"An arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds"

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Yes bloody please



Rude not to department: a Tim Hecker remix? Dredging a characteristic emotional yield from another boiling sea of scratchy feedback & bass swells - while less familiar bells, wordless voice & adagios break the swirling surface?





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

Highbrow mucker



A snappy post in keeping with the succint - by ambient-drone standards, at least - but rewarding source: hear a scintillating, metallically groaning edit (originally for FACT) of Olympia & Variation III from the rich To by P Jørgensen on Low-Point. If you're in the UK, come out to see him at one end of next month or the other...

Blurb: "‘To’ is the second album release by P Jørgensen, a sound artist and composer for ensemble, theatre and film based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Exploring the relationship between composition and chance, Jørgensen created the music for this release by drawing upon a palette of acoustic instrumentation and field recordings which were then transformed via computer processing into luminous textures, crystalline tones and vibrant ambient drones.

‘To’ is divided into two clearly defined sections across its 30 minute running time. Broad swathes of sound, juxtaposed chords and miniature crescendos during the first half give way to a more introspective and peaceful denouement as the album draws to an end.

Whilst the running time of ‘To’ may seem surprisingly concise for an album of this genre, Jørgensen’s purposeful and streamlined approach to composition ensures that not a single second goes to waste. By focusing on timbre and texture, these distinctive tracks establish vibrant atmospheres which seem to take on the properties of a morning's fog or the diffuse glow of reflected light."


P Joergensen > Olympia/Variation III [FACT edit] (from To, Low-Point)

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

Monday 19 October 2009

“as ignorable as it is interesting”



LMYE trying to engage with TU M's beguiling Monochromes Vol.1, from a discussion at disquiet (with a few hindsightful amends): tranquil, languid, subtle, TU M’ exemplify a kind of gentle drone-ambient that is utterly likeable, though perhaps not completely challenging. Long repeated waves of breathy sound at breathing pace, topped with very gradual accretions & embellishments, do what Eno dictated all those years ago ambient should do: provide an immersive music that works as well in the background as the foreground, & allows the listener to vary their stance to it as mood dictates - or in his far snappier version: “as ignorable as it is interesting”!

Foregrounded, the pieces have of course to be accepted on their own terms. Inevitably, their elongation & repetition means that ‘development’ is near-glacial — & limited: more like time spent static than travelling. That feeling is clearly heightened by their being monochromes in the sense of a very restricted palette of tone & mood.

Although far from revolutionary & strikingly narrow in range, they do reward the substantial investment of time (if not constant attention) they demand… But it’s a bit discomforting to ask what difference it would have made if ‘Monochrome 4′ had come in at 17 minutes, rather than 30?

No doubt TU M’s artistic judgement about how long each piece should go on was based on their assessment of that weight & cadence – but as artists like Scanner &, yes, Eno start to make use of the iPhone to offer loops that listeners can run for however long they like, it’s kind of interesting to imagine the Monochromes released in that endless format.

[Scanner's newly-released & currently free Whisper for iPhone/iPod Touch (http://bit.ly/sP8oU), is a strong recommendation in these parts - a haunting, moody loop that feels like an ultra-modern conception & delivery of music...]

Another angle on this. TU M’ put an 8:16 “excerpt” of the unreleased Monochromes 00 up online (it's below). Since we don’t know how long the full version is intended to be, we can only take the excerpt on its merits (it’s as beguiling as the rest, with an occasional sliver of muffled echo somewhat reminiscent of Chris McNamara’s ‘Vague Cities’).

To weigh the excerpt against an unavailable but by definition longer full version, an iPhone-type loop would let you feel your own way to its perfect, Platonic length – if one exists!



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

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Rude not too



'Rude not to' department: worth it for those space drums alone, but sbtrkt's giveaway of his brisk, frisky (if a bit unresolved) Kaoss is also an opportunity to point you to the masked producer's ravishing 2-step reinvention of Portico Quartet - with the hang intact, but not much else...!

The underlying track, Line, is from the quartet's imminent Isla.

Sbtrkt mix for MAH (featuring no fewer than five unleased dubplates) here & interview with Fabric here.

sbtrkt > Kaoss (unreleased)


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

Monday 12 October 2009

It ain't so



You might be forgiven for thinking that ambient (never the most revolutionary of musics, after all, except perhaps in the fact of itself as something defiantly non-linear & sideways-on...) has nothing much left to offer - that we've pretty well exhausted all of the microsound/found sound tropes, all of that gradual, delicate accumulation & manipulation of detail, texture & tone.

It ain't so, of course. Countless other examples could be found (one would be Loscil's predictably fine Strathcona Variations, soon to be covered here separately). But two new albums - one from the droney end of the spectrum, one laced with techno whispers - underscore how rewardingly the seam (which is now only short-hand for 'slower instrumental music, typically with some electronics' anyway...) can still be mined.

Take cacao's Permutopia on stdio. Throughout this lovely self-release (with a fascinating back-story/conceptual underpinning - see below) judicious glitches & judders work the more obviously pretty into something richer & deeper: the shuddering Kallipolis, the scratchy drone of Circum Europa, the ululations of Palanese, the piercing sparkle of Life Without Objects (returning on For Civilia).

Hear the whirring Anarres, where a windy, 'copter-ish drone adds urgency to submerged piano & backwards voice, below.

"Permutopia is an amalgam of found sound — tape loops, turntable manipulations and field recordings pulped into highly textured compositions. Based on 6 different conceptions of utopia from throughout the ages — from techno-agrarian island idylls to anarchic moon colonies — sound is used as an evocation of new forms of living, as an expression of that which is unattainable by design.

Taking its cues from the work of superstudio, Ursula K. Le Guin, Aldous Huxley, Ivor de Wolfe & others, Permutopia is a tribute to past futures, richly imagined conjecture and radical transformation."

cacao's older Tropisms I-VI is still available at stdio, by the way.

Meanwhile, muffle & echo help shape the slow washes of Chris McNamara's Vague Cities on Overlap: the crepuscular Trimalchio, Sleeping Car/Shunting Yard's serene accretions, the darker unfurling of et puis, the gradual march of Subsandtaxis in Markus Guenter's remix.

oooohdear, a shimmering, reflective highlight, is below.

cacao > Anarres (from Permutopia, stdio)

Chris McNamara > oooohdear (from Vague Cities, Overlap)

NB: higher-res versions available from the artists/labels.


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

Friday 9 October 2009

Amalgamated twit



By no means an original idea, but twitter is such a big part of LMYE these days that it seems worth recycling what we do there for non-'followers' (sorry, not our term...). Some recent mix tips:

Crisp & urgent mix of @unsound performers by bshosa = http://bit.ly/4wa24I. "Recorded in one take, with no editing" - UK gigs soon, please!

Appleblim's Harmonia/Eno refix & Walls' (@allez_allez + @banjoorfreakout) post-krautery in AA Amazing Sounds launch mix http://bit.ly/U5uUw Oh, & if Appleblim meets Eno's not enough, also features Suicide, DJ Koze & Mount Kimbie (& Walls)!

Deaf Center, Chauveau, LJ Kruzer, To Rococo Rot, Benge... RT @unchartedaudio Kone-R's "deep, dark mix" for The Circle: http://bit.ly/meNKT

Scott Grooves' own 'Keytroit' makes wonderful, throbby closer for @factmagazine's "elusive Detroit house maestro" mix: http://bit.ly/ZWHaL

@Keshhhhhh's subtle @poplarpenguin mix circles back to ISAN via Caretaker, Eno, Fennesz, English, Rabelais, Greiner: http://bit.ly/f2ilV (RT)

Indisputably tasty... RT @InvertedAudio Highly recommend Scuba's mix for mnml ssgs as SCB - his house/techno project http://bit.ly/10qiai

This 'christopher rau live in his bedroom' mix is also tasty: http://bit.ly/b2a0D

STP/Peverelist, ISAN/Martyn, DJ Koze, Peter Van Hoesen, The Mole... RT @unsound new podcast by The Bunker's DJ Spinoza = http://bit.ly/CKg7T

The "loud, intense & riotously entertaining" sound of Melvin Oliphant III... RT @factmagazine - DJ Traxx mix (FACT 88) = http://bit.ly/IqaiW

Persuasive about Saki, @chrisjohnpower's new 'Wow + Flutter' British Males mix looks quite persuasive too: http://bit.ly/lNGFx

"Say Hey" - checking out @siart/Leo Zero's Ze 30 mix http://bit.ly/2qe5q8

Sesame St, Indeep & BOC... RT Boards of Canada mix joins the @ninjamixdump Choice Cuts sound gallery @percussionlab = http://bit.ly/17Ug4n



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

Forthcoming murk

As tweeted at twitter.com/earslend. Feedback/suggestions welcome...

Forthcoming on LMYE - Loscil/Chris McNamara/Cacao &/or Loscil/Sunken Foal/Hulk/J. Behan; Max Richter/Leyland Kirby (Caretaker); Anticipate special (Klimek/Mark Templeton/Honig)...

...Vulva String Quartett; Excepter/iTAL tEK; kranky special (Nudge/Greg Davis/To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie/more Ethernet); LRAD...

...; Astral Social Club (& other half of split); Jodi Cave/Kirschner/Deupree; TVO; & something murky in my notes ('CT'?)...

Thursday 8 October 2009

Rude not to



From the 'rude not to' department - "old song. pre onandon. have it": the blurred delights of Lukid's Everybody Make Happy, which manages to seem like several different songs in the course of its eight minutes. You may like the somewhat formulaic one in the middle less well, but the plaintive, found voice start & the splintered, stuttering second half are quite gorgeous, even touching.

Lukid > Everybody Make Happy (unreleased)


Somehow resisting the allure of the FlyLo/Brainfeeder sphere (despite Undomondo's efforts...), this half of LMYE at least doesn't spend too much time in warped beat territory these days. But new stuff from the charming Kelpe easily changes that.

Not yet heard the rest of it, but the blissy, breathy Eye Candy Bath bodes pretty well for the imminent Cambio Wechsel.

Kelpe > Eye Candy Bath (from Cambio Wechsel, DC Recordings)


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

Sunday 4 October 2009

Return to Navapolatsk




Lovely, dubby squelch from cross-border collaborations with Belarus, curated by ~scape: I/DEX vs Pole > Minsk, Pinch meets Pavel Ambiont > Poison / Remedy (both from Connections, re-upped [original post] to mark its release today...).

"The first Unsound Minsk in May 2007 was a revelation for Western European artists who performed, as well as the local audience. It was an event that via (mostly) electronic music created a spontaneous and strong route directly between the Belarus capital and the rest of Europe. Pole – Stefan Betke – was one of the artists who performed on that night. Together, Unsound, Betke and the Minsk team IN-Touch decided to take things further, to join Belarus producers and musicians with their counterparts from Germany, Poland, the UK, Switzerland and Sweden to form new collaborative projects. The artists on this CD travelled to Minsk for a week at the end of September, giving workshops and working on recording sessions with Belarus artists, working in a variety of music genres.

This CD is the result, a very diverse collection of tracks recorded in Minsk and mastered in Berlin. On the one hand imbued with a dark, heavy atmosphere, at times the music here is also playful, revealing the talent and energy of the Belarus artists, as well as the open minds of everyone involved. The project has led to releases beyond this compilation, and the continuation of forged collaborations. It promises the opening of more channels, more connections."


PsyPhotos by Pavel Ambiont

Bonus: I/DEX's fine Scalene (from Seqsextend, Nexsound).


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