Bis Aufs Messer weekly news June 04/ 2021
hi. Welcome to another newsletter for June and then last one for this month. A few records arrived already and a bunch of more are on its way.
Highlights are the new CARLOS NINO & FRIENDS - More Energy Fields, Current LP, PERILA - How much time it is between you and me? LP, ROBERTO MUSCI - The Loa Of Music DLP, REMKO SCHA - Guitar Mural 1 feat. The Machines DLP, MICK HARRIS & MARTYN BATES - Murder Ballads (Drift) DLP (col. vinyl), STEVE VON TILL - A Deep Voiceless Wilderness LP (purple vinyl)
Also lots of restocks arrived like a couple Eintürzende Neubauten restocks, AUS - II LP, FRANCOIS J. BONNET & STEPHEN O’MALLEY - Cylene Suisse redux LP, JAN JELINEK restocks, MAMMANE SANI ET SON ORGUE - La Musique Electronique du Niger LP and more
Also we run low on the PIGEON - Deny All Knowledge Of Complicity LP on RED. Maybe get one now :)
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
LP
CARLOS NINO & FRIENDS - More Energy Fields, Current LP (international anthem - 'More Energy Fields, Current' is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of prolific producer/percussionist Carlos Niño. Featuring heavy contributions from many of the most exciting instrumentalists in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño’s has been a central force for over 2 decades), the album collects 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage” style. Starting with the subtle invitation of “Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please…” (accompanied by the liner note from Niño: “We’re all in this together. I look forward to living in a much higher, much more conscious, harmonious state, here, with You, on this Magical Planet Earth.”), a gorgeously-keyed canonic infinity by pianist Jamael Dean articulates an Earth-loving, universalist ethos that imbues the entire 44 minute program. While the sonics shift and evolve, gracefully placed in patient order across subsequent track highlights “Nightswimming” (featuring Dean and Dntel on modular synth), “Thanking the Earth” (featuring multi-instrumentalists Sam Gendel and Nate Mercereau, whom Niño has been working and bonding extensively with in recent years), “Salon Winds” (featuring Jamire Williams on drums and Aaron Shaw on flute), and “Togetherness” (featuring Dean and Devin Daniels on sax), the naturalist sentiments established in the exposition remain potently present. ) 27.00
FAYE WEBSTER - I Know I'm Funny Haha LP (secretly Canadian - Faye Webster loves the feeling of a first take: writing a song, then heading to the studio with her band to track it live the very next day. When you listen to the 23-year-old Atlanta songwriter’s poised and plainspoken albums, you can hear why: she channels emotions that are so aching, they seem to be coming into existence at that very moment. Webster captures the spark before it has a chance to fade; she inks lyrics before they have a chance to seem fleeting. Her signature sound pairs close, whisper-quiet, home-recorded vocals with the unmistakable sound of musicians together in a room. I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap and R&B community, where she first found a home on Awful Records.) 24.00
FRANCOIS J. BONNET & STEPHEN O’MALLEY - Cylene Suisse redux LP (éditons mego - Cylene Suisse Redux documents François J. Bonnet and Stephen O'Malley's Switzerland tour in December 2019, following the release of their first album, Cylene. The two musicians chose to entrust sound material recorded on the tour to the expert ears of two friends and great musicians Jim O'Rourke and Ryoji Ikeda, giving them carte blanche, and each in turn chose a distinct personal approach. For Ryoji Ikeda, it was a question of finding a moment, circumscribing a fragment of time through his listening, with minimal intervention. For Jim O'Rourke, on the other hand, the live recordings became material to be deconstructed and reassembled, to tell, according to his musical sensibility, a path of metamorphosis for Bonnet and O'Malley's music. Cylene Suisse Redux is a prismatic substrate of a series of concerts surrounded by friendship, lakes, mountains, and by nightfall.) 22.00
JAN JELINEK - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records DLP (faitiche - Faitiche presents a long-lost vinyl album: for the last 14 years, Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, originally released in 2001 on ~scape, existed only as a download. Now the album is available again on vinyl, as a double LP with two bonus tracks (B-sides from the Tendency EP, 2000). What the press said about Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records: “Don’t be misled by the title, though for there isn’t a finger-snapping rhythm c bebop lead anywhere on the album. Instead, Jelinek chooses to explore the visual effect moiré - two shifting patterns creating an implied third dimension - in the audio realm.” (Alternative Press) ) 25.00
LOREM IPSUM - Vivre Encore LP (vot - Acoustic classical screamo (with violin, piano and acoustic guitar) from France. This is baroque screamo, and it's not done in a gimmicky way; you can envisage how these songs could be easily transposed onto electric guitars and drums based on the violin/piano/acoustic guitar arrangements featured here, but the songs consciously draw from classical music rather than just trying to do screamo riffs on a violin. (metalstrom)) 12.00
LUCY RAILTON - 5 S-Bahn LP (boomkat - 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.) 28.00
MICK HARRIS & MARTYN BATES - Murder Ballads (Drift) DLP (col. vinyl) (sub rosa - Post-Isolationist - Deep Ambiance & Folksong re-emerge in this first vinyl outing of the classic 'Murder Ballads' (Drift) by M.J. Harris / Martyn Bates "Leaving nothing behind but the wild birds to moan" Rarely do two types of music meet on a level where they threaten to cancel each other out - let alone create something even more meaningful in their mutual vanishing. But the music created within the seminal Murder Ballads (Drift) by Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza, & parallel solo career) and Mick Harris (Napalm Death, Lull, Painkiller, Scorn) creates just such a world. Murder Ballads (Drift) evolves Martyn Bates vocalisations / storytelling song-voices, by turns expressed as labyrinthine layers, calls and responses, muted and distant echoes, sung whispers and counter-melodies, ultimately resulting in a mesmeric conversation of musical inferences and correspondences. Murder Ballads (Drift) created the post-isolationist frame of reference, innovating and extemporising into a truly original dazzlingly unique form. In 2021 - re-emerging nearly twenty years after its initial inception - somewhat surprisingly, Murder Ballads (Drift) still remains/exists in an area overlooked by other artists, an area that truly still remains the sole province of M.J. Harris / Martyn Bates.) 25.00
THE NOTWIST - The Messier Objects DLP (back in print - When The Notwist returned with their acclaimed 7th studio album 'Close To The Glass' (their debut for Sub Pop Records) in early 2014, many were enchanted by the epic instrumental 'Lineri'. It was the only instrumental track featured on the LP,but according to Notwist-singer Markus Acher, instrumental works have had an especially big impact on the album and its arrangements. Between 2008's ‘The Devil, You & Me’ and this year’s 'Close To The Glass', The Notwist not only concentrated on various solo projects, but also worked for several theatre productions and radioplays. 'The Messier Objects' is a compilation of some of these works. ) 23.00
PERILA - How much time it is between you and me? LP (small-town - “Perila is making some of the most head-spinning ambient music out there right now.” — Pitchfork Perila, the moniker of Berlin-based electronic musician Aleksandra Zakharenko, announces her debut album, How Much Time it is Between You and Me?, on Smalltown Supersound. With a sound world so specific and transportive, Zakharenko’s ambient music is filled with detail and movement akin to hauntological musique concrète touched by song. Raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Zakharenko moved to Berlin six years ago, finding her place almost immediately at Berlin Community Radio. Regular work with expressionistic field recordings and electronic sound research eventually led Zakharenko to develop her own podcast series, WET (Weird Erotic Tension), combining her evocative, atmospheric music with erotic spoken word poetry. After a handful of early cassette releases as Perila — a project name originally used for her BCR show — Zakharenko has arrived at Smalltown Supersound for her debut full-length, a self-described “immersive experience into self” viewed through a “silence prism” where everyday sounds usually ignored felt amplified. ) 25.00
REMKO SCHA - Guitar Mural 1 feat. The Machines DLP (black truffle - The first-ever vinyl reissue of Remko Scha’s Guitar Mural 1 featuring The Machines, originally published as a rare cassette edition by Taal Beeld Geluid in 1982. A computational linguist by profession, Scha played an important role in the development of sound, installation, and digital art in the Netherlands from the late 1970s onward, co-founding the performance and exhibition space Het Appolohuis in Eindhoven in 1980. Alongside Paul Panhuysen and Jan Van Riet, Scha was a founding member of the radical improvisation group The Maciunas Ensemble, though he is best known for his work with mechanised electric guitars, documented on the legendary 1982 LP Machine Guitars. Guitar Mural 1 documents an installation of Scha’s mechanical guitar ensemble The Machines held at a Groningen gallery space in 1982. Five electric guitars hang from the wall, their strings sounded by rotating rubber strings and a sabre saw controlled by a mechanical apparatus, as well as four ropes criss-crossing the five instruments on the wall. Once the mechanism was set up, Scha’s only intervention was to vary the speed at which it operated. Where Machine Guitars presents short excerpts clearly distinguished by rhythmic and timbral variation, here we are confronted with four enormous side-long slabs of percussive string attack and the resulting clouds of harmonics. Variation is minimal across the duration of each side, making for a sculptural listening experience, as if we are patiently examining each facet of a static object. But significant variety exists between the four sides, each of which shows off a different facet of what The Machines were capable of. The first two excerpts feature open strings sounded at rapid tempos, dissolving the percussive attack into a continuous stream of sound reminiscent of Charlemagne Palestine’s ‘strumming’ technique. On the third side, the strings are partly muted and the tempo slightly lowered, resulting in layers of relentlessly chugging rhythm somewhere between an ensemble of hand drums and an early Velvet Underground bootleg. On the fourth side, havoc breaks loose in percussive waves of asynchronous repetition that bring Scha’s sound world close to that of another pioneer experiment in musical mechanisation, the Solar Music of Joe Jones. Presented as a limited edition 2LP set in a deluxe gatefold sleeve accompanied by stunning visual documentation of the original installation, remastered audio and new liner notes from Alan Licht and Van Lagestein, Guitar Mural 1 is an exhilarating document occupying a unique space between kinetic sculpture, hardcore minimalism and rock & roll. ) 26.00
ROBERTO MUSCI - The Loa Of Music DLP (soave - The Loa of Music is the first recording project of Milanese composer and musician Roberto Musci inspired by Voodoo Religion; Vever (the magical voodoo paintings) and Loas, the dark and magic spirits. The deep charm of non-Western music has led him to travel for many years across Africa, India and Asia, studying rhythms, scales, performance and interpretation of the most varied traditional and indigenous music, as well he make many field recordings and collected ethnic instruments that would then be combined with synthesizers and electronics in The Loa of Music. Recorded in 1983 originally had 80 minutes of music but only half was released on original LP. SOAVE pressed for the first time the Complete Recording Session from original tapes of this masterpiece that combines in a natural, spontaneous and unforced manner the sounds of distant and historic cultures, loopped, cut and effected, with avantgarde and mystical approach creating a very personal and inspired innovative musical language.) 35.00
STEVE VON TILL - A Deep Voiceless Wilderness LP (purple vinyl) (neurot - Steve Von Till has made a life’s work out of seeking the elemental. With a solo discography that stretches back more than two decades, he has toiled in a shadow realm, peeling back layers of reality in a never-ending search for true meaning and raw emotion. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness strips back the veil even further. An achingly beautiful ambient work with neo-classical leanings, the album is a hallucinatory and elegant rumination on our disconnect from the natural world, each other, and ultimately ourselves. For some listeners, the album may recall the work of modern composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Brian Eno or Gavin Bryars. For Von Till, it’s about surrendering to the spirit of place—and to the original intent behind his 2020 solo album, No Wilderness Deep Enough. That album marked a significant first for Von Till: It was his first solo record without a guitar in hand. Instead, Von Till intoned powerful and thought-provoking lyrics over piano, cello, mellotron and analog synthesizers. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness is that same album without Von Till’s words. “This is how I originally heard this piece of music,” he says. “Without the voice as an anchor or earthbound narrative, these pieces have a broader wingspan. They become something else entirely and unfold in a more expansive way. The depth of the synths, juxtaposed with the strings and French horn, have space to develop and allow the listener to imagine their own story.” ) 27.00
STIJN HÜWELS + TOMOYOSHI DATE - A Distant Fire, A Distant Cloud LP (laap- Pillowy ambience from Belgian producer Stign Hüwels and Japanese electro-acoustic artist Tomoyoshi Date. Pleasant, pastoral stuff for fans of Home Normal. "A Distant Fire, A Distant Cloud" is the second album from Hüwels and Date, following their 2015 introduction by Chihei Hatakeyama. Here, they reference a poem by Tadahito Ichinoseko that's recited on the album, and both artists use guitar, synth, piano and subtle field recordings to make the softest ambient music imaginable. It's almost so quiet at times you can barely hear it - music in the vein of the Japanese landscape ambient tradition, but augmented with a distinctly European grasp of blustery, widescreen sadness. Lovely.) 24.00
TELEVISION PERSONALITIES - And Don’t The Kids Just Love It LP (red vinyl) (fire - Ahead of its time, ‘And Don’t The Kids Just Love It’ was Television Personalities’ influential debut album released in 1981 and features ‘I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives’. The legendary lo-fi release sees them produce British inspired 60s pop and post-punk that captured the period and ‘sounds remarkably prescient’ (Pitchfork’s Best 100 albums of the 1980s). With the formidable Daniel Treacy at its core, Television Personalities remain one of new wave’s longest serving and seminal artists with a career spanning over three decades. The indie pop visionaries influenced many people across the industry including Battles, Black Dice, Crystal Stilts, MGMT and Creation Records’ Alan McGee. “They provided the inspiration and motivation for me to start the label.” Alan McGee – Creation Records “A remarkably influential album that holds up extremely well.” Allmusic) 27.00
TRIOSK MEETS JAN JELINEK - '1+3+1' LP (faitiche - A long-lost vinyl album is back in stock: for the last 18 years, 1+3+1 by Triosk meets Jan Jelinek, originally released in 2003 on ~scape, existed only as a digital download. Now the remastered album is available again on vinyl. What the press said about 1+3+1 back in 2003: “Hence the album's titled 1+3+1 – it’s a reference to how it was made. Jan Jelinek sent us stuff, then we did stuff, then he added the final touches. He did a little bit more editing and production and mixed and mastered it in Berlin.” Interview Laurence Pike, Jazzgroove “1+3+1 is not minimalist jazz; it is loop-based jazz, influenced and produced by a minimalist composer, and then given to a jazz trio with post-rock tendencies.” Pitchfork “On Theme from Trioskinek, a jaunty, up-tempo tune not unlike the Charlie Brown theme is dragged down by Jelinek’s compressed sound effects, giving the impression of a runner training underwater, straining for grace with every step. If electric jazz had its Bitches Brew, it’s only fitting that someone, someday, would give us Glitches Brew.” SFWeekly ) 22.00
MERCHANDISE
ROSE CITY BAND - earth trip TRUCKER CAP (LTD ROSE CITY BAND trucker cap.) 22.00
