"This Awareness asks"

At 6pm tonight I'd never heard of Ethernet: by eight his sublime Kansai was very possibly my favourite new track this year. Its fuzzy spaciousness, its artful shards of noise, its intensely textured depths & its confidence to throw the occasional prettily echoey bone all testify to a very rich, uncowed take on the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction heritage - & leave me hungry for 144 Pulsations of Light (out on Kranky in October, apparently).

Ethernet: "Based on my research and experience in using sound for induction of meditative states, I set out to apply trance-inducing sonic effects to drone-ambient music. I recontextualized the deep bass kick sound used in techno dance music as a subdued hypnotic pulse to accentuate the textures. An unprocessed analog Roland TR-808 was used for this pulse, as well as binaural beats and spatial effects processing to create music to facilitate deep meditation. I blended layers of synthesized textures with organic field recordings made in Central Japan in '00-'01, and Northern California between '03-'08. The intent of the album is to produce an introspective sonic environment conducive to self-healing work and voyaging into new states of awareness."

Kranky: "While Tim's description may read as somewhat dry and technical, the sonic landscapes that he composes are anything but. He sculpts textural washes of sound to create immersive, constantly shifting aural psychedelic environments. Hazy, gaseous atmospheres that are alternately arid and humid float above, in and around the muffled pulses used as rhythms. The experience is not unlike that of landing on an alien planet, stepping out of a spaceship, and surveying new terrain."

Ethernet > Kansai (from 144 Pulsations of Light, Kranky) > Whistleblowers/Orgonite [Flow Dub] (from Orgonite EP, Bump Foot)

Archive (including 'sound healing meditations', mixes as DJ Tanuki & music as Oneironaut) here.

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Distiller's macho

After the refreshing physicality of the Moritz von Oswald Trio's Vertical Ascent - thrillingly flogged along by his threshing drums - Vladislav Delay's next is that fine album's inverse, despite being another trio piece. Indeed, the wispy, barely there Tummaa is so reduced, so austere that it can feel like a sketch or a blueprint of itself.

There's a bravado in that, of course - a sort of distiller's macho. In which case, to use a word not readily associated with Delay (though it was disconcerting recently to come across his own description of his early motivation as "I just wanted to kick ass as much as I could"), he's just made the butchest album of his brilliant career...

Vladislav Delay > Melankolia (edit from Tumaa, forthcoming on Leaf)

Earlier Delay coverage here. Substantial interviews by the milkfactory (plus eleventh volume/hard format) & Tokafi here & here.

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Dappled meadows

So modest that a cloak is seemingly the very least it would throw over a puddle in your way, yet so committed to its own way of doing things that even its punctuation idiosyncracies are evidently all quite deeply meant (though what slightly random dots, colons & commas might be meant to mean, over & above 'I have my own way of doing things', is something else...): Alpine.'s Fr:om Harmed Weather To Stark, Micro, Climates. is a little piece of pastoral bliss.

Despite the name & the obvious parallels with the excellent Mountains, it is more dappled meadows & orchards than magisterial uplands - an English summer record/English summer of a record (meaning fleeting, warm loveliness, not lagered, lobstered lads & sporting woe). Yet another feather in the plumage-rich Highpoint Lowlife cap...

Alpine. > Fr:om [lo-res]

Video art from Alpine. here, by the way.

Alpine. is also half of Pausal (who've toured with Koen Holtkamp, cementing the Mountains connection). Their eponymous net-release via HPLL a couple of years ago shares the warmth of Harmed Weather - whose composition pre-dates it, if we're being chronological - but stretches out more languidedly; a remastered version with an additional track (Semi-Submerged) & a reworking (Place [Revisited]) is out now, with an album to follow (not featured in head Highpointer Thor's recent beat-driven 'Future Sounds' mix of forthcoming releases for reason of fit).

Pausal > Song From a Cloth Pocket [lo-res]

Same track also features on this mix of "hazy ambient jewels" via archive.org.

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.