Bis Aufs Messer Weekly News 03 August 2024
Hi, welcome to another newsletter for this month and this time a bit earlier as usual - a bunch of cool stuff arrived like the latest Folklore Tapes, DOROTHY CARTER - Troubadour LP re issue, BEN VIDA - Vocal Trio LP, GREGORY T.S. WALKER – Minstrels & Minimoogs LP, the long awaited COCTEAU TWINS & HAROLD BUDD - The Moon & The Melodies LP re issue, MICHÈLE BOKANOWSKI – Cirque LP, three amazing Joe McPhee Re issues via Superior Viaduct, STENHJÄRTA - Gryning Kommer Rod LP, SLIPPER - A Tiny Rose Made Out Of Clay TAPE, UNIFORM - American Standard LP, new NICK CAVE LP, various Can restocks, ZELIENOPLE – Everything Is Simple LP on Shelter, THOU & RAGANA - Let Our Names Be Forgotten LP restock and some other goods …
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
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LP
THE AMERICAN ANALOG SET - The Golden Band LP (numero - The ethereal third album from the Texas slowcore wavers. A lethargic, sparse and autumnal effort, The Golden Band is the album on which The American Analog Set found the courage to drive 40 km/h on the highway. Released by Emperor Jones in 1999, this 25th anniversary edition has been remastered from the original tapes and impeccably reproduced in a beautiful sleeve.) 28.00
BEN VIDA - Vocal Trio LP (EDITION BLUME - Edition of 200 copies, fold-around insert w/ liner notes, leporello Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the works by Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and shortly after returning with the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney’s legendary “Postal Pieces”, the label is now offering a brand new, ambitious work by the American composer Ben Vida, entitled “Vocal Trio”, conceived, performed, and recorded in Bremen, Germany, during the Spring of 2022. A truly stunning work of compositional conceptualism, combining the ideas of systems based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration - issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies mastered by Stephan Mathieu, featuring specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert offering the piece visual score - it’s a landmark in contemporary experimental practice and arguably the most forward-thinking and exciting piece by one of the most exciting American artists working today) 30.00
CHICO MELLO & HELINHO BRANDÃO - Chico Mello/Helinho Brandão LP (black triffle - Black Truffle is thrilled to announce a reissue of Chico Mello and Helinho Brandão’s self-titled release from 1984, the first return to vinyl of this classic of Brazilian experimental music with its original cover art and complete track listing. An under-recognised figure whose work inhabits a singular terrain where radical new music techniques and music theatre meet musica popular brasileira, Mello has lived and worked in Berlin since the late 1980s. A student of Dieter Schnebel, Mello played in the 90s iteration of Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings alongside compatriot Silvia Ocougne, with whom he produced a radical and hilarious deconstruction of MPB classics on Musica Brasileira De(s)composta (an early and rather atypical release on Edition Wandelweiser).) 30.00
DOROTHY CARTER - Troubadour LP (drag city - The first official reissue of Dorothy Carter"s folk-music exegesis comes 46 years after its original release, 20 years after Dorothy passed, and 11 years before the centennial of her birth. Yet it seems right on time for a new celebration of her music. Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, and original tunes flow together effortlessly in hypnotic gardens of eternal world musics. A highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her and us with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era - his childhood - from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter.) 32.00
EFTERGIFT - Vatten Över Vatten LP (discreet - Vatten Över Vatten ('Water Over Water') is the debut album by the Gothenburg-based act Eftergift. Heavily influenced by the Nordic nature, this is beautiful organic tape music that utilizes a range of different instruments over the course of 8 songs. Sort of the musical equivalent to slowly walking on foggy Swedish fields in the summer dawn. While comparisons could be made with the early Korea Undok Group transmissions or someone like Mattias Gustafsson when it comes to working with the magnetic tape and letting it become an integral part of the soundscape, the rugged lo-fi brilliance and homebrewed ambient of Eftergift is firmly rooted in its own vision and weirdly musical in all it's fucked up 4-track glory.) 26.00
GREGORY T.S. WALKER – Minstrels & Minimoogs LP (freedom to spent - Edition of 300 hand-stickered copies, insert Gregory T.S. Walker’s Minstrels & Minimoogs was self-published by a young, nomadic composer and virtuoso in 1988 to accompany an immersive multimedia performance at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium. Created with this outer, and other, world setting in mind, the four tracks find Walker stretching toward an ancient-to-future vision where Egyptian myths and Hieronymus Bosch-ian tableaus are rendered in a screaming three dimensional circuitry of electronic drums, synth guitars, and, of course, Minimoog. Given the musical terrains and outmoded topics traversed, and that this entirely DIY effort was originally released as a micro one-sided 12” edition, Minstrels & Minimoogs is as perplexing and euphoric a document lost-to-time as it is now found. Born in 1961 into an intensely musical family spanning four generations, Gregory’s mother Helen Walker-Hill was a noted musicologist specializing in the rediscovery and work of historical Black female composers, while his father, George Walker, was the first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. Both parents studied with the famed (and famously strict) Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1950s, and held to lofty aesthetic standards in their home life. Walker began studying the violin as a child, but when a burgeoning interest in the electric guitar and rock music as a teen manifested, it was largely verboten in the household. The rule was that the music played in the home was to be acoustic and classical. Although the elder Walkers eventually relented and allowed Gregory’s guitar to be plugged in for a brief interval on the weekends, the remaining days he settled for strumming it sans amplification) 30.00
COCTEAU TWINS & HAROLD BUDD - The Moon & The Melodies LP (The Moon and the Melodies is a singular record within the Cocteau Twins" catalogue - unusually ethereal, even by their standards, and largely instrumental, guided by the free-form improvisations of Harold Budd, an ambient pioneer who had drifted into their orbit as if by divine intervention. Building on the atmospheric bliss of Victorialand, released earlier the same year, it signalled a possible future for the trio, yet it was a path they"d never take again. Now, almost forty years after it was fi rst released, it"s being reissued on vinyl for the first time - remastered, from the original tapes, by Robin Guthrie himself. Over the ensuing years, The Moon and the Melodies has attracted a passionate fan base. Its most atmospheric tracks routinely turn up in ambient DJ sets. "Sea, Swallow Me" is one of the Cocteau Twins" most streamed songs on Spotify, having found a new life on TikTok, where it serves as the soundtrack to innumerable expressions of hard-to-express melancholy. For such a low-key aff air, the album casts a long shadow - but Raymonde believes the record"s uniqueness stems directly from its humble, unpremeditated origins. "It captured a moment in time between friends that are enjoying making music together. Really, that"s the essence of it.“) 27.00
HAR - Cursed Creation LP (dark descent - To be utterly stunned by the ferocity of a record is an all too rare occasion in this day and age. Yet from its very first note, HAR’s debut album Cursed Creation strikes like a bolt from the blue, mauling its listener and showing no mercy. With Cursed Creation, the Berlin-based five-piece of Israeli descent have reached a new peak, injecting a lethal dose of technical mastery and unadulterated hatred into their already established formula. After two promising EPs, and 2019’s devastating Anti-Shechinah demo, Cursed Creation marks the “culmination of the band’s constant search and redefinition of its own vision of intense and evil black/death metal”.) 28.00
JOE MCPHEE - Black Magic Man LP (superior viaduct - Black Magic Man is arguably the pivotal Joe McPhee release. It bridged the span between the regional and the international, bypassing the national altogether. Recorded in the same sessions that produced Nation Time, Black Magic Man consists of music not chosen for that LP. Like its much-feted sister, technically it falls under the domain of CjR, Craig Johnson's herculean effort in support of McPhee. An erstwhile painter, Johnson became a self-taught audio engineer, acquiring equipment expressly to document McPhee's music. In December 1970, five years after Johnson and McPhee had met, they recorded two days of activity – a concert followed by an additional day of recordings – at Vassar College where McPhee was teaching in the Black Studies department. About half of the material was used to make Nation Time. While they had planned to issue a follow-up, the money wasn't there, so the tapes sat dormant. Fast-forward five years – Werner X. Uehlinger, a Swiss businessman who worked for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, contacted Johnson while on a trip to the US, and over dinner with McPhee, they discussed putting out some of the unused tracks from the Nation Time sessions. With this casual encounter in 1975, Hat Hut Records was inaugurated. The new label's maiden release was Black Magic Man, dubbed Hat Hut A, the first in what would become Hat Hut's letter series. Along the way, the series would feature seven Joe McPhee records, including the first four in a row. – John Corbett (excerpt from the liner notes)) 30.00
JOE MCPHEE - Tenor LP (superior viaduct - There are lots of outstanding Joe McPhee LPs. Nation Time being chief among them, but there's also Pieces Of Light, Oleo and Topology. The Poughkeepsie, New York-based multi-instrumentalist, by now an international star of free music, has amassed a daunting discography, no doubt. If you want to peer deeply into the soul of Joe McPhee, however, there's no way around it, you need to spend some quality time with Tenor. Tenor is McPhee's first solo record. He did not set out to make it. It was an afterthought, quite literally, born of a gathering of friends at the Swiss farmhouse of cellist Michael Overhage. A beautiful meal, some drinks, warm conversation, and ... why not, an impromptu recital. Hat Hut producer Werner X. Uehlinger was there and a year later issued it as McPhee's third LP for the label (Hat Hut C in their famed letter series). The existential blues 'Knox' sets the stage, indicating that this will not just be a toss-off postprandial singalong. 'Good-Bye Tom B.' carries on with aching melancholy, through burred notes and hushed harmonics. The relatively jaunty 'Sweet Dragon' is also emotionally loaded with Ayler-esque vibrato, slurs, wipes, and blasts of tone. The side-long title track comes without a theme, as a kind of pure investigation of the horn, its potential, its limits, its expressive capacity. There have been few solo sessions as comprehensive and devastating as this spontaneous after-dinner diversion in rural Switzerland in 1976. We're very lucky someone pressed record.– John Corbett (excerpt from the liner notes)) 30.00
JOE MCPHEE - The Willisau Concert LP (superior viaduct - Joe McPhee's first international release, Black Magic Man, was issued on the newly formed Hat Hut imprint in 1975. It was a watershed moment for the 35-year-old musician. Based in Poughkeepsie, New York, he was too far away from Manhattan to have participated extensively in the Loft Jazz happenings of the decade. European exposure, however, would give McPhee an alternative circuit, something of an escape route from the trappings of American cultural myopia. In support of the new record for this Swiss label, McPhee invited John Snyder on a European tour in October 1975. Snyder was a synthesizer player with whom McPhee had made the duet LP Pieces Of Light, released a year earlier on CjR. The two musicians developed an extensive repertoire, playing diverse spaces in the Hudson Valley. Geographically close gigs were a plus, since it took extra energy to hoist Snyder's ARP 2600. McPhee and Snyder were invited to play at the Willisau Jazz Festival in Switzerland. If you compare this live record with Pieces Of Light, a studio effort, it's considerably more open. South African drummer Makaya Ntshoko is rolling thunder on the choral 'Voices,' shuffling under Snyder's bubbly beat on 'Bahamian Folksong.' It is quite a special combination, enough so that Hat Hut chose to release it as their next LP, Hat Hut B in their alphabetical series. The Willisau Concert represents the sound of Joe McPhee opening up, opening out, expanding his field of operations to include new figures, fresh experiences, new continents of sound. – John Corbett (excerpt from the liner notes)) 30.00
MICHÈLE BOKANOWSKI – Cirque LP (The Circus is a place of lights and colors, but also of shadows, even darkness. Admittedly, it delights children and makes adults laugh. But you only need one rainy autumn evening near a circus tent and the smell of fodder to think of the sadness of the clowns, the endless training of the animals and the freaks who are hidden in some caravan... cinema, the essence of the circus – movement, light, danger and burlesque – will have been admirably rendered in Notes on the circus by Jonas Mekas (1966), one of the inventors of the filmed diary. With Cirque, Michèle Bokanowski does similar work, entirely dedicated to spinning, in the musical field. She distinguished herself in particular in the composition of musique concrète, among others Tabou and Trois chambres d'inquiétudes, after having studied with Pierre Schaeffer and Éliane Radigue. The latter, great lady of drone and minimalism, fell under the spell of Cirque and wrote the booklet for the piece as a poem.) 27.00
MOLACHAT DOMA - belay polosa LP (Sacred Bones - Belarusian post-punk/synth-pop group Molchat Doma have always exuded the brutalist aesthetic of the architecture that graces their album cover. It's cold, grey, imposing, industrial - and yet within these foundations, human hearts beat. After their breakthrough in 2020, the trio went through a polarity of experiences, from the low point of an uprooted life and a forced move from their hometown of Minsk to the tentative high point of headlining major shows around the world. It was in this mood that the band settled into their new home of Los Angeles to complete their fourth album, "Belaya Polosa," a testament to change in difficult times, a love letter to the digital pulse of the '90s, and a Technicolor reinvention of the band's gritty dancefloor anthems. Molchat Doma operate on another level here: from the opening synth swell and drum machine throb of "Ty Zhe Ne Znaesh' Kto Ya" to the goth/post-punk austerity of "Son" to the swirling electronic textures mixed with reverb-drenched guitar embellishments, the expansive space and yearning vocals of title track "Belaya Polosa" - which recalls Depeche Mode at their most reflective or The Cure at their most repressed - to the sultry and seductive "Chernye Cvety" - a piece reminiscent of Duran Duran's early '90s output in its fusion of dreamy guitars and authoritative, mechanized beats - and the interwoven layers of instrumentation and melodic sophistication of "Ya Tak Ustal." Molchat Doma made their name with previous albums that sounded like bootlegs of recordings banned in the Eastern Bloc, made after a few key entries from Factory Records' catalog were smuggled in from the West.) 26.00
NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS - Wild God LP (pias - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are back with their new album 'Wild God' after a five-year hiatus! Across ten tracks, the band dances between convention and experimentation, making left turns and detours that enhance the rich imagery and emotion in Cave's heart-wrenching narratives. There are moments that fondly recall the Bad Seeds' past, but they are fleeting and only serve to add another facet to the band's relentless and restless forward momentum. Nick Cave says of the album: “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It's a complicated record, but it's also deeply and joyously infectious.” Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis and mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began writing the album on New Year's Day 2023. Recording in Provence and London, the Bad Seeds finally added their unique alchemy, with additional appearances by Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar). "Wild God…there’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves you. I love that about it." - Nick Cave) 27.00
SEAN & ROCKY - s/t LP (grace - A haunting and fragile lo-fi affair compiled on vinyl for the first time from the body of work of Rocky Lorelei and Sean Armstrong recorded between 2012 and 2021 in Berlin and Glasgow. Rocky and Sean perform together as "Slipper", play in UK based indie outfit "Spinning Coin" and release solo tapes i.e. on their 'Rehberge' label.
Introspective songs and textures from two stellar songwriters of the current indie scene. For fans of the C86 era, Grouper and early Sebadoh. You get the idea) 24.00
STENHJÄRTA - Gryning Kommer Rod LP (grapefruit - Grapefruit Records is proud to introduce Stenhjärta, a new duo consisting of Gustaf Dicksson & Magnus Jäverling. Both are active in the Swedish Underground music scene centered in Gothenburg. Gustaf is known for his shape-shifting prolific solo project, Blod, as well as his participation in the notable music collective, Enhet för Fri Musik. Magnus is somewhat newer to the scene, appearing on some Blod recordings as well as releasing a fascinating concept album called Bowdark on the Discreet Music label in 2022. As a duo here they are exploring classic prog-folk motifs with very Swedish influences. Gryning Kommer Röd is yet another gorgeous album delivered to us from the heads and hearts of two active musicians of the Swedish Underground.) 28.00
THOU & RAGANA - Let Our Names Be Forgotten LP (an out - Gold Vinyl - Louisiana sludge metal band Thou had one hell of a productive 2018, having already released three vastly different EPs and a career defining LP. And now they've got a split 12" out with fellow noise makers, Oakland's Ragana. The two artist's "Let Our Names Be Forgotten" split is dedicated to the people lost in the Ghost Ship fire and sounds like an aching, solemn blend of Americana and metal.) 25.00
UNIFORM - American Standard LP (sacred bones - American Standard begins with a shock. Singer Michael Berdan stands alone and screams, "A part of me, but it can't be me. Oh God, it can't." It all begins with a confession. Behind the harrowing screams lies the pain of bulimia nervosa. It is the pain of an illness that is as physical as it is psychological. This is a kind of departure. With each sentence of American Standard, Uniform peels back a new layer, telling the story inside the one before it. The lyrics penetrate to the core of the innermost self, the small human being crushed in the grip of the illness. To unravel this story of eating disorders, self-hatred, delusions, mania and ultimate discovery, Berdan enlisted the help of two towering literary outsider figures. Along with B.R. Yeager (author of the modern cult classic Negative Space) and Maggie Siebert (the mind behind the contemporary body horror masterpiece Bonding), the three writers dissect the personal material to present a portrait of mental and physical illness as haunting and terrifying as anything in the canon today. The result is an accurate articulation of a condition that goes beyond simple torment, and captures the exhilarating transcendence and release that illness can bring in the process. American Standard is easily Uniform's most thematically accomplished and musically confident album to date. Sections twist and explode.) 28.00
ZELIENOPLE – Everything Is Simple LP (shelter - Everything Is Simple arrives four years after its predecessor, Hold You Up, which in turn came five years after Show Us The Fire. Zelienople does not do things in a hurry. Why should it? Operationally and musically, haste has nothing to offer the Chicago-identified trio. They do not rush their time signatures, and they do not rush their albums, because however long it takes is the amount of time necessary. So, what’s necessary? Singer-guitarist Matt Christensen, multi-instrumentalist Brian Harding, and drummer Mike Weis had all been in other bands before they united to become Zelienople in 1998 (the band’s name references a town in Pennsylvania where Harding and Christensen were once stranded while waiting for parts necessary to fix a broken-down car). All of them have all played other music since then. Harding records long-form instrumental music under the guise Ill Professor. Weis has explored ambient sound, studied Korean rhythmic practices, and improvised with Kwaidan and Slow Bell Trio. Christensen is torrentially productive on his own; at the end of April 2024 he had 212 digital releases on Bandcamp, and by the time you read this, there’ll be more. If Christensen is driven by compulsive necessity, Zelienople’s rate of production must be a spoiler, not an enhancer. But the three musicians need each other to make the convergence of ceremonial cadences, echo-laden instrumentation, and mournfully resigned singing that constitutes Zelienople’s music. Still, the making of Everything Is Simple took Zelienople out of its comfort zone. In 2020, Weis left Chicago for Kalamazoo, Michigan, which meant that the band no longer had access to its usual recording refuge in his basement. They turned loss into an opportunity to change their approach. Instead of layering tracks incrementally, they recorded mostly live with two extra musicians, Eric Eleazer (synthesizer, Fender Rhodes piano) and PM Tummala (synthesizer, Fender Rhodes piano, vibraphones). Keyboards and metallophones broaden the sound field around Weis’ patiently perambulating percussion. And instead of clinging, Harding’s basses and clarinets swirl and wreath around Christensen’s apprehensive articulations of the experience of being a quiet person in a menacingly loud cultural moment. ) 29.00
TAPE
ROCKY LORELEI - A Sculpture In My Hands TAPE (rehberge - A Sculpture In My Hands was conceived between summer 2021 and spring 2022, slowly and darkly ~ ~ ~ a collection of dreams, reflections, and premonitions, a testament to patience the drone pieces (Full Moon Light Falls, Telepathic Mail, Heart of Water) were all recorded improvisations from the spring of 2022, just before the other songs were recorded, on a Yamaha mt8x - thanks to Sean Armstrong for playing bass on It's All On My Mind (track 8), and for playing piano on Pathway, (track 11). the bird voice on Tomorrow is a Star is thanks to the nightingale, singing one spring night by Plötzensee rain on Oh Alvina (track 7) was recorded outside the window of my room the album art is 'Decisions in the white plate' a painting by Agnese Guido thanks to jack mellin for lending me his guitar and bass since i left glasgow, both of which you hear on the recordings thank you to my family for loving me and supporting me, & to my friends for choosing me i dedicate A Sculpture In My Hands to the memory of my friend, Benjamin Tenisci Stevenson) 12.00
SEAN ARMSTRONG - The Technical Times TAPE (rehberge - A new solo album by Sean Armstrong. Recorded at home in Wedding, Berlin as people, sounds and seasons passed by outside.) 12.00
SLIPPER - A Tiny Rose Made Out Of Clay TAPE (rehberge - Slipper was formed in 2019 by songwriters Sean Armstrong and Rachel Taylor and they play beautiful Lo Fi Indie Pop A Tiny Rose Made Out Of Clay was recorded by Slipper over 7 days and nights between April and June 2023, in both Berlin and Stanisławów; then it was mixed at home in the seasons that followed.
) 12.00
V/A - Ceremonial County Series Vol.III - North Yorkshire | Devon TAPE (folklore tapes - Ceremonial County Series Vol.III - North Yorkshire | Devon - C-30 printed cassette housed in library case - 6x panel reseach note sleeve - Unique vintage OS map cut-out piece - D/L code Volume 3 in the 24x volume set of ceremonial county cassettes. North Yorkshire: Song of the Whitby Jet by James Green Devon: Wistman's Wood by Eva Bowan) 13.00
V/A - Ceremonial County Series Vol.V - Norfolk | West Yorkshire TAPE (folkore tapes - Norfolk: The Lantern Man by Pefkin - West Yorkshire: The Bradford Boar by Dean McPhee - C-30 printed cassette housed in library case - 6x panel reseach note sleeve - Unique vintage OS map cut-out piece - D/L code Volume 5 in the 24x volume set of ceremonial county cassettes.) 13.00
V/A - Ceremonial County Series Vol.VI - Cornwall | South Yorkshire TAPE (folklore tapes - Cornwall: Arthur Gernow by David A Jaycock South Yorkshire: Wardsend Cemetery by Slug Milk - C-30 printed cassette housed in library case - 6x panel reseach note sleeve - Unique OS map cut-out piece- D/L code) 13.00
V/A - Ceremonial County Series Vol.VII - Durham | Staffordshire TAPE (folklore tapes - - C-30 printed cassette housed in library case - 8x panel reseach note sleeve - Unique OS map cut-out piece - D/L code Volume 7 in the 24x volume set of ceremonial county cassettes.) 13.00
