"An arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds"

Monday 30 May 2011

Hell and Bach


Portland's man of Porcelain (Opera), Jeff Witscher, with a follow-up from Hell (Rene) for Type, The Terminal Symphony, that’s a quite different kettle of chips from that debut and its handy little bonus disc.



There he was quite the nu-Kosmische cowboy, riding a wild frontier of high pressure atmos and bubble'n'squeak, giving a refresh to what was turning into electronica’s latest over-chewed Flavour of the Month gum. But with a sonic template based more around experimental 90s electronica The Terminal Symphony slips sneakily into a completely different decade, with an obsessively rigorous compositional style and an electronic take on classical minimalism.

Following the debut there were a series of collabs, 7”s, cassettes, and splits, though none really prepared us fully for his latest flame. He takes classical minimalism's forms as a main springboard from which he forges his own Hell-ish re-contextualisation in which the digital and analogue synths and drum machines of Porcelain Opera are reframed in a different structures. Type reckons Witscher “has used his enviable background in noise, punk and synthesizer music to come up with something totally removed from the current scene, and absolutely singular.” Certainly he’s been around the block a few times, as anyone with more than a cursory lurk in the experimental cassette undergrowth would have seen, but it was clearly the recent analogue and Kosmische fetishism of OPN and Emeralds et al. that put Hell on wheels. The Terminal Symphony is definitely a leaner, punchier animal than more generic peers leaking incontinental drift and arpeggio overflow. It opens with a familiar grunt and grind that tugs and chugs through “Chamber Forte” before the dissolve into the album’s main theme, whence familiarity fades and a neo-symphonic voice (more like that of Marble Sky (see further down this post) emerges. This voice returns on the hauntingly elegiac closer, “Adagio For String Portrait.”

Chamber Forte by _type

Comment from Hell: "I wanted to make a tighter record without flooding the content and giving up the space, instead blurring it, […] I had some older material around, but for most of I started with a clean slate for all arrangements and with a list of ideas I'd formed over a few months while living in Europe. This record was a shift, consciously and unconsciously, towards whatever is next."

Lighthouse Marvel by _type

James Knapman, a contrib colleague from igloomag, says: “Some albums may dazzle, glitter and shimmer, but few do so with the blinding intensity of The Terminal Symphony and never more so than on the scintillating “E.S. Des Grauens in Fifths.” Here, the classical and baroque influences are truly obvious, as are the sounds of the classic Moog synthesizer, as it builds from a repeating two note analogue waltz into an exquisite choir of rolling arpeggios, bass synth pads, ascendant washes and mesmerizing swarms of meticulously arranged, dancing beeps and bleeps.”

Rene Hell "{e.s. des Grauens in fifths}" from Megazord on Vimeo.

And then: “The smeared, bleached out and flat colours of seventies television are constantly merged with loud, nineties experimentation. There’s the tinny harpsichords of “Juliard Op. 66″ bristling with brightly coloured synth keys, the wowing, off-kilter warbles and flutters of “Oxford Meter End” and a sort of lo-fi texture running through “Detuned Clarinet” that is quite endearing in the context of the Vangelis pitch-bending and urban atmospherics that surround it. Rounding things out in unforgettable style, “Adagio for String Portrait” immediately brings to mind the translucent, glowing but melancholy beauty of track twenty-four on Aphex Twin’s seminal Selected Ambient Works 2.”

That’d be “Matchsticks,” incidentally, as memorably deployed by Chris Morris in his Blue Jam episode, “Welsh Water Daddy.” Any excuse for some Jaaaaaaaam:



Back to Hell's beauty:

Adagio for String Portrait by _type

“From harsh noise freak outs to meditative drone works, Witscher’s ever evolving approach to music has been well documented in the cassette underground with releases as Impregnable, Deep Jew, Secret Abuse, and Marble Sky as well as founding the Callow God and Agents Of Chaos labels. The music Witscher produces as Rene Hell draws from the deep well of post-war electronic music but manages to sound like nothing else, no small feat considering the rampant cannibalism and repackaging of synthesized sounds from the 70’s and 80’s that passes for “progressive” music these days.”

Fragment from an interview with Jeff Witscher:

“JW: […] I was really inspired by North Star and Glassworks. I’m really into the idea of reinterpreting classic minimalism.

EVR: Have minimalist composers been a strong influence for you won work?

JW: Well, I’ve listened to them for quite a while but I suppose I’m just seeing something different in them now. I love Terry Riley, Roberto Cacciapaglia and Arvo Part. I’m a huge Cacciapaglia fan, I think Sei Note in Logica is flawless. You should check out Sonanze and The Anne Steel albums.”


This prompted an esoteric minimalist tangent - a Roberto Cacciapaglia chase turning out not to be of the wild goose kind:



In fact, much of Witscher’s output prior to going to Hell - as Marble Sky, Abelar Scout, Disfigure Mare, and such like - was towards the ethereal and ambient noise end of the spectrum, offering up hours of layered ambient and drone pieces. Marble Sky’s The Sad Return was a particular favourite from 2009 – it dripped with plangent slow-fi low-core symphonics, as on the wistful ambient-drone-tastic “Pulling Up Grass Under Blanket”





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

Friday 27 May 2011

Radio Yugoslavia



The Vladislav Delay Quartet blows in! Sasu Ripatti cements his place in the vanguard of post-jazz - or whatever else you want to call the clattering, swooping territory staked out by his VDQ & its kissing cousin Moritz von Oswald Trio (intruding, I guess [though no expert], into a once almost exclusively Norwegian domain thanks to Jan Petter Molvaer, Supersilent/Arve Henriksen et al...) - with a densely vibrant Honest Jon's release that seems to redefine what improvisation with a jazz inflection/infection & an electronic palette might yield.

Below hear the exquisite, wistful Salt Flat, the wry Presentiment & Killing the Water Bed's dark whirls & eddies, as well as extracts from VDQ's loping, sparkling remainder (Louhos & Des Abends notable higlights...).


Blurb: "Vladislav Delay Quartet features an electro-acoustic ensemble with Ripatti on percussion. Other members of the lineup are Mika Vainio, who handles electronics and processing, and live instrumentalists Derek Shirley and Lucio Capece (the latter of whom appeared on Vladislav Delay's 2009 album Tumaa). Those two play double bass, bass clarinet and soprano sax. The album is mixed and produced by Ripatti himself.

“This was the most difficult and challenging record I ever worked on,” admits Delay, who in recent years has found inspiration in producer Teo Macero’s innovative work on Miles Davis’ fusion material. “It remains somewhat raw and natural, even though there are tons of processing and mixing involved. It was also difficult, because everything was recorded live, with spilling between tracks and microphones. And Mika's stereo channel not only had his loops and sounds, but also the processing he was doing on my drums or Lucio’s horns.”

Recorded at the former Radio Yugoslavia studios in Belgrade, throughout one week last year, Vladislav Delay Quartet is an expansive and multifaceted listening experience. In Delay’s scrupulous production, the ensemble’s “raw and natural” interaction finds a deep coherence: the articulation of absolute freedom."







Photos by sierus (middle) & Luka Knezevic Strika

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

Thursday 26 May 2011

Shock and Or



Kangding Ray’s Or - good enough to be 2011’s best Techno, Bass, IDM, and Electronica album - all in one! Certainly on first hearing there’s been little to rival it for sheer viscerality and fluidity of beats and bass motion, combined with textural detail and veiled harmonics; Frenchman David Letellier (mais oui!) beats the Germans at their own Spiel – not just outdoing kindred Raster-Notables like Alva Noto, Frank Bretschneider, and Byetone, but lauding it over fellow-stretchers of boundaries between aforementioned electronic sub-genres like Monolake and T++.

Kangding Ray . OR . rn123 . preview by kror

Your LMYE scribe is momentarily rendered sprachlos, so let’s get Das Wort from Monsieur Ray’s sponsor, Raster Noton:
“After the Pruitt Igoe E.P, Kangding Ray returns with his third album for raster-noton, pushing further his explorations on the edge of digital and analog sounds. With OR, Kangding Ray continues to blur the borders between experimental and bass music, and brings his signature sound to another level, somewhere at the darkest fringe of club culture.

With the massive metallic beats of « athem », the frightening distorded waves of «Mojave», the elevated groove of «Odd Sympathy», the modulated guitar walls of «Leavaila Scheme», or the low-bitrate Everest of «La Belle», KR creates deep atmospheres, loaded with echoes of collapsing economies, dysfunctional political systems, and corporate alienation.
In an abstract manner, OR depicts the desillusions of modern civilizations, while initiating a positive reflection on crisis as a creative state.
OR («gold» in french), as the only chemical element that seems to keep its value for eternity, refers to the cult of endless consumption and the absurdity of fluctuating currency valuations, while in english, as a logical operator or grammatical conjunction, OR represents the possibility of another choice, an « inclusive disjunction » which suggests that there might be another answer, a different path to follow.”


Or from Nicolas Lelievre on Vimeo.



Looking for more Rays? mnml ssgs just posted a ssg special - Kangding Ray VS mix - download here.

You can even watch a mini-profile, if you fancy it:



Or did you miss out on the last Ray's? Have some!



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

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Ghosts on the rooftops



While you're digging deep for Japan & NZ, spare a thought - & a little cash - too for Sohrab. The hugely gifted sort-of ambienteer (whose A Hidden Place featured in LMYE's 2010 Festive 50 & weighed, of course, in naming Touch our pioneering label of the year) urgently needs representation for an asylum appeal.

His eerie fund-raiser, Shouting at Dictators (mastered by the great BJ Nilsen), is yours for £4. Laced with a lonely, disembodied/disenfranchised rage - but also, as often with Sohrab, a thrilling, pulsing beauty - the piece is made all the more plaintive by the thought of it as a soundtrack to his prospective deportation & 'homecoming'...


Background: "As you may know, Sohrab managed to leave Iran late last year for Germany, where he appealed for political asylum having been interned in Brandenburg. This appeal has failed and he is trying to raise funds to appeal against this latest ruling.

If he fails, it is probable that Sohrab will be flown back to Iran and arrested at Tehran Airport... Europe is reassessing its policy to 'immigrants' on a daily basis, partly because of the rise of the political right, but also because of the influx of refugees from the 'arab spring'. The vast majority are being unceremoniously shipped back to their point of origin...

This release is a fund-raiser to help pay for a lawyer to help with his appeal against the ruling. 100% of Artist and Label money from this release will be donated directly to the appeal fund.

The protest was recorded in Tehran in the autumn of 2009. On June 12, 2009 the Iranian presidential elections were held, and the results were strongly contested by the population. For the first time after the Islamic Revolution, Iranians expressed their dissent by organizing huge demonstrations against the regime. But the protest was not limited to demonstrations in public spaces; every night at 10 o'clock, citizens gathered on rooftops to continue their protests, chanting "Allah u Akbar" ("Allah is great"). At times, these chants would be interrupted by other, more indignant, chants of "Mag bar diktator" ("Death to the dictator"). During these protests, the dark Tehran nights were haunted by the ghost-like shadows and their eerie voices. Dreams, memories, emotions, and hopes roam around like ghosts on the rooftops of Teheran."





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

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Rejected from shelter


No excuse for donor fatigue in the face of this year's epic charity compilations from Antiopic/Thrill Jockey, birds of passage, flau, Hibernate/Fluid Radio & Unseen (previous coverage) - a touching counter-tsunami of creativity & generosity to benefit Japan & New Zealand...

Kanshin, Hibernate & Fluid's contribution, is a 31-track trove of treasures. Sure, there are occasional mawkish or sickly moments. But the notable line-up (listed in full below) delivers a welter of stand-out offerings.

These are headed by a ravishing excerpt from Yann Novak's translucent 3 Surfaces. Other subtle gems of texture & tone come from the likes of p jørgensen & Ian Hawgood, Talvihorros, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Jeremy Bible & Jason Henry, & Relmic Statute (all streamable in full below).



Clem Leek: Light Passage II (Grief)
Hummingbird: Dancing Shadows
Relmic Statute: Lopery
Scissors and Sellotape: Heal
P Jørgensen & Ian Hawgood: Isles
Wil Bolton: Lost In Transit
Field Rotation: A Pondering Silence
Caught In The Wake Forever: LiaFail (At Dawn)
Damian Valles: Clime
Library Tapes: May (Variation)
Yellow6: Repeat
Maps and Diagrams with Ylid: Again
Felicia Atkinson: Chaleur Vacante
Hessien: Flightless And Nocturnal
Yann Novak: 3 Surfaces Excerpt
Offthesky With Ten And Tracer: Therapy Refuge
Orla Wren With Katie English: Swallowtail Yellow
The Moving Dawn Orchestra: We're Here
Spheruleus: Residue
The Silence Set: So Will Everything We Love
Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek: Utsutsu
Szymon Kaliski: And Longing
Jeremy Bible & Jason Henry: Grainslip
Bengalfuel: Gorgon
David Newlyn: Landscape (III)
Tom White: Bright Rooms
Listening Mirror: The Cause Of It All
Talvihorros: Perigee
Alex Durlak: Bellows
Antonymes: Kiotsuketene
Kyle Bobby Dunn: Britannia Into Morning

Buy via Bandcamp (£6 minimum or £10 double CDs from the curators)...


Background: "Kanshin has been put together to raise money for the current recovery in Japan following March's earthquake.

As the sensationalist media broadcasters find other things to talk about in the news, a huge recovery operation is still on-going as we speak. Many people have lost everything. So we decided to put together Kanshin so that via Ian Hawgood, 100% of profit from compilation sales will go directly towards the Japan recovery and on-going relief efforts. Ian lives in Japan and his wife is currently working with both the Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support organisation (JEARS) in Sendai and surrounding areas, as well as the Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters in Japan group who are going up to areas which are not receiving government support for food, water, basic supplies, as well as rebuilding and cleaning up. By this means they are able to transport food, clothing and aid directly almost every other weekend and during holidays to areas which are not getting enough or any support.

Ian's wife has also arranged a house as a base in Sendai for volunteers and a temporary home for found animals who are then moved on through JEARS either to foster homes or animal centres. We felt that any funds we can send this way would probably have more of an immediate impact than donating via one of the larger UK charities."





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

Sunday 22 May 2011

The Power of 'Al'


Pausal's hymnal, orchestral, tidal "Autumnal" enchants, the appeal of all these 'als' perhaps subliminal - esp. to a Guy Called Al. Gorgeous and expansive, “Autumnal” trails a forthcoming cassette release of the same name by the cuddly but unfluffy Hampshire duo - due in June (6/7/2011) on Alex Cobb’s Students of Decay (Edition of 100, so look sharp).

Pausal: "Autumnal" by Students of Decay

Their set at The Cube last May was great, putting Chihei Hatakeyama, whom they effectively warmed up for in a somewhat chilly shade.


Hanging halfway-house with Hampshire homies, however briefly, I mentioned to Alex and Simon, not critically, but discursively, talking trajectories of influence and this'n'that'neverything, that their sound had about it more than faint resonances of Stars of the Lid. This was somewhat muttered into (metaphorical) beard, as SotL had kind of become the default knee-jerk referent deployed by Every Reviewer And His Wife in seeking soundalikes for the slow-and-low neo-symphonic upwellings of a new wave of ambient-drone-crones, and it was tired (like SotL's sounds), I knew. But they were happy (tape hiss made them?) to acknowledge SotL’s status as lowlight legends. And undeniably reminiscent this “Autumnal” is, it has to be said, of the cadences of some of SotL’s early-mid period (circa The Ballasted Orchestra / Avec Laudenum).





"Autumnal" sounds very much still in the vein of their acclaimed Barge debut, Lapses (review), and its older smaller relative, Pausal ep (review) (plus, incidentally, see prefiguring autumnal cover below)





While we're here, worth noting that one half of Pausal, Alex Smalley, with sometime string-y contributor, Svitlana Samoylenko, make up Olan Mill, whose fine Pine (on Serein!) is still fragrant.

Olan Mill - An Obedient Ear from Serein on Vimeo.



Olan Mill - A Heavy Leg Cycle from Serein on Vimeo.

Gorgeous Pausal-curated mix (tracklist here) as a bonus for reading this far!

Pausal - Pausal Mix by _type

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

Friday 20 May 2011

Lap or fold



Like a modern Cluster vamp, a deliciously woozy, glassy tone poem from Temporary Item.s...

Stream more of Carine Masutti's insidious temping, including the twanging, plinking Juste Passer & Ex amnio bravely's stately, spacious grace notes, below & via her Bandcamp.











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

Friday 6 May 2011

Piet Heinkade 3



100 seconds of Tim Hecker can be worth hours of other hacks. Proof? The arcing, whirling, ever more urgent opening - a version of The Piano Drop, which starts the mesmerising, monstrous Ravedeath 1972 (Spotify) - to last Sunday's performance in Amsterdam for Viral Radio with cohort Ben Frost.

Stream this precious fragment (shrugging off the frothy first few moments, perhaps, which seem to put the rave into Ravedeath...), plus an Experimedia album compression & a revisiting of one of the album's stand-out tracks, below.








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

Thursday 5 May 2011

Air & amplification



Talking of Australians & field recordings, back to Robert Curgenven. His TSU duo will be performing alongside Stephan Mathieu - as part of their joint tour, which kicked off down in Cornwall last night - for a Room40 presentation with BJ Nilsen this Sunday. That'll follow an appearance near our neck of the woods & participation in Saturday's Mie/Hibernate extravaganza with further LMYE alumni Simon Scott, Relmic Statute, Ithaca Trio & Danny Saul in Manchester...


TSU, in which Curgenven pairs vinyl degeneration & remote field recordings with Joerg-Maria Zeger's guitar & effects, seems to be more of a live & gallery proposition than a recorded one. But a taste of their compelling, dense accumulations can be heard in the 2009 installation below.

STUDY OF THE SOUL'S MOLECULE I

TSU also features on one of the peaks of Curgenven's work to date, Oltre (Spotify). Italian for further, longer or over, it could also be read as a hybrid of ole & autre - a sort of flamboyant otherness, even if this fails to capture the record's austerity or its enormity.

Zeger accompanies Curgenven on the beautifully shaped, fiercely buzzing Largo capriccioso (Spot).

Largo capriccioso (extract; re-up)

Blurb: "Oltre documents the degradation and transformation over two months of live performances of theTransparence and its use within an integrated system of subsonic feedback from ventilators, acoustically gated binaural microphones, modal micro-variations in guitar feedback, field-recordings from across remote areas of Australia and the live, physical interplay of the turntable, dubplate and stylus - combining to create a field which moves beyond the original recordings and their individual spaces."

Oltre is part of a larger project around dubplate decay that also includes Transparence. Hear several powerful live workouts, including the 'instrument's debut, in videos below.

"Cut at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin by Rashad Becker at extremely low volume and having no audible bass response of its own, the dubplate works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and sound medium to become an instrument in its own right. The ephemeral audio signal becomes present only when played at high volume, allowing the dubplate to produce room-filling bass feedback via the resonance of the turntable and additional overtones - “Transparence” is designed to produce a unique physical response from the room, air and amplification with each playing and simultaneously to gradually cause its sound to disappear every time it is played, as the needle gently abraids the soft vinyl surface, replacing the high overtones slowly with new artefacts and crackle that cause the sound to continuously change and evolve."

air+electricity - live in hamburg

air+electricity live at Mikro_Makro Festival in Slupsk, 2008

Premiere performance of "Transparence" (RF007) dubplate as part of air+electricity set at Mikro_Makro

a+e18 [extract & remix] (via Compost & Height)

Photo: Katie Hepworth

The earlier Silent Landscapes weights field & turntable input differently. Paving the way for Seaworthy & Matt Rosner's fine Two Lakes (Spot), it subjugates electronics to a minor, connective role & foregrounds often ancient Australian sources.

"Composed from unprocessed recordings made between 1999 and 2008 in places that include some of the world’s oldest - the 2.5 billion year-old rock-shelves of the Tanami Desert in north Western Australia, Litchfield National Park and Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory; volcanic fields by the imposing Mount Warning (Wollumbin) in northern New South Wales; the desolate open plains between the Channel country and Barkly Tableland in Central Queensland; along Indigenous songlines that cross and connect the ancient continent – from Muggadah (Echo Point) in the Blue Mountains near Katoomba to Coober Pedy in South Australia - these recordings combine to present a compelling insight into the experience of space, place and time across a country that can offer much but often says little."

Silent Landscapes No 4 [extract] (from Silent Landscapes, Recorded Fields)

Silent Landscapes No 5 (via Compost & Height)

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

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Pole to pole



Unless you've rabid venture capitalists or Premier League clubs in hot pursuit, a better offer than the great & now venerably double-digited Room40's anniversary compilation - the baldly titled 10 - is unlikely to come your way any time soon. Like an LMYE fantasy festival line-up (Chris Abrahams! Andrea Belfi! Richard Chartier! Greg Davis! Taylor Deupree! Ben Frost! Koen Holtkamp! Rafael Anton Irisarri! Pimmon! Janek Schaefer! Steinbrüchel!), this 40-track opus - "a summary of music and sound that has occupied our ears...past, present and future" - is yours for an email address...

Tracklisting:

1. Chris Abrahams - Water
2. Asher - Untitled
3. Andrea Belfi - Poaofbp
4. Candlesnuffer - Euclid's Fudge
5. John Chantler - the Droning Chord
6. Richard Chartier - Rendered1_2009
7. Chihei Hatakeyama - Fkpkc002
8. Leighton Craig - Endless Blue Sky
9. Greg Davis and Ben Vida - Two Dozen Windows
10. Taylor Deupree - Live:Brisbane
11. DJ Olive - Monday
12. D.N.E. - Volatile
13. Erikm - Sossusvlei
14. Ben Frost - Feeding
15. Friedl + Vorfeld - Blau
16. Glim - Fusibil
17. Kraig Grady - Bima
18. Erik Griswold - from Heaven Above
19. David Grubbs - You Could Look It Up
20. Grouper - Hollow Tone
21. Koen Holtkamp - Broken Circles
22. Rafael Anton Irisarri - Distance
23. I8U - Higgs
24. Jeph Jerman - No Words
25. Ulrich Krieger - Cephei
26. Minamo + Lawrence English - Luminous
27. Scott Morrison - Ballad for Velizy
28. Pimmon - Limited E Country
29. Steve Roden - One of Forty Rooms
30. Marina Rosenfeld - Sweetest Sensation
31. Sebastien Roux - More Songs (Excerpt)
32. Philip Samartzis - Davis Station
33. Janek Schaefer - Unfolding Honey
34. Steinbrüchel - Same
35. Tenniscoats - Tasmania: for a Bay
36. David Toop, Scanner, Io3 - Live at Open Frame
37. Zane Trow - Initled
38. Tujiko Noriko Trio - Heartga Live
39. James Webb - Piglet
40. Xiu Xiu - Ingeborg Bachmann


Below stream & view some stand-out performances - often monumental, always singular - from Room40 honchos (& Holy Family duo) Lawrence English (here on Touch, ironically...) & John Chantler.




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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