Környezeti lábjegyzetek

Ambient footnotes dept: following recent pieces on Scanner & Chubby Wolf, more richly layered, reflective loveliness from the same fertile sources - the Professeur's Sighs, Wonders in an exclusive instrumental mix that reveals a host of subtle, telling details previously ornamenting Sukhdev Sandhu's text, plus the new Celer (Weavings of a Rapid Disenchantment - "dense, warm, generous but dark and nostalgic drones, that fit with “Panoramic Dreams…” mood", according to the label's indisputable blurb) forthcoming in LMYE's favourite 10" vinyl (why aren't all records in this perfect format?!)

Sighs, Wonders (Instrumental) by scanner

"Originally commissioned for The Spitalfields Festival London, in collaboration with writer Sukhdev Sandhu, June 2010. This is an exclusive instrumental mix."

Celer > The Acceptance of Paralysed Infinity [excerpt] (from Weavings of a Rapid Disenchantment, Basses Frequences)

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

Studio 13

Clangers & bangers - two contrasting shades of intensely out-there otherworldliness from Modern Love cousins Daphne Oram (via sub-label Young Americans) & Demdike Stare.

Today's hand-crafted LMYE hack of a dozen extracts from Oram's deeply strange, faux-naif Oramics documents an extraordinary, pioneering journey through textures & tones. It seems to bear no relation to anything else being made at the time (nor much since) - though more classically-attuned ears than these could probably work up the odd link to musique concrete & other high-end experimentalists.

Stay with the hack all the way to the end to hear Daphne herself on "this intriguing equipment" (she sounds exactly as she looks...).

Meanwhile, Demdike's dense, dark Liberation Through Hearing draws from the same well as Forest of Evil & the more obviously exotic Symbiosis (especially the circling, rattling Bardo Thodol). But while the dubby deviance of Caged in Stammheim & Regolith is clearly in the post-Basic Channel lineage of their predecessors, the rest of the album - stream in full below - also features what feels like an even richer engagement with drone than before...

"The second of three Demdike Stare albums for 2010 is upon us. Its title ‘Liberation Through Hearing’ is a direct reference to the ‘Tibetan Book Of The Dead’, an ancient text intended to guide the reader through the experience of the consciousness occurring during the interval between death and the next rebirth, a subject also hinted at in Western culture by the Skull Disco label and explored by psychonauts such as Timothy Leary. If ‘Forest Of Evil’ was the push-off, we’re deep into the session now, rendering those intermediary hours of the trip when we’re untethered from reality and deposited in the moment, an interzone of harrowing drones, acousmatic sampledelics and arcane intentions designed to create a state of psychedelic submission. The dark currents run deep..."

Previous coverage (& here; DS/ML).

Regolith

Caged in Stammheim

Bardo Thodol

Demdike Stare - Liberation Through Hearing

Daphne Oram > Oramhacks > (from Oramics, Young Americans)

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

Quiet noise

Talking of prizes, imagine a world in which Erstlaub's astoundingly rich, deeply affecting music was celebrated & garlanded as it should be. However inconceivable from an 'industry' perspective, it's not really that hard.

In one inverted Martin Amis short story writers of sonnets are the swaggering, mega-earning artists of the day. Schlocky screenwriters, in ironic contrast, are the starving hand-maidens of their art.

For Dave Fyans to be the blinged-up beneficiary of such an alternative universe (he'd cope with the moral challenges, never fear, though the rest of Dundee might have to lie low for an initial day or two...) would seem fair enough. It'd acknowledge the vast intensity & depth of his work, its evident total sincerity, its inspiring subtlety of mood & pace, its compellingness.

All of these are embodied by the strikingly complete The Long Road from as far back as 2006 (& now freely available as part of Broken20's 'precursors' programme, happily). Endure three ham-fisted shortenings below or, better, immerse yourself in the magnificent (& somewhat higher-res) whole.

"Sometime in 2006, Erstlaub finally crawled out from the internal wreckage, fully formed and bristling with very specific intentions. The Long Road marked the end of one journey and the beginning of another. The systems had been honed, the process refined, the trials undertaken, it was time to transmute pure thought and will into sound.

The movements and passages contained within it are generally of a subtle, calmer nature with a focus on texture and interplay between modulations but at times configure themselves into a quite daunting amount of quiet noise. The Long Road was performed once in October 2006 in Augsburg, Germany, the first public appearance of Erstlaub.

The Long Road was created on a Nord Modular G2 using a Evolution UC33 midi controller and a Boss DD20 delay unit, it was recorded in one live take with no additional processing or overdubs."

While we're unearthing early-stage Erst, the even earlier, similarly granular but somewhat lighter rumbling Blown also demands an ear. "Originally, "Blown" was created on a modular synthesizer, using basic sound gnerating and shaping components to build a complex and dense environment. The environments were then recorded to computer at 44kHz/16 Bit audio and then transferred to an ageing Akai M-8, quarter inch analogue tape machine. Due to both the age and general disrepair of the tapes and the equipment, the audio has been coloured and treated by the decaying magnetic filaments of the tape and the machines valve circuitry. The audio is played back at a lower speed than it was recorded to further magnify the inconsistencies of the medium. The resulting recordings were then sent back to the computer and layered with the close-miked mechanical noise from the tape machine along with the ghosts of the tapes previous contents. No other computer processing has occurred with these audio files. Blown acts as a study not only into the properties of an archaic recording medium but also as a stark contrast to the clinical, digital age in which we live."

Previous coverage (& here, & here; Broken20 here).

Erstlaub > The Long Road [shortened] / The Long Road [shortened #2] / The Long Road [shortened #3] (from The Long Road, BrokenZero) > Blown [extract] (from Blown, CONV)

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

Andelevesarewe Anlauesargh Anlewesearche

Clearly, any chance to hear new music from Richard Skelton should be taken (which reminds me: must get that Machinefabriek collab as a matter of urgency...). So, stream six minutes of keening, tremulous "fragments" from a new, seemingly more orchestral - or lushly stringed, at least - 2-part release in his Clouwbeck guise on Sustain-Release below.

In all probability, no Mercury Prize will ever acknowledge Skelton's profound, unclassifiable work (the Uranus, sure, but not the gruesome festival of self-congratulatory necrophilia with the pretension of passing itself of as a showcase for the best of British new music).

No matter. That's just 'the industry'. He is the best of British music - not alone at the peak, of course, but certainly unique & incredibly special.

Previous coverage (& here, here & here).

Clouwbeck ~ From Which the River Rises

Clouwbeck ~ Wolfrahm [re-up]

Clouwbeck ~ A Moraine [re-up]

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

Skimmed foam

In truth, & hardly for the first time, pretty well everything that needs to be said about Pale Sketcher's Plans That Fade was said by disquiet months ago. But impervious as these ears are to Napalm Death, Godflesh or Jesu (even the Jesu 'misfits' of the original Pale Sketches), the Demixed project on Ghostly - brilliantly described by Marc as "like someone stirred up a Jesu shake, and just skimmed the foam off it — or took an X-ray of Godflesh, and used it as a musical score" - quite appeals.

& the wispy, shivering Plans That Fade, originally on the Horizon Line/Ghostly by Night compilation, is an evident high point (marks deducted for an occasional cod-reggae clunk, though)...

Hard to dispute this wry, pointed little observation (from Ghostly): "Interestingly, as Broadrick has moved from more traditional signifiers of heaviness (aggression, guitars, volume) towards their opposites (melancholy, computers, texture) his music has only gotten deeper and more affecting. In that way, Pale Sketcher may be Broadrick’s heaviest work to date."

Note to self: must hear those remixes too...

Pale Sketcher > Plans That Fade [Faded Dub] (from Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed, Ghostly International)

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

Code red

Among the more demanding sounds yet featured on LMYE, two cassette-delivered takes on William Fowler Collins - a wheezing, buzzing shuruti box workout for Root Strata, & the darkly engulfing Hiding in Light at the core of the next batch of Digitalis tapes.

Hear chunky extracts below, & stream WFC's ferocious Perdition Hill Radio (for Type) in full too...

The Ghosts of Eden Trail

William Fowler Collins - Perdition Hill Radio

William Fowler Collins/Svarte Greiner at Cafe OTO.

William Fowler Collins > Hiding in Light [extract] / Lost in Fire [extract] (from Hiding in Light, Digitalis - forthcoming) / Enter the Host II [edit] (from Enter the Host, Root Strata)

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

Afternoon tea & green tea

A fluttering, immersive live workout (Leeds, last month - full stream below) underlines the sloping, accreting excellence of Relmic Statue. Savour his languid, somehow submarine soundscapes via the snappily titled, utterly unsnappy netlabel release abscon (5.L) ditus ianua (on High Linear Music)...

Blurb: "abscon (5.L) ditus ianua" by Relmic Statute easily flows through whole sonic worlds and musical genres. One can't help but feeling that this album takes a tour through the personal world of its creator and through the vast places that modern electronica has made possible through technological wizardry.

This album is the perfect fusion of its elements. Filled with field recordings and manipulations, the experiencer is quickly driven through an evolving environment that at once embraces noise and ambience, music concrete coupled with a deep sense of folky romanticism. This work will surprise you, it will challenge you, but it will not leave your deepest desires for music unsettled.

This is the music of someone who embraces what is and what will be."

Previous coverage (& here).

Relmic Statue > a preface of events / a comparative chart of notation (both from abscon (5.L) ditus ianua, High Linear Music; NB: lo-res versions - original is 320kbps...)

Re-upped streams of abscon's other two tracks, including the rich, jazzily inflected explanatory notes:

explanatory notes

selected tabulations

live2 "recorded at the left bank centre leeds on 5/6/10 by ithaca trio."

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