BIS AUFS MESSER weekly news July 02 / 2021
hi. Welcome to another newsletter for July. A bunch of stuff is still en route to us (La Vida es un mus, Mount Eerie, YA etc) - but we got some new things in stock like the new BIG BRAVE LP, BOOTLICKER LP, the new DAMON LOCKS LP, DIAMANDA GALAS - De-formation: Piano Variations LP, HEAVENLY - A Bout De Heavenly: The Singles LP restock, a bunch of CARAL DAL FORNO restocks, MARK PERRY - Snappy Turns LP (!!!), TREY GRUBER - Herculean House of Cards DLP and some older NUMERO group restocks, MARTA FORSBERG - tkac LP and more….
We also reprinted the BIS AUFS MESSER POCKET PRINT T-shirts and they are available in S/M/L/XL/XXL … unfortunately all t-shirt companies raised their prices - so all shirts got a little more expensive
And we also thought to refresh the classic ADAGIO830 T-shirt and print a little run of the T-shirt as a pocket print as well. Check them out
And we repressed the DIÄT - positive energy LP - get one if you missed out so far.
The FLETCHER TUCKER _ unlit trail TAPES are en route to us and we ship pre orders as soon as they are here.
Thank you for your support in those difficult times
We are also back on the store MONDAY TIL SATURDAY from 11°° - 18°°
Norman & Robert
mailorder@bisaufmesser.com
www.adagio830-records.bandcamp.com
10“
SPACE AFRIKA – Untitled (To Describe You) [OST] 10“ (Gold metallic Pantone printed on reverse board Space Afrika follow last year’s heartbreaking x perception-bending mixtape “hybtwibt?” with an anxious patchwork of drill bass, reflective musique concrete and after-hours surrealism >> singular deep headspace exploration to file alongside Mark Leckey, Perila, Burial or Klein. Assembled to accompany a short film from Manchester-born visual artist, poet and filmmaker Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh, Joshua Inyang and Joshua Tarelle’s newest is a cinematic audit of identity and ancestry. In the film, Sanoh works hard to visually illustrate an honest and vulnerable picture of her soul. Inyang and Tarelle respond by doing the same with sound, collaging disparate elements together in a way that should be familiar to anyone who heard “hybtwibt?” or their jawdropping RA mix from earlier this year. Warped field recordings, overdriven rhythmic pressure, syrupy pads and disorienting vocals are cut and pasted over each other, generating a living, breathing study of the duo’s Northern working class Black British reality. Unlike the duo’s acclaimed “Somewhere Decent To Live” full-length, elements mutate and transform: mushy noise bends into street sounds, haunted vocals into echoing drill melancholia and muffled howls into shattered digital remnants. The main event is the full 10-minute soundtrack, that’s layered with Sanoh’s disorienting and deeply personal poetry and echoes Mark Leckey’s recent “In This Lingering Twilight Sparkle”. Then the EP is bumped up with three sketches from the same sessions, two of which never made it to the final mixdown. ‘Version 3’ is a particular highlight, pasting heartbreaking piano and blowtorched vocal loops over winding drill bass > sounds like Burial remixing Unknown T into pure syrup.) 21.00
LP
BIG BRAVE - vital LP (southern lord - Minimalism and instinct, structure/freedom and meticulous timing form the cornerstones of their precise, rhythmical sound. Lyrically, the album explores the weight of race and gender, endurance and navigating other people's behaviours, observation and protest. The band further comment "this album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while finding individual worth within this reality." This time featuring the core trio Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson, for their most collaborative record they've made so far. The band elaborate "having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears." For this record, BIG | BRAVE once again made the trek down to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. They remark "we fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey and pleasure.“) 26.00
BOOTLICKER - Bootlicker LP (static shock - t's 2021 and Vancouver’s Bootlicker are back with their first full length. Experimenting with various lineups and sounds since 2017, these 14 original tracks flesh out their most realized expression. Following four EP’s and two demos, their self-titled debut stays true to the noise cultivated in the previous offerings. That raw, blown-out production countered with clean guitar sound and Internationally-informed take on a UK82 delivery remains. Everything that made the band what they were on their previous output is polished into a ball of fire that will not be contained. Their mid-tempo, menacing posture of tracks like "Herd The Sheep" and "State Of Fever" give way to the D-beat totality of "Master" or "Two Faced" proving there are still ideas in the tank. There won’t be much left but scorched earth by the time it comes to rest. FFO: Mau Maus, Discharge, SSD. Every copy of this LP comes with 16 page zine-style lyric insert full of illustrations by band member and visual artist Athena.) 18.00
CHRISMA - Chinese Restaurant LP (spittle - Spittle Records presents a reissue of Chinese Restaurant by Italian new wave duo Chrisma, originally released in 1977. The album was recorded between London and Milano during the second half of 1977, and the results were something like post-punk. More in the direction of bands such as Ultravox, The Stranglers, and Suicide than the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, due to the use of electronic keyboards, obsessive rhythms, tense harmonies, and scratching vocals emerging from generally dark sound textures. Chinese Restaurant was definitely ahead of its time, especially in terms of Italian rock.) 20.00
DAMON LOCKS BLACK MONUMENT ENSEMBLE - now LP (international anthem - Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble’s new album "NOW" was created in the final throes of Summer 2020, following months of pandemic-induced fear & isolation, the explosion of social unrest, struggle & violence in the streets, and as the certain presence of a new reality had fully settled in. Set up safely in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, the music was recorded in only a few takes, capturing the first times members of BME had ever played or sang the tunes. For Locks, the impetus was more about getting together to commune and make art than it was about producing an album. In his words: “It was about offering a new thought. It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape... what happens NOW?’”
) 27.00
DEAN HURLEY - Concrete Feather LP (boomkat - Edition of 500 copies, emerald vinyl, incl. printed inner sleeve Lynch protégé and Twin Peaks sound designer Dean Hurley coaxes an incredible puzzlebox of atmospheres and mood pieces on this killer contribution to our Documenting Sound series, now remastered and pressed on vinyl for what is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most cinematic and neon-lit instalment in the series. Like a smudged and overdubbed copy of the BoC Maxima tape, with added iridescence. Across almost 40 minutes we transition from aerosolised synths to romantic chromatics, thru to Nurse WIth Wound-style severed rhythms and fading glimmers of hope, ‘Concrete Feather’ epitomises Dean Hurley’s prized knack for nuanced instrumental story-telling in the finest and most engrossing style we could imagine. Against the backdrop of the Hollywood film industry that has primed us for as long as we can all remember, the music spans a panorama of lush, mirage-like choral pads and starry flickers thru to gloaming nightmare sequences and screwed drums, while touching on some of the dankest synth tones this side of his ‘Anthology Resource’ volumes or indeed his soundtrack work for Twin Peaks: The Return. It’s full of dread and a slowly unfolding sense of tragedy. "Having a regular practice of recording is probably the single most important element to my craft. It’s a way of dropping indiscriminate mile markers while constantly moving forward in time without ability to pause. Over the years, working for David Lynch taught me a great deal about this and the concept and importance of experimentation. I’ve found myself clinging to those lessons during this time and using them as tools for both productivity and balance.) 28.00
DIAMANDA GALAS - De-formation: Piano Variations LP (De-formation: Piano Variations, a work for solo piano. Composed and performed by Galás in September 2019, the 21:19 minute piece is based on the expressionist poem Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital). Written by German poet Georg Heym in 1912, Das Fieberspital's depiction of warehoused patients of yellow fever presaged the treatment and hiding of infected and damaged soldiers later in WWI. De-formation depicts a march and delivery of maimed and infected soldiers to hospitals and industrial warehouses throughout Germany during and after the First World War. In the hospitals the maimed would receive experimental operations and the infected would be confined to protect the mental vitality, enthusiasm, and health of citizens of the State. The Piano Variations were inspired by Galás' work on the score for Das Fieberspital. In organizing the work, she realized that the piano skeleton had become its own work, and she decided to record that in advance of the vocal work.) 28.00
HEAVENLY - A Bout De Heavenly: The Singles LP (back in stock - A potted history of Heavenly… Heavenly debuted with the 7″ single ‘I Fell in Love Last Night’, followed by another 7″, ‘Our Love Is Heavenly’, both released in 1990 on Sarah Records. Heavenly vs. Satan, the group’s debut album, came out in 1991. At this stage in their career, Heavenly’s songs were still mainly concerned with an innocent view of love, whether or not requited, and the instrumentation remained very much the same jangly guitar style used by Talulah Gosh.Before releasing the critically acclaimed Le Jardin de Heavenly, Cathy Rogers (keyboard, back-up vocals) joined the band. Her harmony vocals and keyboards became an integral part of the group’s sound. Before their next long-player, Heavenly released two non-album 7″ singles, ‘P.U.N.K. Girl’ and ‘Atta Girl’. These signalled a growing complexity in Amelia’s songwriting, particularly ‘Atta Girl’, in which Amelia and Cathy sung in rapid-fire trade-off vocals. A broadening (and darkening) of lyrical subject matter was shown in the B-side, ‘Hearts and Crosses’, which told the story of a date rape, with an upbeat keyboard riff providing an ironic counterpoint.) 22.00
JIM O’ROURKE - Too Compliment LP (DDS - Clear vinyl edition - DDS catch enduringly absorbing sonic alchemist Jim O’Rourke at his knottiest and most ingenious in a wormholing suite of amorphous rhythm and psychedelic electronics - a massive RIYL Autechre, Roland Kayn, Bernard Parmegiani, NYZ, Keith Fullerton Whitman. Playing up to and into DDS’ freeform aesthetics, O’Rourke renders 40 minutes shearing hyaline synth tones and ruptured rhythm generated at his Steamroom facilities in Tokyo, a modular out- zone trawling that harks back to his iconic Mego releases and some of the more recent Steamroom experiments. It’s an ideal addition to the ever expanding DDS cosmos, following Demdike’s recent ‘Drum Machine’ expo with a slice of purist and screwed modular magick that transcends early electronics and modern styles in pursuit of musical sensations that defy stylistic brackets. ‘Too Compliment’ was assembled using a bespoke Hordijk modular system, a rare West Coast-style setup hand made by Dutch engineer Rob Hordijk. O’Rourke focuses on the frequency shifter here, using it to coax out fluxing tone thickets, haphazard frequencies and elongated drone corridors. It’s transportive stuff, harking back to the early days of private press academic synth music but also sitting on edge alongside Autechre’s recent long-form work, as well as O’Rourke’s classic “I’m Happy, And I’m Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4”In O’Rourke’s hands, the mass of electronics takes on throbbing, organic dimensions, congealing grey matter and purplish veins of fluid in viscous transitions that glisten and spark with invention as they form new tissue. What comes out is as unearthly as the earliest electronic music, but also blessed with a psychedelc spirit in a way that’s long kept O’Rourke right out on his own, teetering between paradigms yet never settling into any single style. If you’ve always been keen on finding a way into that sprawling soundworld, ‘Too Compliment’ is a perfect entry point into a highly rewarding creative macrocosm.
LUCY RAILTON - 5 S-Bahn LP (boomkat - back in stock - Lucy Railton renders a sublimely haunting impression of Berlin made in early Spring 2020 for our Documenting Sound series of sonic postcards from all corners of the globe. Essentially a recording of a world-renowned cellist duetting with the S-Bahn outside her apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, ‘5 S-Bahn’ utterly steals our hearts in the simplest, most evocative way. Playing with, thru, and against the atmosphere of Berlin in spring during lockdown, Railton captures scenes that feel timelessly nostalgic but also uncannily eerie, taking a reading of the city’s pulse that may feel at once familiar yet surreal and latent, pregnant with an unresolved and restless quietude. Across the 41 minute work Railton describes the slow daily arc of life under lockdown in a usually bustling Berlin slowed to stasis. Quite brilliantly, her voice and her musical gestures become fleeting ephemeral presences as much as the birdsong, passing trains, planes overheard, and the gorgeous church bells of P’Berg, which all unfold and recede in languorous turns. It reminds us of the exquisite, seemingly effortless location recordings used in Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ - ambient sound in the truest sense of the word; suggestive of life just outside our field of view; close - and out of reach. Lucy’s esteemed ear for ghostly haptics serves to search out an underlying poetry in the ubiquitous and everyday, highlighting the serene yet dread-filled uncanniness of a usually bustling Berlin awakening from winter into the torpor of lockdown. ) 28.00
MARK PERRY - Snappy Turns LP (lantern - RSD 2021: 180g clear vinyl Debut solo album for Alternative Tv frontman and long-time running Uk punk scenester, originally released in 1980 on Deptford Fun City Records. Mark Perry was also the man behind the iconic Sniffin' Glue zine, founded in July 1976. The album was produced by Grant Showbiz, principally known for his work with The Fall, The Smiths and Billy Bragg, and it is literally an art-rock nugget. Sort of an autobiographical work, the record is full of twisted hooks, showing the dark side of post-punk. Less hysterical than the output released with Alternative Tv, Snappy Turns should be considered as a post-apocalyptic pop record. It could have been easily included in the infamous Nurse With Wound list (guess what, his former band was there) introducing several connections to the so-called ‘grey area’. In particular, the disturbing tape loops and the violin heard in Death Looks Down are perversely informed by late Throbbing Gristle, a band seriously informed by the same aesthetics (Alternative Tv used to rehearse in TG studio in Hackney back in the days, while former ATV member Alex Fergusson founded Psychic Tv with Genesis P-Orridge). As the shadow of doubt surrounds our nearby future, Snappy Turns could be easily an appropriate soundtrack. Contains two bonus tracks from the 1980’s 7”: The Whole world’s down on me) 27.00
MARTA FORSBERG - tkac LP (LED AND LOVE SOUNDS (2015) is Forsberg’s first sound-and-light piece. The piece is made of frozen and processed violin sounds. The drones are slowly changing, providing minimal repetitions that never stay the same. ”A slow transition from playing on my instrument, to play only my electronics. Letting the violin hang there with me on stage, listening to itself. Following how the drones slowly change, minimal repetitions that never stay the same. And you can hear the gallery clearly, it moves sometimes in the background. Noises of moving bodies. The sound of listening bodies, trying to be still, maybe falling asleep shortly in the middle, and you hear how they drop something on the floor. How nice it is to hear the audience.” ) 24.00
NOISE ADDICT - Noise Addict: 10,000 Kids With Guitars DLP (numero - Springing from the Sydney suburb of Bondi into seemingly overnight international fame as friends and collaborators of Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and the Beastie Boys. Through a combination of relentless drive, luck, and an admirable lack of self-doubt, Noise Addict spanned puberty to surpass the haters and join Radio Birdman and Nick Cave as a strange but permanent piece of Australian punk history. Cover art doubles as a working chalk board.) 30.00
REGIS – The Floor Will Rise LP (downward - Maybe the weirdest and most satisfying Regis record in a while, featuring stripped, slow, highly atmospheric & muscular productions that were recorded as part of that mad ‘Let The Night Return’ feature film (regis, performing more or less alone in a 4000 year old, empty greek amphitheatre) here rendered in brilliant monochrome including contributions from Justin Broadrick, Ann Margaret Hogan and the music school chorus of Corfu. There’s something brutally bare and demented about this one, opening with the simmering choral drone ‘Epidaurus’ fizzing with whirring industrial components and rumbling subs, before ‘Calling Down a Curse’ extends to terrifying dimensions with an intoxicating Ugandan Methods style percussive backbone and a slowed down voiceover by filmmaker Vasileios Trigkas, to our ears sounding like Burial as if rendered by Conny Plank as a kind of alternate version to his still entirely unclassifiable ‚Biomutanten’.) 25.00
TOMMY McGEE - I'm A Stranger DLP (numero - Just as Al Green’s “Back Up Train” was pulling out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a whistle-stop tour to the top of the charts, producer Palmer James began eyeing another Furniture City branch line: Tommy Mcgee. The result was 1976’s Positive-Negative, the creative apex in a career littered with endless bottoms. Gathered for the first time are Mcgee’s timeless album, singles for Golden Voice, Mercury, TMG, and Tosted, as well as the complete output of his nascent mid-‘60s funk combo the T.M.G.’s.) 28.00
TREY GRUBER - Herculean House of Cards DLP (numero - Opaque Blue - Benjamin Trey Gruber 3.13.1991—9.12.2017 A tortured songwriter and struggling addict who jolted the tired Chicago DIY scene with his own brand of primal despair, Trey Gruber and his band Parent were on track to join the ranks of Twin Peaks, Mild High Club, and Whitney. His death in 2017 at the age of 26 brought it all to a halt. In his final years Trey wrote and recorded hundreds of previously unheard demos, dandelions in the cracked concrete of 21st century disconnect, an alphabet’s worth of which have been compiled by his family and friends for his only album: Herculean House Of Cards.) 30.00
CD
JULIUS EASTMAN - Three Extended Pieces For Four Pianos 2xCD (sub rosa - ** Double-CD version includes 10-page booklet ** Four Pianos (1979-80) It is recognized today that these tutelary pieces for four pianos are among the most powerful in contemporary music, their impact is almost unparalleled. After the historical version recorded forty years ago, this one, featuring four of the greatest European performers, is now regaining its full power. High-level recordings too. There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic - undoubtedly also one of the most powerful, and it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy.) 20.00
TAPES
MUNDO PRIMITIVO - Paisaje Interior TAPE (static shock - All proceeds from this release are being directly donated to aid those who are currently struggling against fascist violence in Colombia. As Australia gets a head start with the first green shoots of post-(?)pandemic punk, MUNDO PRIMITIVO set it off with some vertigo-inducing bar-setting on this sensational eight track tape. Melissa (of Colombia’s ABUSO) touches down in Sydney and starts this band. It sounds like you getting moshed right out of the fire escape of a Bowls Club in Wollongong and head first into the window of an anarchist squat in Bogotá. And back again! It’s hardcore, so the inventive riff buffet on offer here tastes a bit like Oli’s previous shred stint in another hands-across-the-Pacific supergroup MORTE LENTA, but the immediacy here is straight outta the New South Wales basement multiverse, which figures as bass is held down by Allie of PHOTOGENIC and MUM infamy, while roiling tom stomps could only be worthy of esteemed local corelord Señor Coyle of ILL BRIGADE. As cocktails go… it’s a strong one, so order a tray for your mates then throw them at a cop. ‘Paisaje Interior’ takes a defiant lyrical stance, asking us who will we decide to be after what we have been through? This is a bold decree to hold ourselves together in grief and rage, to stay very much alive in spite of the best efforts of so many evil forces. “Hoy quiero vivir y gritar la verdad!” If this tape had to be compared to a four band bill we’d book OLHO SECO for mood, LOOK BACK AND LAUGH for speed, SIAL for vibe and …CHAIN OF STRENGTH for cruciality. El Mundo contains multitudes though so there’s even a propulsive RAKTA-esque haunting to close things out.) 8.00
MERCHANDISE
ADAGIO830 - Pocket Print T-shirt (Brand New ADAGI830 T-shirt with a small pocket print Fresh for your upcoming summer hangs - Printed on Fair Trade Stanley Stella Shirts - 100% Cotton) 16.00
BIS AUFS MESSER - logo T-shirt (Brand New Bis Aufs Messer T-shirt with a small pocket print on a little pocket. Fresh for your upcoming summer hangs Printed on Fair Trade Stanley Stella Shirts - 100% Cotton in S/M/L/XL/XXL) 16.00