Bis Aufs Messer weekly News 05 May 2023
Hi. Welcome to another newsletter for May. A bunch of restocks arrived this week - but also some cool new releases like the GREG MALCOLM + STEFAN NEVILLE - Don't Drown 2x10“. LARY 7 - Larynx DLP, SCHLIPPENBACH QUARTET -anticlockwise LP, V/A - Canto A Lo Divino DLP, LOOPSEL - Öga For Öga LP , GIA MARGARET - Romantic Piano LP, PORTRAYAL OF GUILT - Devil Music LP, XIU XIU - Ignore Grief TAPE, JULIUS EASTMAN – Femenine DLP, TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS - Teenage Jesus & The Jerks LP, TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS - Teenage Jesus & The Jerks LP re issue, LYDIA LUNCH – Queen Of Siam LP, BEN VIDA WITH YARN/WIRE AND NINA DANTE – The Beat My Head Hit LP, and much more …
We also added 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
10“
GREG MALCOLM + STEFAN NEVILLE - Don't Drown 2x10“ (okraina - Stefan Neville is one of the busier beavers on the North island of New Zealand. Recording under his own name, as Pumice (or a variety of other soubriquets), running the Stabbies & the Rockets label, drumming for the Coolies and so on, he keeps his tail moving quickly so that it does not grow moss. Greg Malcolm is one of New Zealand's premier avant garde string-benders. He did a bit of band aktion with Jay Clarkson in Breathing Cage but has mostly hewed to stranger improv-based roads. On this Double 10" both play / cover traditional American and Irish Folk Songs plus a mind-blowing Hanns Eisler tune. As all Okraina releases the double 10"s comes with a beautiful artwork!!) 22.00
LP
AKI TAKASE & ALEXANDER VON SCHLIPPENBACH - Four Hands Piano Pieces LP (trust - Two grand pianos, quasi two orchestras, driven by two of the most distinguished personalities of contemporary jazz: Aki Takase and Alexander von Schlippenbach - they are having a conversation within the medium of sound. But they complement one another in a way that makes any stylistic differentiation irrelevant. With all the transparency in the course of their playing the dialogical principle opens out into an holistic piano language. What counts is freedom and the responsibility to create something new, driven by the awareness of continuous change. (Bert Noglik) ''During the first attempts to improvise with four hands on the piano, it soon became clear that playing together without any conceptual guidelines - of whatever kind - can quickly lead to unwanted tautologies or even pleonasms.On the other hand, it is quite possible that with longer experience in practice, something useful will emerge. The present pieces, which were composed over a period of thirty years meet these criteria in different ways.'' Liner notes by Alexander von Schlippenbach. Recording by Olaf Rupp at AA Studio on 1.-3. September 2021 Edited, Mixed by Olaf Rupp on 6. March 2022 Photos by Manfred Rinderspacher and Georg Tuskany) 28.00
ASHER GAMEDZE - Dialectic Soul DLP (on the corner - Sold out on release in 2020, Asher Gamedze"s Dialectic Soul finally returns as a limited edition clear vinyl press ahead of On The Corner"s 10th anniversary. Dialectic Soul is the debut album from one of Cape Town"s most cutting-edge, visionary artists and musicians, the drummer Asher Gamedze.) 30.00
BEN VIDA WITH YARN/WIRE AND NINA DANTE – The Beat My Head Hit LP (shelter - Where Ben Vida’s music has previously explored the sound of text at the outer register of electronic composition, here, in collaboration with the Yarn/Wire quartet and the vocalist Nina Dante, the voice and the words it works to inhabit are placed back at the time-scale of a song. There is a familiarity to this music’s combination of restrained melody and heightened atmosphere. It feels, softly, like it’s made by a band: piano, percussion, voice. A composition kept aloft and even by its four stewards through a simultaneity of effort. The pace, across five pieces, hurries and relaxes but never outruns or distends language. You could find a story in the words being sung, if that’s what you need. But there are unfamiliar dimensions too. So many threads, so many timelines. A story or a thousand, or a litany of scraps: language complete but raw, language that can or cannot be translated. Singers fused at the breath. Oppositions or dualities—a question and an answer, two sides of a conflict, the sense of being here or over there— are drawn together into a single sentiment, plural with feeling. Voices negotiating in unison how to articulate a stance. Musical cues doling out tension as needed.) 28.00
CLAUDIO ROCCHETTI – Decay Music n. 5: Labirinto Verticale LP (die Schachtel. The latest work, after six years of silence, from Italian berlin-based composer, performer and publisher (Black Letter Press) Claudio Rocchetti, and a welcomed return on the Die Schachtel imprint after the brilliant Another Piece of teenage wildlife (2008), Labirinto verticale (Vertical Maze) takes its origin from the four years long collaboration of Rocchetti with the Parma-based Fondazione Lenz, a contemporary theatre research collective/organization. Immersed in their very fertile milieu, inspired by the writings of Hölderlin and Calderon de la Barca, and orbiting around the concepts of Memory, Sedimentation, Presence/Absence, Rocchetti produced several hours of music, a selection of which is collected in this album, that marks the n.5 in the internationally acclaimed Die Schachtel’s series “Decay Music”, perfectly fitting its mission, which is to explore the more “intangible”, “decomposing” (in a re-generative sense of the term) borders between experimental sound and “proper” music with a special focus on the more interesting experiences of the contemporary Italian scene.) 28.00
DAMĀVAND – Decay Music n. 6: As long as you come to my Garden LP (die schachtel - "As long as you come to my garden", the sixth release in the cherished Die Schachtel’s series “Decay Music” as well as the debut of the duo Damāvand (Gianluca Ceccarini and Alessandro CIccarelli) on the prestigious Italian label, is a tribute to the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova, through his lyrics and freely inspired by the cult movie about his life The Color of the Pomegranates (Nřan guynə, 1968, USSR) directed by Sergei Parajanov. The feature film tells the life of the poet, who lived in the 17th Century, from childhood in the royal court, to retirement until his death in the monastery of Haghpat, through a series of episodes, static like paintings that do not tell but show, evoke, they suggest through metaphors, analogies, surrealist flair, dreamlike landscapes, liturgical pauses. The six tracks are inspired by the dreamlike imagery contained in the movie, weaving sound textures ranging from ambient to noise, to references to the musical tradition of the Middle East.) 28.00
ELISABETH KLINCK – Picture a Frame LP (hallow ground - Picture a Frame,« the debut album by the Belgian composer Elisabeth Klinck, was born out of strict isolation and is nonetheless a result of a collaborative process that saw her working closely with artist Oscar Claus. Enriching her compositions for violin with electronic soundscapes and field recordings from their surroundings, the two entered an artistic dialogue that took place inside its own idiosyncratic space outside of conventional time. It is an intimate record in which Klinck’s expressive playing that incorporates unconventional techniques forms the basis of something much bigger: an invitation to inhabit a specific space at a specific time together with the two of them.) 28.00
GIA MARGARET - Romantic Piano LP (jagjaguwar - irst, Gia Margaret called her new album Romantic Piano to be a little cheeky. Because the spare, gentle piano pieces have more in common with Erik Satie, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou and the "Marginalia" releases by Masakatsu Takagi than with a cozy candlelit date night. But there is a hidden intention in this cheekiness: The beautiful set suggests "romance" in a more classic sense, which the Germans call forest solitude. The compositions evoke the lofty themes of the Romantic poets: solitude in nature, nature's ability to heal and teach, a sense of contented melancholy. "I wanted to make music that was useful," says Margaret, grossly understating the power of the record. Romantic Piano is curious, soothing, patient and incredibly moving - but it doesn't linger for more than a second. Margaret's debut album There's Always Glimmer was a lyrical marvel, but when an illness prevented her from singing on tour, she recorded her ambient album Mia Gargaret (another cheeky title!), which has a keen sense of arrangement and composition showed that wasn't fully realized in the lyrical songs of There's Always Glimmer. Romantic Piano also manages almost entirely without words. "Writing instrumental music is generally a much more enjoyable process than writing lyrics, and it ultimately affects my songwriting," she says. Romantic piano strengthens her as a compositional force. Margaret had originally aimed for a degree in composition, but dropped out of music school halfway through. "I really didn't want to play in an orchestra," she says of her decision, "I really only wanted to write film music. Then I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter." Romantic Piano indeed touches on a rare emotion in art, often reserved only for cinema - the simultaneous awe of existence with the big lens and the intimate inner monologue after language when we're stuck in our skulls. And that's very romantic!) 28.00
JULIUS EASTMAN – Femenine DLP (frozen -JULIUS EASTMAN – Femenine DLPRecorded live on Wednesday, November 6, 1974 at Composers Forum in Albany, The Arts Center on the Campus of the Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York. Performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble. Recorded by Steve Cellum. Tape transferred by Garry Rindfuss. With liner notes and then some by Mary Jane Leach. Mastered by Jim O'Rourke at Steamroom. Design by Antoine Verhaverbeke. Cover by Andrew Roth: »Untitled (Julius Eastman)«, c.1980.) 39.00
LARY 7 - Larynx DLP (Blank Forms -Recorded in Lary 7's legendary apartment studio Plastikville over nearly a decade, Larynx is the first full-length retrospective of the East Village icon's hybrid music and engineering practice. The record mobilizes 7's array of homemade instruments, which he `frankensteins' together from offcast and outmoded bits of technology. An ode to the long-lost Canal Street junk shops he frequented in the 1970s and '80s, Larynx brings together numerous thrift finds and sonic inventions used in his theatrical performances and installations. To play "le concretotron," a board covered with twenty years worth of unspooled magnetic tape, 7 runs a tape head topographically over the flattened strips, picking up snippets of their recorded contents. The spring tree, another of his contraptions, is simply turned on and left to its own devices; feedback loops cause the amplified coils to resound in space and slowly increase in volume. The track "Mechano-Bleep" features a pattern generator constructed from a telephone sequence switch, 150 oscillators from an electric accordion, a sewing machine motor, and an early computing system called a "select-a-board." Meanwhile, antiquated electronic instruments abound_7 employs the Ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer; a Philicorda organ; and a homemade Trautonium, among other gadgets. Following Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Raymond Scott of Manhattan Research, 7 adopts a painstaking editing process that is entirely analogue. With lacquer cut directly from reel-to-reel and mastered by Paul Gold, Larynx is, in 7's words, "the sound of the twentieth century going haywire." Multimedia art alchemist LARY 7 was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1956, and encouraged by his mother to mine junkyards for treasure from a young age. A former media studies student of Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, and Hollis Frampton at the city's public university, 7 was also educated in engineering, architecture, and filmmaking. He moved to Manhattan permanently in the late 1970s, where he used his technical know-how to launch a career as a commercial art photographer, working for major galleries and downtown friends alike, and has been a fixture of New York's experimental underground ever since. Rejecting digital technologies because of their premeditated nature, 7 uses esoteric, often precarious analog equipment and instruments for his absurd, unpredictable presentations. In addition to his solo work, 7 has collaborated with the likes of Conrad, Tom Verlaine, Swans, Jarboe, Jutta Koether, and Foetus. In 2015, Anthology Film Archives celebrated the release of Danielle de Picciotto's documentary Not Junk Yet: The Art Of Lary 7 with a three-day retrospective of his films. He retired from commercial photography after Hurricane Sandy and remains a tenant in the same East Village building he has lived in since the mid-‚80s.) 35.00
LOOPSEL - Öga For Öga LP (DFA - Like a dream foggily remembered, Loopsel's Öga For Öga is tempting in its beauty yet slightly menacing in its depth. These songs, like paths in the forest forest, are heavily, almost treacherously, reverberated, with finger-plucked guitars acting as your signposts amongst the flora and fauna of field recordings, pads, and the cool, calm voice of Elin Engström. The album is the second from Engström as Loopsel. She is a Gothenburg-based musician and one-half of both the group Monokultur and the team behind the tiny Mamma's Mystersika Jukebox label with her partner JJULIUS. During what seemed like the nadir of the pandemic, the blurry, otherworldly sounds emanating from their living room snaked snaked into the office of New York's DFA Records, where the otherwise dutifully DIY pair found the scale of worldwide release and distribution. Öga For Öga is the second release from that partnership (following JJULIUS' VOL. 2 in 2022).) 28.00
LYDIA LUNCH – Queen Of Siam LP (radiation -
MOTORPSYCHO + JAGA JAZZIST HORNS - In the Fishtank 10 LP (Motorpsycho has been one of the preferred candidates for a fish tank recording session for many years. When Stickman changed distributors in Benelux two years ago, the time had finally come. During their European tour in 2002, between boring press days and various festivals, the three Norwegians went to the famous Fishtank Studio together with the horn section of the Jagga Jazzists. Without a fixed plan, they improvised wildly for two days. The result is five unique tracks that bring out the full stylistic range of the two Norwegian bands. The material tends between Stax-like soul, Pharaoh Sanders, John Coltrane and driving rock elements.) 20.00
NINA NASTASIA - Riderless Horse LP (temporary - The US-American songwriter NINA NASTASIA returns after a twelve(!) year break with a new album on Temporary Residence! Her sixth studio album "Riderless Horse" was again created in close collaboration with Steve Albini, who has been a declared fan of the Californian since her 2000 debut "Dogs". "Riderless Horse" was recorded after NINA NASTASIA took an extended hiatus from music - her acclaimed latest album Outlaster was released in 2010 - and after the suicide of her former partner and longtime creative collaborator, Kennan Gudjonsson, in 2020. "Riderless Horse" now documents this grief, but also deals with moments of self-empowerment and the joy of discovering her own abilities, as the cult musician explains in a statement accompanying the album announcement. NASTASIA produced "Riderless Horse" with Steve Albini, with whom she has worked on all her previous albums, and Greg Norman in a cabin in the woods in upstate New York.) 28.00
ORG - Org LP (Selected by Jim O’Rourke for his Tone Glow list of 25 albums that “never got their due”, Org was founded in the early 90’s by Espen Jensen and Kjetil D Brandsdal who would later go on to variously record as Elektrodiesel, Noxagt and Ultralyd in the swirl of the highly active Norwegian underground. “Org" was the only album the pair recorded as a duo, pressed in a meagre edition of just over 100 copies which disappeared almost as soon as they were made, lodged in the memory of the select few who have managed to hear it in the years since. Made up of three long tracks, the near 20-minute ‘001’ opens the album with an extended organ zone-out matched with scraping factory machinery saturated into a dense cloud of harmonic fuzz. There's something transcendental about the sound that intersects with microtonal Alice Coltrane (particularly the unfairly maligned organ-only edition of "Turiya Sings"), as well as Pauline Oliveros and Ramleh. It’s music that pulls you in subconsciously; before you know it, you're fixating on the uncomfortable grind of metal on metal, buried mechanical rhythms and liturgical organ vamps that wind between industrial cacophony and sacred ritual music. For its last few seconds, we go into a full death metal tearout that fades out before it takes full flight, a glorious wtf.) 28.00
PORTRAYAL OF GUILT - Devil Music LP (Grey Vinyl. Plunge deeper into the deranged world of PORTRAYAL OF GUILT with DEVIL MUSIC, the latest EP from the Austin-based trio. In the wake of releasing two full-length records in 2021 - We Are Always Alone and CHRISTFUCKER - they followed up 2022 with a year of relentless touring. In the middle of their frantic schedule, the band took time to craft the five new songs that would make up Devil Music with Viva Studios' Matt Michel (Majority Rule) in Virginia. They then took their creative vision to the next level with Ben Greenberg (Uniform), by tracking alternate versions of each song with orchestral arrangements in place of the three piece's standard instrumentation. On Devil Music, Portrayal of Guilt's goal is to create a visceral listening experience. On either version of these songs, whether it be the a-side's more familiar heaviness or the orchestral b-side takes, the band is determined to drag the listener with them through what feels like a reckoning. Lyrics on songs like the opener "One Last Taste of Heaven" feel burdened with a sense of finality - "I've carried this body for miles_ I lay the angel on the wooden pyre / before taking one last Tate of heaven" feels as heavy as the blackened guitar riff refraining throughout the song. Through other songs like the intense "Burning Hand" (complete with it's hypnotizing post-punk bridge) or the epic title-track closer, the imagery of King's lyrics is an unapologetically grotesque examination of loss, exhaustion and suffering - brought fully to life by illustrator Ben Robert's cover art for the release. These songs are yet another example of Portrayal of Guilt pushing the limits of their sound into more extremes. Since their inception they have been challenging the boundaries of genre, taking elements from screamo, blackened metal, grind and industrial music to make something uniquely unsettling and expertly-crafted. Devil Music feels like the soundtrack to a future-less future, one where either path you tread is destined to lead towards ruin.) 27.00
SCHLIPPENBACH QUARTET -anticlockwise LP (trist - Schlippenbach Quartet: Evan Parker - soprano & tenor saxophone, Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano, Alan Silva - double bass, Paul Lovens - drums, percussion This album was originally released on FMP in 1983. Remastered in 2022 by Martin Siewert. CREDITS: Recording:live on September 11th, 1982 at the Quartier Latin in Berlin by Jost Gebers Production:Jost Gebers Re-Mastering:2022 by Martin Siewert Artwork:G. Fritze Margull Publisher:FMP Photos:Dagmar Gebers) 32.00
STEFANO PILIA - Spiralis Aurea DLP (die Schachtel - 2023 repress, edition of 190 copies, 180g vinyl, six-panel gatefold sleeve w/ booklet First emerging during the early 2000s, over the past two decades – via solo releases and numerous collaborations with artists like Oren Ambarchi, Valerio Tricoli, Alessandra Novaga, Z'EV, Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, and numerous others - Stefano Pilia has presented a singular voice within Italian experimental music, harnessing visceral energy and hands-on immediacy within delicately woven tapestries of sonority, each investigating the sculptural properties of sound and illuminating its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time. Spiralis Aurea, his third solo release with Die Schachtel, encounters the composer venturing into unchartered waters, exploring notions of spirituality via a body of twelve compositions, recorded in various combinations with a cast of all-star instrumentalist; Alessandra Novaga, iosonouncane, Silvia Tarozzi, Mattia Cipolli, Ensemble Concordanze, Elisa Bognetti, Enrico Gabrielli, Valeria Sturba, Giuseppe Franchellucci, Adrian Utley, and Cecilia Stacchiotti. The roots of Spiralis Aurea rest within Pilia’s longstanding, personal engagement with the spiritual and an epiphany had during a visit to the Futa Pass cemetery, the resting place for German soldiers killed in Italy during the Second World War. Deeply moved, he reflected on the profound meanings laying below the geometry of its design; “a place 'crossed' by thoughts about the landscape, history, symbols, rituals. A work offering a reflection on life and death. A prayer for the living and the dead.” Stepping back from the intuitive immediacy that guided his work for decades, and inspired by the concepts of “divine geometry”, he set out to translate a series of numerical relationships and geometric figures into “sacred” musical forms, attempting to grasp enduring archetypes that underpin collective experience, believing that art holds the potential to operate as a balm for the isolation fostered by the modern world.) 45.00
STERNENMÄDCHEN - Gilles Zeitschiff 2 LP ("Timothy Leary!" - That was "Star Girl" Gille Lettmann's almost breathy final word on the 1974 album Gilles Zeitschiff, Vol But it wasn't published at that time - let's say: due to circumstances. Until now. Almost 50 years after its recording, the ZEITSCHIFF 2 can finally take off. Gille conjures up Leary's spirit here too, comets and stars hiss through space on fluorescent traces of rays - the Cosmic Couriers live up to their name. But unlike in Vol. 1, everything is in one piece here. The careful remastering ensures a compact sound, and where the "Queen of Sunshine" outshined everything else on the first record, in ZEITSCHIFF 2 a clear hand ensures clarity. This hand belongs to the Italian pianist and conductor Roberto Cacciapaglia. The quadro album Sonanze, produced by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, was his ticket to the magic circle of cosmic magicians. Even if it wasn't called that at the time: Sonanze was an early approach to a genre that we now call "ambient". One senses the potential Rolf heard in Roberto's music. Dieter and Rolf knew how to integrate Roberto's competence. ZEITSCHIFF 2 has become a fluently composed, effectively arranged work that radiates warmth and cosmic tranquility without lacking in excitement. A work that brings the spirit of space rock from the early seventies back to life and shows us today the tracks the cosmic couriers followed back then. GILLES ZEITSCHIFF 2 is more than just a sequel. And also more than a premiere: it is a discovery.)27.00
TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS - Teenage Jesus & The Jerks LP (radiation - During the late 1970s, after No Wave pioneer Lydia Lunch met saxophonist James Chance, she began setting her angry and disjointed poetry to anti-music, founding her ground-breaking band Teenage Jesus and The Jerks with Lunch’s shouted lyrics matched by her non-conventional use of electric guitar. The group’s self-titled debut EP is a fast and furious affair, produced by Robert Quine of the Voidoids/Lou Reed, with future Nick Cave drummer Jim Sclavunos on bass and Bradley Field on minimalist percussion; steeped in aggression and audacity, it’s an awesome disc that rebuffs punk’s easy cliches and refuses to be categorized. This reissue also includes the ‘Pre’ EP and the tracks from the legendary No New York compilation.) 26.00
V/A - Canto A Lo Divino DLP (mississippi - Canto A Lo Divino is the unique musical expression of the Chilean peasant world - a conversation with the divine nourished by Biblical and other sacred texts. It is communal music, played in packed rooms throughout the night on the 25-string guitarron, its ancient melodies transmitted through the 10-line decima form originating in Spain and found across the Caribbean, South America, and even into the Mississippi Delta. Rooted in the remote Central Valley of Chile at the skirt of the mountains and following the slopes of the major rivers, the Canto tradition has persisted for centuries in the voices of hundreds of men and women who sing of saints, divine images, and angelitos (very young children who have died). The verses are also centered around daily life in the valley - labor and drought, family, animals, and plants. There are countless entonaciones (melodies) that define this region, its communities, and its unique worldview. Mississippi Records is privileged to work with the Museo Campesino En Movimiento and their archive of hundreds of hours of intimate field recordings of the Canto - music rarely, if ever, heard outside of the region. Artwork is provided by another inhabitant of Chile's Central Valley, a baker called Frederico Lohse, who brought divine visions from the Cantos to life, painted on reused flour bags. Canto A Lo Divino celebrates the complexity and solemn, stunning beauty of this nocturnal, communal form of musical devotion. Double vinyl LP comes housed in deluxe gatefold jacket with 8 pages of lyric translations and liner notes about the Canto tradition by researcher Danilo Petrovich.) 34.00
TAPES
XIU XIU - Ignore Grief TAPE (stoned to death - Over the course of the last two decades, Xiu Xiu’s prolific output of critically acclaimed albums and collaborations has been consistent and dazzling. They have collaborated with songwriters like Mitski, Sharon Van Etten, Deerhoof, Chelsea Wolfe, Twin Shadow and others, as well as avant-garde composers like Charlemagne Palestine. They’ve released many full-length albums that have been praised in outlets such as The New Yorker, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, NME and others, and have toured the globe relentlessly, performing alongside artists such as Deerhoof, Swans, Tune-Yards, and more at places like The Guggenheim, Primavera Festival, Benicassim Festival, Pitchfork Festival and others. Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror.) 15.00
