Horn of Plenty

 

As a further part of broadening the recognitions in LMYE's Festive Twenty for 2020 (list / compilations / alt list [to follow]), here are 10 'projects' that went beyond the bounds of a single release - sometimes far beyond, either by sheer weight of output or - in a couple of cases - being part of a larger work in several media...

The self-description of one entry - :zoviet*france:'s long-running, unceasingly exploratory A Duck in a Tree mix series on Resonance FM - more or less encapsulates them all, happily: "genre-refusing, zero BPM, hypnatropic & maximinimalist recordings that have grabbed their attention".

Note that both Broken20's 'proper ambient' Slow Notes series & Front & Follow's inspired Isolation & Rejection benefit deeply worthwhile charities. 

Equally, Touch: Isolation - whose sprawling brilliance parcelled out across the lockdown spring was on a scale only matched by Boomkat's Documenting Sound (though without an Akira Rabelais mega-mix as the completist's reward...) - sought to support artists through the pandemic. 

Like other Bandcamp subscriptions, Scanner's Fan Club served this role for an individual artist - providing an insightful stream of often compelling exclusives from installations & other unreleased output. 

Sprawling brilliance also describes the continuing unfurling of A Year In The Country's 'year-long explorations of an otherly pastoralism, the undercurrents & flipside of bucolic dreams' - now entering their seventh year...

Longform Editions has featured in this slot before, but no matter: 2020's editions (including members of the LMYE pantheon like Celer, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, Chihei Hatakeyama & Strategy, as well as a host of welcome discoveries) were some of the strongest yet from this exceptional initiative. 

Unexplained Sounds Group's amazing geographic anthologies follow Electroacoustic Lebanese Music forming part of LMYE's unpublished selection of 2019, for what that's worth...

Finally, Le Berger's 'faint, warped, imperfect' pale blue dots: 

"The prism by which we should measure progress is the way we treat one another; locally, globally. Also the way we treat & share our habitat."

 The list:

12/13/14/15/16/17 (Longform Editions)

Anthology Of Post Industrial Music From Balkan Region / Persian Experimental Music Vol. II / Experimental Music From Mexico (Unexplained Sounds Group)

dat pale blue dot tho I/II/III/IV/V - Le Berger (self-release)

Documenting Sound (Boomkat) 

A Duck in a Tree (:zoviet*france: / Resonance FM)

Isolation & Rejection series (Front & Follow)

Scanner Fan Club (self-release)

Slow Notes series (Broken20)

Touch: Isolation (Touch)

Year 6 (A Year In The Country)

 

Touch: Isolation showreel

Top photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.