Bis Aufs Messer weekly News 04 March 2021
hi, welcome to another newsletter for March. A bunch of amazing stuff arrived like the CINDER WELL - The unconscious Echo LP, ERIK WOLLO - Silver Beach DLP, HECKER / OKKYUNG LEE - Statistique Synthétique / Teum (the Silvery Slit) LP, FELICIA ATKINSON - Echo LP (col. vinyl), SUSAN ALCORN - The Heart Sutra (Arranged by Janel Leppin) LP, EMBROY re issues, a bunch of MINIMAL WAVE restocks (DEUX, OPPENHEIMER ANALYSIS etc), PLUGPOINT MUSIC - Last Chance LP, WRITHING SQUARES - Chart For The Solution DLP, HENRY GRIMES TRIO - The Call LP, BONNIE MERCER / YLP - Old Moon, New Moon / The Image of 36 LP, NORDSIND - Lys LP and much more.
Also a few PHIL ELVERUM Books are available in case u missed the pre order.
We also received the test pressing for the upcoming PIGEON LP and it sounds amazing!! So keep an eye out for pre orders etc .
Thank you for your support in those difficult times
Norman & Robert
www.adagio830-records.bandcamp.com
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THE LOST JOBS - s/t 7“ (THE LOST JOBS kommen aus Leipzig und haben vor knapp 3 Jahren ein Split-Demo-Tape mit STREIT veröffentlicht. Seither hat die Band recht viel live gespielt, einige neue Songs geschrieben und jetzt kommt endlich das Vinyl-Debüt in Form einer schönen 7″. Darauf gibts 5x schnökellosen Garage-Punk mit rockenden Surf-Gitarren und dreckigem 77er-Einschlag. Die Platte ist limitiert auf 500 handnummerierte Exemplare und kommt inkl. Textblatt, DIY Stempel-Cover und Sticker. Alles zusammen in 5 verschiedenen Coverfarben – der Zufall entscheidet welche ihr bekommt.) 6.00
LP
BONNIE MERCER / YLP - Old Moon, New Moon / The Image of 36 LP (Downwards look to Melbourne, Australia’s incredibly fecund experimental scene for this almighty split LP; facing off Bonnie Mercer’s colossal sub-bass drone hallucinations with scorched-earth drug dirges by the YLP duo. If yr into Sunn O))), Earth, The Birthday Party, Spacemen 3, Sun City Girls, Gallon Drunk - this one’s for you. Both sides of ‘Old Moon, New Moon / The Image of 36’ sustain their influences from doom drone, gothic blues rock and post-punk for the already fraught 2020s. Each act renders a certain, ravishing sort of romance from end-of-earth bleakness, sketching out feedback-drenched vistas and sunburned, byzantine visions augmented by drum machines and electronics to blistering effect. Internationally renowned guitarist Bonnie Mercer offers a rare solo suite for her part. Moving beyond her decades of work with bands including Grey Daturas and Breathing Shrine, Mercer generates a transcendent collapse of desert rock forms that will reward listeners with the sandblasted riff textures of ‘Half Moon’, the skull scraping psyche noise lushness of ‘Linda’s Goodman’s Love Signs’, and a deathly crawl to dawn in ‘The Latest Disappointment.’ If you’ve ever seen Sunn O))) play live, Mercer makes use of the same sort of precision tooled grot that turns our insides out - all subharmonic drone and subby gnarrr that's a properly transformative listening experience at the right volume. ) 36.00
CINDER WELL - The unconscious Echo LP (contraszt - Cinder Well is the project of multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. In the early twenty-tens when she lived in Santa Cruz, CA, she played in the dark-folk group the Gembrokers and was a member of Blackbird Raum. Both bands were touring the emerging anarcho folk scene in Europe in 2013 when they met the folks of Lankum. This encounter proved quite influential and after collaborating on an album together Amelia eventually moved to Ireland to study Irish traditional music. By the sound of it alone, a voice, two violins, resonator guitar, its folky instrumentation and traditional feel ‘The Unconscious Echo’ could be described as a ’timeless’ folk record. But the slower pace and drawing out of tones with a shruti box and long stretched string sounds, make it a dark and modern variation on a traditional theme. It is also a record (and this might sound hyperbolic, but just wait for it) that could have only been made after the Holocaust. In the title track Amelia lets us in on what she has come to understand about the passing down of generational trauma. That is what the ‘Unconscious Echo’ is, and what it is echoing with is truly horrific.) 18.00
CRYPTS - Coven Of The Dead LP (tcm - Take no prisoners! CRYPTS from germany deliver very true old school deathmetal, no gimmicks, no intros, pure and simple stripped down end of the 80s style. Without any exaggeration you can name Morgoth, early Entombed, Hail Of Bullts or Autopsy as comparisons – technically fit, great songwriting, a fantastic singer, who, if i can believe the band, growls even in normal conversations. This record has the power to raise the dead and everyone who has more than three OSDM records in their posession will probably adore COVEN OF THE DEAD) 15.00
DAME AREA - Ondas Tribales LP (mannequin - We are really proud to welcome Dame Area in the Mannequin Records family. Hailing from Barcelona, Silvia Konstance and Viktor L.Crux (a collaborator of Nurse With Wound and J.Arbeit from Einstürzende Neubauten) developed during the last years a unique music style recognized as "Tribal Wave". Mixing synth bassline arpeggios and live percussions, noises and congas, industrialism and tribalism, Italian and Spanish, Dame Area are running across the same path and breathing the same air of the EBM/Industrial driven Diseño Corbusier or the drum compositions of Roberto De Simone. Starting to play live and releasing their music in 2018 for their own label and venue Màgia Roja (with the support of fans like Julian Cope and Yamatsuka Eye), their incessant touring schedule has already seen them play all over Europe in the past couple of years. Since 2019 they also play live as a trio with Jesse Webb from Gnod/Anthroprophh at the drums/percussion. For fans of: Diseño Corbusier, Esplendor Geometrico, Einstürzende Neubauten, group A, Kris Baha) 20.00
ERIK WOLLO - Silver Beach DLP (abstrace - Erik Wøllo is a unique Norwegian musician that has been active since 1980, covering a wide range of styles but mostly known for his very personal take on electronic ambient music. In Silver Beach, gentle rhythms hold center for lush beautiful melodies to unfold, manifesting a restrained elegance in the way the chords hover around this percolating heartbeat. The result is synthetic walkabout music, an album of simple yet vibrant sophistication, perfect for wandering around or sitting contemplating imaginary beautiful vistas with eyes closed. These seventeen stunning tracks create a sense of ceaseless motion without arrival, the pleasure of traveling without destination: walking on an outer limits beach. An early electronic music masterpiece, it was made using the latest MIDI technology at that time. Everything was composed and recorded on the now vintage Roland MSQ700, and all the diverse synths and rack modules were mixed directly down to 2 track analog tape (no multitrack tape was used). The original Silver Beach album was released on vinyl on the Norwegian label Cicada Records in 1986. In 1988 the album was released on CD (also Cicada) and included the additional and very rhythmical tracks “Little Big Tune” and “Mountain Train.” The album was also re-released on CD on the Spanish label Margen Records in 2005, remastered and fine-tuned with 5 additional previously unreleased tracks from the same era. These tunes just refuse to be forgotten, their glittering beauty having both an air of nostalgia, but also of validity, as they continue to haunt new ears. There's no doubt that this is a classic of European eighties electronic music composition, a polished artwork with the best aesthetic and emotional signifiers of its era. ) 28.00
FELICIA ATKINSON - Echo LP (col. vinyl) (boomkat - Newly remastered by Rashad Becker for this vinyl edition, ‘Echo’ finds Félicia Atkinson synching her feelings into a watercolour suite of solo keys, voice and field recordings, unfurling 40 minutes of new music that we wager will take your breath away. Félicia was undertaking an artistic residency in La Becque when the plague took hold in Europe at the start of 2020. Stationed with her husband and young child in the small artistic community near Geneva, she wrote this “imaginary garden” of music dedicated to anyone in pain or isolation. The result is a ponderous mix of slow but searching keys, windswept sax, room recordings and sensitively detached but intimate electronic touches that she intended to mirror the solace she came to find and provide a place for reflection for anyone in need. Working from a wooden chalet surrounded by gardens, and particularly one inspired by Derek Jarman’s in Dungeness (created in the years after he learned he had AIDS), Félicia acts as a transducer for quiet energies and the worries of a world where, as she puts it; “basic things… suddenly seemed so crucial and vast; health, disease, plants, nature, solitude, family, people, fear, calm….”. Across six pieces spanning almost 40 minutes, Félicia describes a slow but fleeting passage of time between pruned pieces of sound poetry, uncanny concrete abstractions and broader parts of ambient jazz that recall the vulnerability and fragility of Terre Thaemlitz’s solo piano expressions with her own sort of tactility and blurry ambiguity, especially the 13 minute ‘Lillies’. Around and behind each note you can hear the creak of Félicia’s chair, her breath on the microphone, birds outside - radiating warmth and a wondrous intangibility that’s impossible to express in words, imbuing the listener with a sense of liminality - of existing between worlds.A proper salve for the soul, we tell you.) 28.00
HECKER / OKKYUNG LEE - Statistique Synthétique / Teum (the Silvery Slit) LP (Statistique Synthétique draws as much from the history of computer sound synthesis as from its latest developments. But well beyond developing simply as a proof of concept, this piece aims to transcend the abstract status of synthetic sound objects and lead them to a properly hallucinatory state, that is to say to a meeting point where the object and perception dissolve into each other, in a sort of transcendental field. Beyond, also, hylomorphism, to reach the world of matter-form fusions, where perception knows how to see “shoulders of hills”, as Cézanne wrote. Teum (the Silvery Slit) is, as the title suggests, an overture, an opening to the game of multiplications, fragmentations, duplications. But it is also the opening understood as the void that blossoms between two borders, a break from which escapes a double tension, both the pulling force of these two edges which move apart and the opposite force of reconciliation, of compression. Okkyung Lee invites us to a truly telluric moment, a rare moment of expression where tectonic movements and shear stresses become music. If the earthquakes were, as we thought in the 18th century, due to underground thunderstorms, there is no doubt that this piece of music, both celestial and continental, could have been their audible manifestation. Text by François Bonnet=) 23.00
HENRY GRIMES TRIO - The Call LP (esp - ESP-Disk present a vinyl reissue of Henry Grimes Trio's The Call, originally released in 1966.It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this December 28, 1965 recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler -- including Spirits Rejoice (ESPDISK 1020CD/LP)--, Don Cherry, and Cecil Taylor (to name just a few), the service was certainly there, but he got this gig fully on his merits. For The Call, Grimes teamed with highly original clarinetist Perry Robinson (as label owner Bernard Stollman has noted, "a virtuoso who merits far wider recognition...and this recording reflects both of their contributions, in equal measure") and stalwart drummer/ESP-Disk' regular Tom Price. As a bassist, Grimes's melodic style is well up to the task of being co-equal voice with a horn, resulting in a thoughtful and texturally rewarding LP with a level of quality far above the rote sideman session cliché, and far away from equally clichéd ideas of unrelentingly full-bore free jazz. It offers the sound of three excellent musicians listening to each other and responding superbly. The Juilliard-trained Grimes appeared on six other ESP LPs besides those already mentioned. He retired at some point after the last of them, 1967's Marzette Watts LP, and went so far off the scene that it was rumored that he had died. Happily, that was not the case, and he reemerged in 2003, moved back to New York, and returned to his prolific ways until illness slowed him down and then took him from us earlier this year (2020).180 gram vinyl featuring original artwork; edition of 500.) 26.00
KIOVA - Empty Fields & Smoke-Filled Skies LP ("Two years after their debut album “An End in Motion” on Suicide Records (Sweden), Finnish epic post metallers KIOVA are back with new EP ”Empty Fields & Smoke-filled Skies”, showcasing the band’s new vocalist and refreshed mixture of many different subgenres, including crust, post hardcore, and post rock." - idioteq.com) 15.00
MULATU ASTATKE & BLACK JESUS EXPERIENCE - To Know Without Knowing LP (Legendary vibraphonist and “Father of Ethio-jazz”, Mulatu Astatke joins forces with Melbourne-based eight-piece Black Jesus Experience on their latest album To Know Without Knowing, an absorbing nine-track assembly of majestic Ethiopian melodies and hip-hop-infused jazz and funk grooves, released via German imprint, Agogo Records. Recorded between Addis Ababa and Melbourne and melding Astatke’s dexterous improvised stylings and Black Jesus Experience’s penchant for transcontinental and cultural exploration, To Know Without Knowing sees Mulatu Astatke and Black Jesus Experience (or BJX) expand on their unlikely yet formidable partnership, combining illuminating original compositions and exciting new arrangements of Ethio-jazz classics. Since pioneering the “Ethio-jazz” sound in the late 60’s, Mulatu’s ascent in to the musical stratosphere is unparalleled. Born in Jimma, Western Ethiopia, Astatke moved to Wales to study engineering, before diverting his attention to music, moving to the US, and becoming the first student from Africa at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Blending traditional Ethiopian scales with jazz arrangements, and Latin rhythms, Astatke pioneered the “Ethio-jazz” sound, which rose to prominence in the late 90s after the renowned Éthiopiques series, alongside the reissue of Astatke’s masterwork, Mulatu of Ethiopia. Having been sampled by the likes of Nas/Damian Marley, Four Tet and Quantic, as well as contributing a number of original compositions to the OST for cult director, Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 film Broken Flowers, Astatke’s influence on the wider music community and his unrelenting mission to bring the music/culture of Ethiopia to the world continues to this very day. Having met Astatke at his nephew’s jazz club in Addis Ababa in 2009, BJX are one of the finest contemporary purveyors of Ethio-Jazz today. Bringing together artists from across Melbourne’s thriving scene and with members of Moroccan, Zimbabwean, Maori and Ethiopian heritage. Lead saxophonist and co-founder Peter Harper’s first introduction to Ethiopian music came from his father, a music teacher for the Ethiopian Navy band in the sixties, however it was upon meeting singer and future frontwoman of BJX, Enushu Taye that his love of the country’s vibrant music history really came to the fore. Hailing from Ethiopia, Enushu began singing for her local community from a very young age. In 1992 Taye was forced to take refuge in Cairo and years later migrated to Australia, bringing her captivating voice and remarkable life story to Melbourne, and later forming the foundation of Black Jesus Experience with Harper, Ian Dixon (trumpet/flugelhorn), Pianist, Bob Sedergreen, and the “lyrical miracle”, Zimbabwean/Australian MC, Mr. Monk, amongst others. ) 24.00
NORMAN WESTBERG & JACEK MAZURKIEWCZ - First Man In The Moon LP (hallow ground - An unlikely meeting of two like-minded spirits, »First Man in the Moon« sees the former Swans guitarist and Hallow Ground regular Norman Westberg and the prolific double bass player Jacek Mazurkiewicz collaborate for five evocative tracks. The pair finds common ground beyond the boundaries of atmospheric drone, abstract jazz and experimental music and blurs the lines between the acoustic and the electronic. The two first met when the composer Mazurkiewicz supported Swans with his solo project 3FoNIA on their 2014 European tour. »I really enjoyed his approach,« says Westberg about the Polish musician’s blending of the acoustic qualities of his instrument with electronically generated sounds. A decision to collaborate was made and when the US-American musician returned to Eastern Europe to support Michael Gira on his solo tour in late 2019, Mazurkiewicz reached out to him with the idea of booking some studio time before Gira’s two concerts in Warsaw. »Recording was very fun and easy,« remembers Westberg. »It was just two people enjoying hearing and reacting to what the other is doing.« »First Man in the Moon« is not however a plain document of these improvised sessions, but also shaped by Mazurkiewicz’s approach as a composer. Once the recordings were finished, he selected and edited the recorded material, refining the peculiar dialogue between the guitarist’s meditative drones and bright chords and his own rhythmic yet subtle approach to playing the double bass, sometimes plucking the strings and occasionally using his bow to underscore Westberg’s fleeting melodies, but also using the instrument in unconventional ways to generate sound. A feeling of weightlessness prevails throughout the aptly-titled »First Man in the Moon.« Even at their most abstract however, these five improvisations-turned-compositions remain tangible, lively, and joyfully explorative. It is a record that you wouldn’t expect from either of these musicians, but the logical result of two idiosyncratic minds sharing not only space and time, but also their respective visions with each other. ) 26.00
NORDSIND - Lys LP (Following the bands EP Efterår and standalone single Dvale, Danish instrumental blackgaze/post rock duo NORDSIND is gearing up to release their debut full length “Lys” through DIY punk/hardcore/post-metal labels Voice of the Unheard, Belladonna Records, Vinyltrolden, Araki, Maniyax and Dingleberry Records. The core of Nordsind has always been storytelling through music. By creating atmospheres of melancholy, joy, calm and sadness, Nordsind strive to be the soundtrack to your daydream. The bands coming album Lys is no exception and as the title suggests, the main inspiration for this album has been light (Lys being the danish word for light). Light both as a physical thing, that can be observed and explained, but also light in an esoteric and spiritual manner. Lys serves as a sonic representation of how the band interprets this.Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, Nordsind has existed since the beginning of 2017 and play instrumental post rock/blackgaze, with big open chords, fast blastbeats and calming melodic parts, that makes thoughts wander and time fly.) 20.00
PHAROAH SANDERS & FLOATING POINTS & THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA - Promises LP (luaka - Promises is an extraordinary, collaborative album by the electronic giant Floating Points and saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders. The album features the London Symphony Orchestra and cover art by the acclaimed American artist, Julie Mehretu. Five years in the making, it will be released on Luaka Bop, March 26, 2021. The album is composed and engineered by Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points, who's second album Crush earned Best New Music from Pitchfork and a major feature in the New York Times, and placed him on several 2019 critics lists. His debut album Elaenia, released by Luaka Bop, was another Best New Music pick and hailed as one of the best debuts of the decade. It is also the release that made Pharoah Sanders want to work with him in the first place. A restless, ever- evolving producer and composer, Shepherd has toured with the xx, and also holds a doctorate in neuroscience. For Pharoah Sanders, who recently turned 80, this is a rare outing and his first album in fifteen years. One of the last icons of his generation, Pharoah performed with John Coltrane on his late-career free jazz masterpieces, and released a string of expansive recordings under his own name for the Impulse! label which have been cited as a pivotal influence by everyone from The Stooges to Marvin Gaye. Most recently, he was featured in a 2020 Supreme campaign. The music unfurls, patiently, over nine movements, and 46 ever-undulating minutes. It's a work of pure feeling, like no other record you'll hear this or any other year.) 25.00
PHRYDDERICHS PHAELDA - Bruchstuecke LP (Even those of you who are already familiar with our label's concept of rediscovering music which has unjustifiably been lost, overlooked or forgotten will be surprised by the reissue of the six-track-record 'Bruchstuecke' LP by Free-Jazz artists Phrydderichs Phaelda. This band was a short living school band project of the Gymnasium Voerde Mitte (West-Germany) led by pianist and music teacher Friedrich Schepers joined by other teachers and students (Hans Klimek on bass, Lutz Leonhardt on drums, Wolfgang Kulawik on guitar). In 1975 they went to the studio to record 6 instrumental tracks in a style that could be best described as jazz / fusion with hints of r’n’b and rock, which are brimming with crisp snare drums played in polyrhythmic and ever-changing patterns and tempos. Alongside that the astounded listener gets to enjoy thrilling electric guitar lines and breathtaking electric piano excursions together with ultra-warm and elaborate bass guitar parts. All this is held together by the four musicians great overview and ability to improvise and react spontaneously to their fellows. This creates a kind of magic which is rare to hear in music these days. Stefan Leisering and Juergen von Knoblauch, the two record digging members of Jazzanova have immediately understood the unique quality of 'Bruchstuecke' and decided to re-release this overlooked masterpiece. In the course of the original release of this album in the early 1980s only a small amount has been pressed. Now with this reissue on Notes On A Journey is the chance to make this gem available to a larger audience – to people who share a great interest in the remarkable development of underground Jazz in Germany during those exciting years. ) 25.00
PLUGPOINT MUSIC - Last Chance LP (minmal wave - Here comes a reissue of a rare self-released record by Plugpoint Music called ‘Last Chance’. Plugpoint Music was the minimal synth project of Reiner Ossmann, who recorded the 12 songs on this album in his home studio in Germany in 1987 and released them as an edition of 200 copies. This gem of a record was never properly distributed and so essentially disappeared until it began circulating amongst underground collectors sometime over the last 15 years. The sound has been compared to the likes of Mort Garson and Cluster. It’s a true minimal synth classic in all of its eccentricity and lack of self-consciousness. The record has been remastered and will be pressed on 180-gram black vinyl as an edition of 500 copies along with a lyric insert sheet.) 27.00
ROTURA - Estamos Fracasando LP (First album by Barcelona-based Power Pop / punk-rock band Rotura. "It is always worth it when it comes to good friends. After their demo recorded at the beginning of February 2020 with 5 songs and presented digitally, they again put themselves in the hands of Xavi Escribano at EM Estudi in October to record 5 more cuts that give shape to ESTAMOS FRACASANDO, a physical debut in LP format by this trio of Molins sense Rei that despite being hardened in a lot of battles and bands in the city of Barcelona waste no time and present us with a recovery of the most melodic, combative and anarchist PUNK sounds of the city with a dark and melancholic aftertaste that may remind bands like SIGNAL LOST on their guitars. Solid bass lines and a fast-paced hi-hat setting the beat of an incredible melodic voice that may recall bands like ELEKTRODUENDES or ACCIDENTE ... but ROTURA has its own personality and the solidity of its lyrics is what makes the difference from what we expect be one of the next punk references in the city. „) 13.00
SUSAN ALCORN - The Heart Sutra (Arranged by Janel Leppin) LP (idioligic organ - Legendary pedal steel player Susan Alcorn presents her music as curated and arranged by cellist and composer Janel Leppin. This recording is from a live performance from her residency at Issue Project Room in July 2012. Leppin’s arrangements and curation emotes the brilliance, transparency and resonance of the pedal steel guitar. Through this ensemble, the mastery of Susan Alcorn's compositions shine. Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz, and world musics. Struck by the music of Messiaen she began transcribing classical music from recordings and scores on her instrument. Soon, she began to combine the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own extended techniques to form a personal style influenced by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world. By the early 1990s her music began to show an influence of the holistic and feminist “deep listening” philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. As her records gained a cult following she moved to Baltimore, MD. She performs internationally and is a key figure in the free improv scene in the US.) 23.00
VANCE AND SUZZANNE - I Can't Get Along Without You LP (Kalita are proud to announce the first ever official reissue of the holy grail of disco 12” singles, Vance and Suzzanne’s ‘I Can’t Get Along Without You’. A record that deserves its space on the shelf of every collector, DJ and dance music connoisseur, and with original copies now regularly fetching triple figures, it’s time to share this masterpiece with the world once more. In addition, here Kalita accompany the release with a never-before-seen press photo and interview-based liner notes. Originally privately released in 1980 on Vanton Records, this is the first time that both the record and the label’s story has been told. The product of two members of Crown Heights Affair (Richard Vance Turner and Eleton Johns), the label was established as a way to protect both their musical freedom and copyright that they would have lost had they signed to a major label. With Vanton, they sought to create a sound that combined Eleton’s love for Philadelphia with Richard’s love for New York-based productions. ) 18.00
WAYFARER - A Romance With Violence LP (WAYFARER is black metal of the American West. A cavalcade of fury, melancholia, and dust-laden storytelling; the band is informed by the fierce and adventurous spectrums of heavy music, along with the stark Americana of the “Denver Sound” artists that carved the identity of their home. In “A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE”, their most fully realized effort to date, WAYFARER presents a searing silver-screen requiem for the myth of the West. This new work sees them at their most intense and triumphant, as well as at their most pensive. Bold, rhythmic and riff laden, the band’s pointed expedition across the frontiers of black and extreme metal are tinged with the grit and genuine air of artists like Sixteen Horsepower and Jay Munly, and the majestic heights of the Ennio Morricone/Sergio Leone collaborations. Through seven harrowing anthems of the high plains, the album paints a poignant exploration of heroes and killers, the setting sun on a romantic era, and the shadow it has cast on the world we live in today. Recorded in the midst of the pandemic by Pete deBoer (Blood Incantation, Dreadnought), A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE was mixed by the inimitable Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts), and Mastered by V. Santura (Triptykon, Dark Fortress). )30.00
WEAK TIES - Find A Way LP (contraszt - Like a punch in the face and the whole body being shaken. This is what the new record of WEAK TIES sounds like… WEAK TIES is a four piece band from Bielefeld, Germany. In their second album “Find a Way” they diverged from the initial power violence of previous releases and turned to a well done stop-and-go hardcore punk. The album is aggressive, tense, uncompromising and cut to the core. The guitar sound is rather clean and scrappy and blends in perfectly with the overall sound and the blast beats tend to give way to groovier drum rhythms. The riffs screw their way into your brain like parasites and the grooves are as clever as they are blunt, think of early CEREMONY or even BLACK FLAG.) 13.00
WRITHING SQUARES - Chart For The Solution DLP (TROUBLE IN MIND _Writhing Squares - the Philadelphia duo of Kevin Nickles (sax, flute, synth) & Daniel Provenzano (bass, vocals) - have been refining the nuts & bolts of their sound over their previous two albums. Their latest (and second for Trouble In Mind), "Chart For The Solution" is a double album chock full what makes them tick; heady, progressive, psychedelic space-rock-cum-minimal synth slop, punctuated by MacKay/Chance-style blasts of brass & woodwinds that definitely scratch an itch. Over the course of "Chart For The Solution"s four sides, Nickles & Provenzano utilize the extended format to stretch out & settle into a groove all their own. From the relentless synth pulse of opener "Rogue Moon", thru the aggro-throb of "Geisterwaltz" & four-on-the-floor scree of "Ganymede", The Squares have no mercy for your weary ears. After a brief, (slightly) mellow respite thru three tunes ("The Abyss Is Never Brighter"/"A Chorus of Electrons"/"The Library"), the band ratchets up the intensity with the cacophonous clatter of "NFU" (featuring Philly legend "Harmonica" Dan Balcer RIPPING thru runs on his harp) leading right into the album's centerpiece; all of Side Three's "The Pillars", a near-nineteen minute epic suite that launches the listener straight into the maw of a black hole & thru the other side. Side Four closes out "Chart For The Solution" starting with the slinky stomp of "North Side of The Sky" into "Resurrect Dead On Planet Whatever"s unsettling, cosmic-funeral dirge. Fittingly, "Epilogue" closes out the album, with Nickles' sax dive bombing around Provenzano's bass throb like an alien interpretation of "Funhouse"s howling anarchy, augmented by live drums by John Schoemaker & organ by Alex Ward. "Chart For The Solution" really is a ZONE, & the perfect auditory cleanser to scrub away the stain of the previous year. ) 28.00
