It's not just the national cricket team working up a head of steam down under as the year closes. Lately Australia's Room40, LMYE's label of 2011 (joint with Experimedia, trainspotters!), has unleashed a gleaming raft of essential 'editions' that add lustre not only to an already benchmark catalogue but to 2013's output more generally...
This new batch underlines the label's characteristic anti-generic open-earedness. From Eugene Carchesio's manic glitching to Heinz Riegler's therapeutic lullabies, via major statements from Simon James Philips (the gloriously, grandly pealing Chair) & Rafael Anton Irisarri(the crepuscular, clankingly pensive Unintentional Sea), this disparate outpouring somehow reaffirms the uniqueness of Room40's voice.
Moreover, the label still has the great Chris Herbert's Constants to come (some earlier blather). A delectable, delicate freebie EP, Wintex-Cimex 83, only stokes the appetite for the return of an all too rare releaser - now due in February... & that's not even to mention head honcho Lawrence English's magnificent collaboration with Liz Harris (Grouper), Slow Walkers - though that's a somewhat less recent vintage (even more so in the video below)...
Continental Drift could hardly imply earth much more (so too the album’s 'Geologist Monthly' track titles). But earth – in all of its worthy, grounded, lumpen-ness – is the least of the elements here. Rather, to these ears this is an airborne, grandly* soaring sound, mostly, with moments of timeless marine submersion & calm (particularly in the luscious, longer-form Asthenosphenic Movement trilogy) as well as of fiery crackle & roar.
Each is at play in the thrilling high point, Magnetic Striping. A controlled, faintly abrasive rush provides a richly contrasting sound bed for a slower unfurling of trio trickery – a shimmering, glinting son et lumiere a trois. Faures - Magnetic Striping Peeled out from behind their baffling Faures moniker (perhaps it means more in German?), Sam, René & Fuzz sound more like a scrubbed, marketing-friendly boy band than an ambient-drone supergroup (the trio’s tri-continentality another form of ‘drifting’ collision, of course). & in a way that’s fitting since a snappily melodic ear uncharacteristic of the genre underlies much of CD – particularly the two song-length Uplift pieces (Isostatic & Orogenic, as if you needed telling…).
Another way of putting it: CD is a largely unexpected slab of pretty (though hardly cute or winsome) - a notably romantic excursion out across deep waters, vast skies, even beyond the horizon & up into the spheres – a soundtrack to ascension, or immersion. Sam is a brewer. So, finally, some tasting notes: rich, lingering body with only a touch of offsetting bitterness, not cloying, little spice, some intense top notes, elongated finish. *Grand, certainly, & occasionally grand-standing but rarely grandiose… Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
