Bis Aufs Messer Weekly News
Hi welcome to another newsletter for March. A couple new records from Folklore Tapes arrived, then the fantastic JON COLLIN - The Nature LP, the new LUSTMORD – Much Unseen Is Also Here DLP, JPEGMAFIA - The Ghost-Pop Tape DLP, SPECTRAL VOICE restock, BOHREN & THE CLUB OF GORE restock, CATHARSIS restock, OPPENHEIMER ANALYSIS - new mexico DLP restock,
And there is a bunch of cool stuff en route like two new Valentina Magaletti LPs, Astrid Sonne restocks,
We also got invited to host a show at CASHMERE radio Berlin - you can listen to it here
————————
Also the SWEAT EU tour starts next week in berlin on March 21st at TOMMY HAUS with ROPE
SWEAT TOUR
21.03.24 Berlin / Tommy Haus
22.03.24 Hamburg / Størte
23.03.24 NL - Groningen / Vera Downstage
24.03.24 Münster / Baracke
25.03.24 Darmstadt / Oetinger Villa
26.03.24 Stuttgart / Juha West
27.03.24 A - Vienna / Club 1019
28.03.24 SLO - Koper / Skladišče Libertas
29.03.24 CZ - Prague / 007
30.03.24 Dresden / Veränderbar
And we also added (adding) a few more second hand LPs and 7“s to our discogs
https://www.discogs.com/seller/XMESSERX
Thank you as usual
Til then thank you for all your orders & support.
Robert & Norman
________
LP
ARMS AND SLEEPERS - What Tomorrow Brings DLP (pelagic - BELFAST EDITION - An arresting exploration of the artist’s personal experience of fleeing war-torn Bosnia in the early 1990s, the tragic death of his father in that conflict and how the war in Ukraine echoes these difficult memories, ‘What Tomorrow Brings’ is the breathtaking new full-length release from international artist, producer and prolific creative, Arms and Sleepers. Formed in 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts and now based in Berlin, Germany; Arms and Sleepers is the electronic trip hop project of producer Mirza Ramic (formerly a duo with Max Lewis), who has subsequently released 13 full albums and 20 EPs of glitched-out grooves that take as much inspiration from leftfield hip hop experimentalism as they do from the slowburn ambience and panoramic euphoria of contemporary post-rock. His forthcoming 14th full-length album, ‘What Tomorrow Brings’ is a breathtaking aural account that charts the life-changing journey of being forced out of your home over four distinct, musical sections. Initially inspired by watching Kenneth Branagh’s award-winning coming-of-age drama Belfast as the fighting in Ukraine broke out, MIrza found himself reflecting on his own experience as a child and how it has formed the man he is today. As such, the album’s four sections, titled ‘Innocence’, ‘Melancholy’, ‘Rupture’ and ‘Reflection’, serve as the reification of the life and experience that Mirza lost as well as a representation of the identity he has since shaped for himself.) 35.00
A BURIAL AT SEA – Close to Home LP (pelagic - A cascade of brass-fuelled euphoria arcs across the velvet night as infinite waves of guitar delay lap at a shore both familiar and foreign; explorative, optimistic and triumphant… Inimitable post-rock outsiders A Burial At Sea return with ‘Close To Home’, a soaring sonic love letter to the places and people that shaped them, released on February 23rd, 2024 via Berlin’s Pelagic Records. The collective’s first new music since the eponymous debut full-length in 2020, ‘Close To Home’ is a breathtaking evolution of their unique, brass-led blend of shoegaze, math-metal and blissed out afro-jazz that draws inspiration, influence and insight from the rich Gaelic cultural heritage of their Irish homeland. Now based across the Irish Sea in Liverpool, principal songwriters Patrick Blaney and Dara Tohill composed the bones of ‘Close To Home’ over lockdown in an intense period of introspection, enveloping years of creative ideas brought to life in the here and now. Haunting, bittersweet melodies plucked from childhood, folksong memories ebb and flow like a stream of consciousness as the eclectic collective dial down the overdrive and let the ephemeral, organic spaces where distortion meets horn section sing out the loudest… For example, album opener and lead single ‘páirc béal uisce’ is post-rock patience, reified. A masterfully meditative, slow-burn crescendo that builds upon staccato guitar loops and shimmering cymbals before finally bursting into panoramic, half-time elation that washes over the entirety of the record with remarkable and inspirational conviction. Follow up piece ‘tor head’ is an immediate, pounding paean to the rugged Northern Irish coastline; opening on a hailstorm of palm-muted guitars and fizzing polyrhythmic percussion that channels the raw energy of the band’s math-rock roots through the trials and tribulations of the intervening years. This contemplation is none more evident than on the haunting ‘masterfred’, which serves as an awesome showcase of A Burial At Sea’s latent musical maturity and happens to be named after founding member Dara Tohill’s dad, Fred.) 25.00
BRUIT ≤ – Apologie du temps perdu, Vol. 1″ 12” (pelagic - It’s hard not to see the hype around BRUIT≤ as the next big thing in post-rock. While their 2018 EP Monolith provided a promising indication of their son- ic ambition, it was their debut LP The Machine is Burning and Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again which really set off the trig- ger. Receiving rave reviews around the globe and selling out the first vinyl pressing of 3.000 copies within less than a year, BRUIT≤ have no need to prove themselves beyond what they have already achieved so far.The past year saw the quartet from Toulouse take their music to the stage across Europe, expending themselves as they pushed the limits of their performance each night. It brought the collective on a new path. A trajectory which saw the need for pause, for meditation and reflection, and this gave birth to Apologie du Temps Perdu Vol. 1. A solemn ode to the flagrant act of wasting our time.) 25.00
DAVID CHATTON BARKER with THE WITHWORTH & HEALY VALE BRASS BAND - Brown Wardle Hill LP (folklore tapes - Eleven compositions for Brass Band by David Chatton Barker (plus Sam McLoughlin & Mary Stark), drawing from the rich legend and lore of Brown Wardle Hill in the Vale of Whitworth, Lancashire. Played by an ensemble of six from The Whitworth and Healey Vale Brass Band - Brown Wardle Hill stands as an imposing yet noble hill on the South Pennine Moors of Whitworth, Rossendale, Lancashire. Regarded as a site of prehistoric importance due to the overwhelming amount of mesolithic flint scatterings discovered during the early 20th century, the hill also boasts an incredible amount of lore and legend. In 2019 David Chatton Barker spent a year walking and researching into the hill and its surrounding moors, the material gathered formed a series of performances, culminating in the book 'Lorelines'. David discovered the local brass Whitworth and Healey Vale Brass Band and forged a creative partnership including recordings for Folklore Tapes editions 'The Queen of the Well' and 'Mother Redcap' (both feature on this release). The lore and legend David discovered, sprang from several sources of antiquity, most notably the 'little red book'; 'The Vale of Whitworth, Its Moorlands, Favourite Nooks, Green Lanes, Scenery' by local historian William Robertson and another rambler of the vale known as Maxim, who walked the moors, held historic seminars and fastidiously collected newspaper clippings of local events, archaeology and topography.) 30.00
FAZI – Folding Story LP (pelagic - FAZI are a post-punk band based in the ancient Chinese city of Xi’an. However, there is much more to their story than meets the eye… With five immersive full-length records and a brief stint on peak-time commercial TV already establishing the four-piece at the forefront of a truly pionee- ring wave of alternative music in China, the Euro- pean re-release of their latest offering, ‘Folding Story’, represents an incredible new beginning for a band who have already spent years honing their craft – transforming timeless traditions of love, life and death into a perpetual dance of fre- netic, krautrock energy and sprawling, shoegaze panoramas.) 25.00
GLACIS - Perseverance LP (Oscarson - In December 2015 I moved with my family to the Scottish Borders. Having lived my entire life in cities this was my first time living in the countryside. It was remote, living in a cottage on a farm up a single track road. Out the front window was an old farmhouse, looking down on these quaint workers' cottages. Out the back window were endless fields along with the sound of silence. And yet the countryside is never silent. We simply cannot hear the incredible noise made by animals and plants that exist all around us. One of the first things I did when we moved to the Borders was source and purchase an upright piano. I’d not had access to one since I lived at my parents house in Dundee. Overstrung. The only choice. It took time to source one and to ensure that it was capable of being tuned. It was a beautiful creature too. Simple on the outside but when the front was removed the inner detailing was like a snakeskin - something that my piano tuner commented he had never seen before. However, it wouldn’t tune to concert pitch, due to its age. So, while in tune it was half a tone out and, as such, when working with other musicians I had to constantly explain the need to transpose. Still, it was my piano and it was on this piano that I wrote all of the movement one of Borders entitled Perseverance.) 25.00
JON COLLIN - The Nature LP (early music - 2024 repress! Two-colour riso-printed cover pasted onto kraft brown or reverse-board white sleeves, with insert. Acoustic slide guitar improvisations accompanied by external arbitrary sounds, natural and otherwise; recorded in and outside, with and without electricity, in Stockport and Stockholm, 2016–17. 'What sounds tend to get silenced in the production of a record? Sounds are a perpetual and dynamic property of all landscapes but the walls and circuits of music studios largely exclude biophonic, geophonic and anthrophonic ambient sounds. If the unintended silencing of organisms by a myriad of human activities provides yet another indication of our impact on the planet’s ecosystems should we be concerned about the role of music in normalising this silence? Jon Collin’s conscious broadening of presented sound on this record, most prominently the inclusion of ambient birdsong, sirens, and aviation noise, is not novel and it is not necessarily a response to this question. However, his guitar playing acousmatically smashes the taxonomy of sound used above. It shares palettes and forms with vocalizing and stridulating animals, wind, rain, thunder and electromechanical devices without aping them or labouring under the conceit that it might meaningfully communicate with them. It is, however, attuned to the fact that a soundscape is necessarily made up of interfering and integrated signals (some tropical birds use protracted pure tones in environments with persistent geophonic sounds of wind and rain; song sparrows sing lower, great tits higher, nightingales louder and robins at night in noisy urban environments). This approach choruses, without clarion calling, the quandary and challenge of collectively accepting responsibility for our species’ impact on the stability of ecological systems whilst understanding that we are not external to them.') 26.00
JPEGMAFIA - The Ghost-Pop Tape DLP (Ltd. Remastered Blue Vinyl) DLP (BLUE VINYL - For the first time on vinyl, remastered: JPEGMAFIA's 23-track mixtape from 2013. Originally released digitally on Bandcamp under JPEG's birth name Devon Hendryx, the rapper released it for streaming in 2023, and now it is also appearing physically for the first time. The 'Ghost~Pop Tape' is a lofi hip-hop alt-R&B production as we know it from JPEGMAFIA and showcases his strengths as a versatile rapper and producer.) 55.00
JULIETTE - MEMORIES FADE LP (refuse - JULIETTE was active between 2000 and 2004 in Puławy and was part of the impressive DIY scene in the Lublin/Puławy region. Part of the band’s line-up at the time was also involved in other groups such as the well-known ANTICHRIST or 33 ROTATIONS. Juliette’s sound was rooted in the tradition of US and French emo-hardcore of the 90s, but with its own strong “eastern” twist. Their musical presentation was raw, penetrating and moving. Devoid of sterility and politeness, their sound departed from sugary emo/pop. It was instead a completely different form of expression from the tough-sounding hardcore that seemed to define the whole phenomenon at the time. They were listened to and appreciated by different factions of the scene, which at the time boldly intermingled. They reminded us that punk was also about emotion and sensibility. Active over the course of several years, the band performed in many parts of the country and was one of the few bands from Poland to perform at the Ieper HC Fest in Belgium. The band’s musicians went on to play in other groups such as PANACEA, USP and AFTERBIRTH. Members can currently be seen in BLISS, DIARY OF LAURA PALMER and YELL.) 18.00
KEY & CLEARY - LOVE IS THE WAY LP (now again - In the early ’70s, Jessie Key and Sylvester Cleary – two passionate idealists living in Buffalo, New York – formed a close friendship based on a mutual mission to better their city. The Attica State Prison Riot of 1971 was a burning memory, and the Arthur vs. Nyquist lawsuit – brought against the City of Buffalo for creating and maintaining a racially segregated school system – was on the docket. Key was once a cotton-laborer in Mississippi, who journeyed north for school where he met his kindred spirit, Cleary. The two struck up an intense friendship, bought a drum machine and recorded their first 45, “A Man,” a paean to self-actualization and Black American empowerment, which they custom pressed and issued privately. Dozens of recordings followed over a decade long span, issued on local labels and warehoused on cassette tapes. Perennial optimists, Key & Cleary tried any – perhaps every! – path they could demarcate in hopes of forwarding their agenda of self-effected, positive change. They formed Buffalo’s first minority-owned construction company, opened a health food restaurant in a building previously occupied by a fast food chain, and even concocted a candy bar called “The Buffalo Treat,” which they manufactured and sold locally. Eventually they started their own label, Buffalo’s Reflection. On it they released their masterpiece, “What It Takes To Live,” a sought-after disco and Northern Soul classic, which previously appeared on Now-Again’s Soul Cal anthology.) 36.00
LE DIABLE DEGOUTANT / LE VOILE UNIVERSEL - Naïa La Sorcière de Rochefort-en-Terre LP (folklore — Folklore Tapes first foray overseas finds them in the rural Breton village Rochefort-en-Terre. Once inhabited by the renowned witch Naia, who along with her ‘spirit stick’ familiar ‘Gnami’ cured ills, cursed locals, split in two and crushed hot coals into dust using her hands! Naia is a collaboration with Brittany arts group Le Bon Acceuil and features two distinct sonic explorations into the infamous witch, largely based around the only known article and stunning photoshoot by journalist Charles Géniaux, published in World Wide Magazine in 1899. Face A is by Breton musician Pauline Marx AKA Le Diable Dégoûtant, Face B is by UK group Le Voile Universel (The Universal Veil) AKA Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker.) 30.00
LUSTMORD – Much Unseen Is Also Here DLP (pelagic - Dark ambient pioneer, Stygian drone legend and near-mythical entity LUSTMORD pierces the veil once more with ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’; the artist’s latest, solo full-length release in a formidable, 40-year creative career at the forefront of industrial music. Urged by Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle to make music that captured his distinctive aura, Brian Williams assumed the mantle of Lustmord in 1980 and began working with sound because the music he wanted to listen to simply didn’t exist. Nine years of field-recording experimentation and near-constant collaboration later, Lustmord released his third album, ‘Heresy’, which became a milestone in the industrial scene and is now universally regarded as the origin of the dark ambient genre. 35 years later, ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ continues the legacy established by ‘Heresy’ and echoes its enthralling narrative arc. Sequenced in three distinct parts; ‘Much Unseen Is Also Here’ is meant to be listened to in a single, uninterrupted sitting; transporting listeners away to an uncompromising parallel world that only exists within the music, before casting them back out at the end, forever changed.) 30.00
SAM McLOUGHLIN & DAVID CHATTON BARKER - Environmental Meditation Music (EMM) LP (hooded Environmental Meditation Music (EMM) is a collaborative project with the natural world. Developed by the artists Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker since 2017, the project has collected many hours of recorded material, which has been hewn into a long form digital edition and this two sided 46min long playing record. "Water and air dance and sing. A play of constant ecstasy. We are forever embedded in atmospheric flow. Space held by soft animation. The eardrum moves, mostly beyond attention, and so each leaf, each laughing brook, dripping rock and whistling reed. The same something, always different, forever variegated, changing yet remaining its self." The instruments are made using a variety of materials, ranging from guitar strings, rubber bands, saw blades, clock chimes and jars. Many are amplified using contact microphones, often proving an essential part of capturing the frequencies. For the record sleeves, a paintbrush was suspended on a branch using string. The sleeve was cut and placed upon a table with string passed around four bamboo canes in order to keep the brush contained above the card. Windy days were chosen to animate the brush. The brush was dipped into black drawing ink and begun at the middle of the card. Once the ink had all been applied the process was finished and the sleeve left in the rain for a few seconds. In total 305x card sleeves were created using this process.) 30.00
SAM McLOUGHLIN & DAVID CHATTON BARKER - The Heavenly Realms LP (folklore tape s- Folklore Tapes grow yet another branch of investigation through their new Mystic Series, which begins with the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, who spent the latter portion of his life living in England. The Heavenly Realms unfolded from Folklore Tapes’ residency at Swedenborg House in October 2022. The house, in Bloomsbury Way, London, is the headquarters of the Swedenborg Society, an organisation dedicated to the study and publication of the works of scientist, philosopher and visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker were invited to respond creatively to Swedenborg’s legacy, and it will come as no surprise to their followers that the duo took inspiration from Swedenborg’s mystical experiences. Swedenborg’s most renowned work, Heaven and Hell (1764), synthesised years of dreams, trance states and ecstatic communications with angels into a complete vision of the afterlife and the spiritual realms. In it Swedenborg meticulously details a stratified order of the heavens, an ultimate reality within which physical matter relates to spirit through divine correspondences emanating from a highest, purest echelon, God. The duo approach this vision of eternity through music created entirely with a collection of antique clock chimes. As is often the case in their work, this seeming limitation is precisely what unfetters the project’s singular, expressive depths. The Heavenly Realms opens with a fade from silence to shimmering tintinnabulations and pealing chimes, a wave of sound whose undertow pulls the listener into collective memories of struck metal as timekeeper, summoner of souls and banisher of evil spirits. It’s music held taut by oppositions, at once urgent yet calm, simple yet intricate, with angelic tranquilities humming above a grinding, plaintive underbelly. The drama of the music is as much horizontal as vertical. Choirs of overtones outshine their fundamental frequencies, entwined like Swedenborgian correspondences. Harmonics rising above the audible spectrum imply realms beyond perception, and a certain emphasis on each moment of sound in itself, as distinct from relations between moments, invokes a sense of timelessness, of eternity in each instant. That’s not to say the music doesn’t develop. It charts a contemplative, meditative journey full of variety and interest - it’s just that the listener is invited to listen as much upwards, inwards as forwards. The Heavenly Realms’ most beautiful treasures are reserved for those who listen deeply. A revelatory sound-world manifests, a microcosm of the absolute. Ramsey Janini) 28.00
SOARS – Repeater LP (pelagic. - SOARS is the solo project of Kristian Karlsson, synth player in CULT OF LUNA and bass player/vocalist in PG.LOST – and yes, ‘Repeater’, a truly epic instrumental rock album bustling with delay-drenched drama and joyful yet melancholic melodies will make every PG.LOST fan very, very happy. Why is it not a PG.LOST album then? “I got tired of discarding ideas I’ve written that didn’t ft PG.LOST, but at the same time were too good for my ears to throw away. PG.LOST as a collective works at a relatively slow pace, while I by default write music all the time… so eventually it became clear to me that I needed a new outlet for all those ideas”.) 25.00
TILT - ON THE BORDER LINE LP (refuse - Over forty years late – this is the premiere of one the most important recordings in Polish alternative music and most of all, the very first studio recording of a punk band from Poland! TILT from their 1980 recording session, is a milestone whose significance due to the lack of an official release has never been sufficiently understood and appreciated. This is the very beginning of the band’s studio experiences, a band who a few years later became one of the most known of the Polish domestic music scene. TILT, along with DEADLOCK and KRYZYS, were one of the key musical formations in the first wave of punk scene in Poland. They were a part of a cultural subversion. They created a space filled with a community which could boldly express itself and propose its own artistic forms regardless of external and internal limitations. Creativity and having a means of self expression allowed people to escape the expectations and control of a gloomy political regime. The formation of subsequent music groups, the first Polish-language zines, leaflets, graphics, collages, performances and other forms of artistic expression, all formed an undeniable movement, which at the turn of the decade between the 1970s and 1980s, initiated the culture of what is referred to as third circuit – underground network for the distribution of information while the second circulation had consisted of political opposition to the communist party. The first stage in the history of the band TILT happened in the period between 1979-1980. Initially, the band was formed by Tomek Lipiński, Tomek Szczeciński and Jacek Lenartowicz. Jacek had previously played in the legendary DEADLOCK from Gdańsk. Before end of this chapter of history of the band, Pyza joined them and she was playing the keyboards.) 24.00
THE UNIVERSAL VEIL - Helios/Hind LP (Hood Faire - *Limited to 231 hand numbered copies* The Universal Veil is a duo comprised of Sam McLoughlin (Twisted Nerve/Pre-Cert Home Entertainment) and Folklore Tapes head honcho David Chatton Barker. Their improvised live performances with their own handmade "ritual instruments" are by turns meditative, trancelike, joyous and surreal. Helios/Hind is a fascinating sonic artifact which unearths lo-fi cassette recordings from several years of past performances and weaves them together into a new whole, using an array of esoteric processes. It is possessed by the same spirit of mystery and discovery that is present at their live shows, where unusual sounds are spontaneously generated, recycled and transmuted into a deeply strange, magical and psychedelic soundscape which at times feels like it has a life of its own. Helios/Hind is limited to 231 hand-numbered copies and was pressed at Vinyl Factory, UK. The record is housed in a Manilla die-cut sleeve with a sun scorched sigil branded on the reverse and packaged with an insert pamphlet with triangulation notes.) 28.00
V/A - When the Frog from the Well Sees the Ocean (Reports from English UFOlklore) LP (folklore tapes - This latest collection from Folklore Tapes borrows its title from a Japanese proverb about knowing one's limitations ("the frog in the well knows nothing of the sea"), which was itself borrowed from a Chinese fable. In the context of an album devoted to UFO lore, of course, humans are the frogs, the infinite universe is the ocean, and the usual eclectic Folklore Tapes cast of characters gleefully devote themselves to celebrating the colorful hoaxes and stories of their countrymen who claim to have experienced a visit from extraterrestrial life. While alien visitations are admittedly a bit outside the usual realm of Folklore Tapes' research, I would be hard pressed to think of a roster of artists better suited to tackle the topic, as just about everyone involved brings a freewheeling playfulness to the theme and surprises abound. This is yet another characteristically brilliant and inspired compilation from the inimitable Folklore Tapes. Hell, it might even be their best yet." - Brainwashed) 30.00
