Clearing the undergrowth

Sometimes, & this is said with joy rather than sourness, of course, the sheer volume of compelling, special music around is almost overwhelming - the current LMYE backlog of tracks demanding immediate posting features Addled, Taylor Deupree/Kenneth Kirschner, Digitonal, Dntel, Line, Marconi Union, Seth Troxler, The Village Orchestra, Susumu Yokota & Zephyr Skate Team (& that doesn't include our Barcelona arm's plans...). 

Trying to keep up with everything worth your time can feel like that old cartoon. Molehills pop up repeatedly & are smashed down in an inevitably losing effort to maintain a flawless lawn...

Take Bracken. The lovely, idiosyncratic post-Hood lineage of The Boats/The Sea, Remote Viewer & things Moteer have been explored a bit here already. But Bracken's perhaps equally rich splinter had gone unregistered, until now. 

So: an LMYE hack of the clang & shimmer that starts a compote of Bracken remixes & versions (no doubt very obvious & recognisable to those who know - please advise) &  the warped pop of Heathens (from We Know About the Need, on anticon).  

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists have chosen to share freely with their audience.

"decontextualized, reified, corporatized, liberalized, neutralized, asexualized, re-genderized..."

An evocative, defiant poem of texture & constraint: DJ Sprinkles [aka Terre Thaemlitz] - Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone) [from Midtown 120 Blues on Mule Musiq]

Midtown 120 Intro

Bonus: Hush Now (DJ Sprinkles' Broken Record Mix) [from A Silence Broken]

Gentle envelope

Fjord & seascape backdrops probably do little to discourage those 'glacial' cliches. But to these ears The Sight Below (MySpace/LastFM) is lushly warm, not frigidly cold.

A snapshot of his gentle, enveloping pop-drone:

Life's Fading Light (from Glider)



Twice Failed, With Her Kiss (I'd Pass the Sky) & No Place For Us (from No Place For Us)

Bonus: Live on KEXP (also iTunes giveaway: GhostlyCast#18)



Art by Mike Cina.

Tectonic cathedral

Reasons to be, well, 'cheerful' may not be quite right - but new Tim Hecker is always welcome: after the monumental Fantasma Parastasie with Aidan Baker (one of LMYE's 31 Albums of 2008), the no less immense, organ-driven Sea of Pulses [or lower-res here]. 

From An Imaginary Country - due on kranky in March, apparently. Or February, possibly...

The lighter - even pretty - Shosts in Silver also out on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2009 next month, in any case. Hear it here. 

Living stones

Trailing, as often before, on others' coat-tails (assuming in this case that mapsadaisical sports a tailed coat, but you know what I mean...), I stumbled back across Lithops lately. There's a lot to stumble on: that impeccable Mouse on Mars & Von Sudenfed lineage! That wry Teutonic humour! That art-world cred!

 

Anyway, delight in the whirring avant-pop of Handed (from Ye Viols, Thrill Jockey) - originally premiered at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin to accompany an exhibition by Rosa Barba and David Maljkovic, we're told. Who knew?

Well, we could have consulted the handy Jann St Werner project archive...

From which, an LMYE hack of a nicely noisy & warped extract from the man's Noisemashinetapes Archive (download them all here): Textmessage. 

In stillem Gedenken

Courtesy of Berlin's fine zero", a Modeselektor giveaway: the Modes' brand of kitchen-sink techno can be a bit cartoon-ish - to these ears, at least - but their encounters with Radiohead's Thom Yorke were quite tasty, as was Godspeed (the intense first track from Happy Birthday). 

For a scraping, whirring, almost ambient Mode, go here for a free download of the lovely  valedictory In Loving Memory (from the eponymous EP & Hello Mom!); enter the code 5801248655406313 [use by January 30; registration may be required]. 

zero" Last.FM group for more goodies...

Also in BPitch Control territory, the best track from Telefon Tel Aviv's imminent Immolate Yourself to penetrate LMYE consciousness so far: the ravishing The Birds. 

Update: striking, defiant TTA commentary on Immolate here (NB: both Birds & Helen of Troy are BPitch-sanctioned giveaways). 

Before the backlash

Before the inevitable backlash (give it two months at most..), one last Inaugural airing for this awesome splicing of fairly minimal techno pulses & swirls with soaring Obama rhetoric - a rare & inspirational moment. We Cannot Turn Back is an LMYE-curated extract from Francois K @ Minitek last year. 

Apologies as before for the somewhat abrupt ending, & the remorseless re-upping.

Any guidance on the underlying tracks still most welcome...

Hope/Progress image by Shepard Fairey.

Immense non-cyclicality

No doubt basking in the proud glow of having powered into LMYE's highlights of 2008 (well, possibly...), iTAL tEK is emanating love to the world. Not content with sharing a mix of forthcoming tracks via MySpace last month, he's now flipped out a titanic unreleased track. 

Immense & relentless yet floatingly ethereal, Double [zShare] was intended to be part of Cyclical (Planet Mu), "but I decided it didn't quite fit at the last moment". 

A new 'tEK EP to follow this spring, apparently. 

Muffled progress

Contrasting versions of Pan•American's compelling muffled delicacy: Skylight (from Quiet City) & How Much Progress One Makes (from White Bird Music - or White Bird Release, possibly - but due next month in any case...) - both on Kranky

Bonus: a 100-minute Kranky retrospective. 

Tracklisting
1. Labradford "Disremembering" From Prazision
2. Jessamine "Cellophane" From Jessamine
3. Bowery Electric "Long Way Down" From Bowery Electric
4. Magnog "Lost Landing" From Magnog
5. Stars of the Lid "Fucked Up (3:57 AM)" From The Ballasted Orchestra
6. Godspeed You! Black Emperor "The Dead Flag Blues" From F# A# (Infinity)
7. Low "Two-Step" From Secret Name
8. Pan American "K. Luminate" From 360 Business/360 Bypass
9. Windy & Carl "Resolution" From Consciousness
10. Out Hud "Hair Dude, You're Stepping On My Mystique" From S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D.
11. Growing "Pavement Rich in Gold" From The Sky's Run Into the Sea
12. loscil "Lucy Dub" From First Narrows
13. Nudge "Classic Mode" From Cached
14. Tim Hecker "Dungeoneering" From Harmony in Ultraviolet
15. Deerhunter "Like New" From Flourescent Grey
16. Valet "Kehaar" From Naked Acid

Plus: interview. 

Final crank: listen to Jonas Reinhardt's recent debut here - especially the impeccable kraut-out of Worm Preach the Struggling Fire...

Ah, is this not happiness?

The murky, scratchy, hard-hewn beauty of Jan Jelinek's Discrete Machine & Nobukazu Takemura's Der Riss teil zwei (both from The Best of JUNK JET - also hosted at Last.FM, thankfully...). 

Reminded of The Idler feature 'Ah, Is This Not Happiness': I stagger stretched into an unwelcome new day & stumble upon a pair of richly dense, squiggly tracks by two favourite artists, neither previously train-spotted & both free to share. Ah, is this not happiness?

Bonus: a far simpler, but still appealingly subterreanean piece (let's leave the toy dog out of it for now...) from the same source - Kid Fellow's junkset

NB: first photo from Takemura's blog. 

Fish fry

As threatened, more from the sometimes Mushy & often fine Fisk Industries: this lovely, sombre thing (Moieties Part 2, from the EP 77 & Rising), for starters. Also, this almost equally lovely one (Can't Breathe, from The Isle of Wight EP).

Mat Fisk is a mainstay (designer, output fiend) of the part-netlabel Highpoint Lowlife. From his five web releases: a refreshingly clanking kitchen sink Brassica remix of Blood (from Magnetic Fisk Remixes); a subtle, long-unfurling Yard dub of Crowley (ditto); & the sweetly, crisply swirling Shadow (from Triptych).

He's also the spectral Orientalist sort of-dubstepper Kwaidan, or was once: Masaki [excerpt] (from Kwaidan digital 12").

More in this vein, though live & under the FI banner (& without the Japanese mystics), here.

Plaintively monstrous

Plaintive voice (the impolite would say weedy, but that misses out something touching & defiant...) times delectable electro prettiness times a monstrous bass equals Line (also here & here): exemplified by Half-smile from Chinese Room on Uncharted Audio. 

Room also includes a snappy ballad (yes, really) & two muscular remixes from the album it precedes - Hearts, out next month. 

Also in Uncharted territory, tracks from Hard as Snails by Octavcat (MySpace) like Winkle, Apoogiator, Jhumblecloud (the first half, at least) & Little Friends round out their playfulness with - thankfully -  more substance & inventiveness than those jaunty cartoons & the pun-laden*, blue vinyl pressing might suggest.  

* I know. But I'd like to think mine isn't so painful...

A bowl full of mush

No comb, brush nor old ladies whispering 'hush', but we do have - as the children's bed-time story ordains - a bowl full of Mush. Has any record label ever been less suitably named? What little I know of their stuff is crunchy & snappy to a fault...

&, incidentally, has any ever offered a more sorted sample of their wares than this? (Temporary Residence - about to rerelease early Fridge, I see - is decent too, sure, but without the same buffet dimension.)

Anyway, despite my struggles with Bibio's hey nonny no tendences (I know, I know, Boards of Canada endorsement, universal love for Fi - but still not wholly persuaded...) his remix of Lymbyc Systym's Truth Skull [from Love Your Abuser Remixed] gets progressively finer & more warped - here's an LMYE hack that purges the dull first half & kicks off from the Tortoise homage/rip-off...

Also Mushy, Boom Bip & Doseone's deliciously pummelling & ranting The Birdcatcher's Return [from Circle]. 

Others new to my mush: 

Caural - Lake [from Remembering Today] & I Won't Race You [from Mirrors For Eyes]

Fisk Industries - Reflection [from EPs & Rarities]

More Fisk to fry after this...

Martian misadventure

"A sonic adventure inspire by the red planet and all the legends that surround the 4rd stone from the Sun. Electronic magic landscape drawing with sweeping filters, analogs sounds and retro drum-machines."

Well, yes. Don't know about that Martian malarkey (& there's more where that came from - lowell's canals, Helene Smith, the Laestrygon area...). Indisputably, though, the first track of Malaventura's new Mars EP is a luscious piece of shimmering old-school techno - with all the filtered retro-analogueness an inter-galactic traveller could hope to beam up: Cydonia. 

Also: Fernando's deftly jazzy Exploring the Surface (from The Secrets of the Moon) & the Satie swings by Detroit TAKE5 (from Ruidos+Piano, with Alejandro Ventura). 

Video (with background to this rewarding piece):   

Snail's pace in Saskatoon

After Foals, Foal - obviously! From squawky English yearning to luscious, impassive Canadian glitch (though the luscious glitcher appears to have moved on to something twangier these days...).

Anyway, the first slice from Chad's 2003 Nishi (net label) release re:construction: 5:11.

Get the whole thing here. & a live mix that features the first track here. & cough up a few downloads for his more recent Foliage here.

Happy accident department: Foal's current six-stringed output works well against the start of this absurdly good minimal mix by fellow Canuck Knowing Looks (whose Uzbekistan Love will have to be checked out!)...

Aimless and ambient

"Rather aimless and ambient" complained The Guardian. They say it like that's a bad thing!

Every so often, the near-infinity of annoyance that is Foals (MySpace) surprises me with a little gem. No great surprise, admittedly, that Kieran Hebden's epic remix of Cassius (listen via widget) resonated with these ears. 

But though their Antidotes was a way off LMYE's highlights of 2008 (also here), its Electric Bloom was also quite bracing. 

Now they've lobbed out a couple of quite tasty (whatever they say in Faringdon) works-in-progress: A Future Dub & XCFAVA . Have to draw the line at the choral 'Deux' version of Dub, though... 

But the best of the giveaways is this winningly moody, rackety take on some obscure B-side [try not to be put off by their "which we kinda prefer actually" comment]: Glaciers (Early Mix).

Keep your shirt on

Reuber is a master of a kind of post-krautrock & ruhig blut (on Staubgold) his masterpiece. Across its 50 minutes-plus this epic EP vaults a very German gamut - from exquisitely reflective, spacious ambience to an initially almost stately clanktronica that mounts in its own sweet time to splintering frenzy, & back again. 

With sincere thanks to Timo, a permissioned LMYE hack: from ruhig blut b. 

Albums: Anna/Kintopp/Suedpol

Also check out the inspired Live Sessions on his MySpace currently - again, channelling a deep immersion in the experimental/kosmische heritage...

Reuber is also half of the excellent Klangwart, by the way...