, Dmytro Nikolaienko agreed to open up the jewellery boxes of his tape-loop archive for his debut album on Faitiche. What came to light was a collection of dreamy glittering gems, masterfully presented using the compositional possibilities of analogue tape machines. Some may consider a tape machine to be limited as a musical instrument, but Rings makes a convincing case with its sure-handed use of the available parameters – moving tape over the tape head mechanically and manually, cutting loops, manipulating timbre and creating noise by means of saturation. The results are eleven blurred, repetitive, rhythmic patterns that can be understood as an intervention against digital precision, as mechanical irregularities and background noise become musical events. For those familiar with Nikolaienko’s work, his nostalgic approach here will come as no surprise: born in Ukraine and now based in Estonia, he has chosen a historical medium (that has been enjoying a renaissance for some years now) to record historical-sounding sequences. The way he manages his own back catalogue is similarly archival, documenting the chronology of his tape loops in such a way as to leave no doubt as to their advanced age. And then there are his two wonderful labels Muscut and Shukai, the latter being an archival project releasing electroacoustic obscurities from the Soviet past.) 22.00
SENYAWA - Alkisah Remix LP (Alkisah REMIXED is the album curated by Les Ateliers Claus and Kiosk radio (both based in Brussels) and is created with the stems of the Alkisah album by Indonesian duo Senyawa. Alkisah is co-released by a multitude of independent record labels from all over the globe each and to extend this collaboration we decided to involve our musical family. Six artists were invited to tell ‘Alkisah’ stories into different possibilities and produce unique speculative works. This remix LP brings a variety of musical genres and shines a different and surprising light on Senyawa’s compositional works. Going from a musique-concrète approach, towards dub and dance floor bangers highlighting the timelessness of Senyawa their music.Remixes are delivered by Sugai Ken (jap), Celine Gillain (b), Sagat (b), Tolouse Low Trax (ger), Dntel (usa), Front de Cadeaux (it/b)) 22.00
TRIOSK MEETS JAN JELINEK - '1+3+1' LP (fetiche - A long-lost vinyl album is back in stock: for the last 18 years, 1+3+1 by Triosk meets Jan Jelinek, originally released in 2003 on ~scape, existed only as a digital download. Now the remastered album is available again on vinyl. What the press said about 1+3+1 back in 2003: “Hence the album's titled 1+3+1 – it’s a reference to how it was made. Jan Jelinek sent us stuff, then we did stuff, then he added the final touches. He did a little bit more editing and production and mixed and mastered it in Berlin.” Interview Laurence Pike, Jazzgroove “1+3+1 is not minimalist jazz; it is loop-based jazz, influenced and produced by a minimalist composer, and then given to a jazz trio with post-rock tendencies.” Pitchfork) 22.00
WILL GUTHRIE & JAMES RUSHFORD - Real Real World LP (Real Real World is the first collaborative effort from Nantes-based Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie and Australian keyboardist/composer James Rushford. Primarily recorded in a fluid, spontaneous studio session in Nantes, with overdubs added later in Melbourne and Nantes, Real Real World presents five spacious, unhurried pieces that inhabit a unique sound world characterised by wheezing, half-voiced organ chords, chiming metal percussion, and eruptions of small sounds. Beginning with the eerily beautiful, shakuhachi-esque sound of Rushford performing on detuned portative organ, the opening title track is abruptly transformed by the entry of Guthrie’s sizzling cymbals, deep gong strikes, and rustling hand percussion. On the epic ‘Lumbering’, which occupies the majority of the record’s first side, organ chords define a space in which a kaleidoscopic succession of amplified thuds, chiming bells, rustled and dragged objects, and abruptly silenced clusters advance and recede in an oneiric blur, eventually making way for a passage of Guthrie’s virtuosic polyrhythms, itself unexpectedly overtaken by waves of melting fairground organ. The record reaches an energetic climax mid-way through the second side with the stunning ‘Slakes’, where lugubrious chords in the organ’s lowest register are joined by Guthrie’s skittering rhythms, which somehow manage to call to mind both the most chaotic moments of Balinese Gamelan and the stochastic breakbeats of late-90s Autechre. On this piece, Guthrie and Rushford are joined by Melbourne saxophone maverick Scott McConnachie, who contributes an alto sax solo of burning precision, working with a single-minded palette of piercing long tones and wild intervallic leaps. Though it makes extensive use of overdubbing, Real Real World retains a strong sense of having been performed, rather than constructed: while at times the fleeting succession of events can recall electroacoustic music, its primarily acoustic nature and unhurried pace is also reminiscent of the music of AACM affiliates or Marion Brown’s classic Afternoon of a Georgia Faun. Immediately engaging while also hiding countless details in the folds of its polychrome fabric, Real Real World is a relaxed and joyous document of collaborative musical invention. ) 25.00
MAGAZINES
THE WIRE - #446 April 2021 MAGAZINE (Inside this issue: Warren Ellis: As a key collaborator with Nick Cave, the leader of Dirty Three and an esteemed composer in his own right, Warren Ellis has built himself a sturdy outpost on the margins of rock. A new work with vocalist Marianne Faithfull offers further evidence of his versatility. By Emily Pothast Nazar: Currently based in the Netherlands, the Angolan producer has pioneered his own style of rough kuduro in order to confront the conflict, corruption and poverty of his petrostate homeland. By Ray Philp - Once Upon A Time In Watts: From his arrival in Los Angeles in 1940, trumpeter Don Cherry traversed the vibrant suburbs of the city in search of the new thing. By Gabriel Bristow Invisible Jukebox: Mike Paradinas × Lara Rix-Martin: The founders of Planet Mu and Objects Limited test each other with a mystery record selection Nakul Krishnamurthy: Carnatic resonances from the Glasgow based vocalist. By Daniel Spicer - Ann Rosén: Swedish composer sculpts the sound of silence. By Julian Cowley Kohsuke Mine: Post-bop and free music collide in the Japanese master’s reissued catalogue. By James Hadfield Rizomagic: Non-hegemonic beats from the Colombian duo. By Russ Slater Unlimited Editions: Murailles Music Unofficial Channels: Etudes Global Ear: Our regular column continues to report on music in the time of pandemic. This month: festival strategies from The Hague’s Rewire and Newcastle’s TUSK The Inner Sleeve: William Parker on The Ornette Coleman Trio’s At The “Golden Circle” Stockholm) 8.00
