Trumpton clock

Three deep responses from Billy Gomberg, Eleh & Anne Guthrie to last week's Trumpageddon.  

Eleh's is "offered as a point of focus; a means of finding temporary solace from social & political turmoil", while the fraufraulein pair similarly "found solace in creating a musical diary of sorts in this immediate moment of grief."

The soothing, swelling 11.9.16 forms part of a forthcoming LP-only series, Home Age. The darker, more restless fraufraulein pieces - Gomberg's sonorously clanking, Guthrie's more anxious & scattered despite its lovely horn - are the core of 7C, a fundraiser for EarthJustice, NAACP & NARAL. 

Self-released today, it also includes a duo improvisation & a long field recording from marches & protests in New York. "The work is raw and immediate, not a polished album that we have refined over months, but we feel that it is important to start contributing to dialogues & organizations, & communicating with those who listen about where we are in this process. Right now, we are at the beginning."

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

Nature Boy

Beguiling Being in Nature via “Farewell, Brother” from latest Rural Colours release, Afar, Farewell. Who’s doing all this Germanic-sounding Being-in-Nature? It’s offthesky finding fellow-feeling with Man Watching The Stars, known to his Mum as Brendan Paxton. Bristle-based bros Fluid Radio enthuse ‘…these five tracks quiver with a tension that evokes the twilight moment between daylight and darkness, and thrum with a grandeur borrowed from mountains and canyons,’ clinching the deal with ‘…what is most special about “Afar, Farewell” is its ability to enact this kind of ‘being-there’, of being in Nature, even if this turns out to be a kind of mythologised and yearned-for Nature rather than anything concrete.’ 

"Farewell, Brother" by offthesky & Man Watching the Stars by Man Watching the Stars

Hibernate supremo, Jonathan Lees, up yon in Yorkshire, pronounces it ‘one of the most breathtakingly moving albums ever released’ on his junior label, Rural Colours. Hyperbole aside, Afar, Farewell’s five helpings of sustaining guitar string-melt with nice fuzz around the edges go down very nicely, notably failing LMYE’s Enovian ignorability test, resolutely refusing to fade into the background, various textures and timbres – chief among which MWtS’s ‘experimental violin’ - colluding with Jason Corder’s chords to keep ears not only well-lent, but royally tweaked and twirled. Get it here or there.

Offthesky & Man Watching The Stars: Rime Of The Bloodsands Pyre by Rural Colours



While we’re at it, consider that this is just the latest in a stream of offthesky - 20+ emissions over the last decade, incl. collabs with blokes like Radere, Darren McClure, and Billy Gomberg, to name but three. Recently there was Offthesky Vs Kinder Scout’s The Curio Collection on Home Normal with ‘Dusty neo-classical/ambient exhalations from Jason Corder (Offthesky) in trio with cellist Danny Norbury and Home Normal's intercontinental CEO, Ian Hawgood (Kinder Scout). … Across six tracks they paint a slow moving and faded soundscape glowing with the soft peal of bells, creaking strings and crackling location recordings which mingle and diffuse with tender subtlety, the focus given to a blurry mid-ground while a shifting patina of vocal glossolalia and drones lend a dreamy momentum to the whole thing.’ Out of stock, but still downloadable and cloud-streamable:

homen034 offthesky vs Kinder Scout 'The Curio Collection' (album preview) by Home Normal



Around a year ago we had T’Beautiful Nowhere (Northern version ;-)) on Hibernate, apparently inspired by the Appalachians (Wot? not the Pennines?), deemed by some scribe at foxydigitalis to ‘…carry a sense of place that is reminiscent of the work of Richard Skelton (but with only occasional strings).’ Seemingly the typically geetar-totin’ Mr Corder had ‘initially set himself a loose rule to use as many acoustic instruments as possible, whilst limiting the use of heavy electronic processing techniques. Instruments including guitar, harmonium, cello, toy piano, violin, kalimba, vibraphone and voice were recorded in a cabin near Carter Lake, Colorado in the peace of a beautiful, yet remote space. It was this secluded environment that encouraged and an existential state of mind and the resulting material gleaned of ideas relating to isolation and the surrounding rural landscape.’ Everyone knows this is nowhere…

offthesky - the beautiful nowhere (album preview) by experimedia

Cutely appraised, incidentally, by the nicely downhome wasistdas up in Hebden Bridge (home of Hibernate – serendipity or some relation?), whose previously handwritten reviews are now video-mediated here.



























And more recently dropping from offthesky came The Lowern Decay on Wist Rec, or digital, again featuring the delicate fizz and scrim of processing with more nature-loving guitar tones peeking through. Ooh.

offthesky - Lowern decay (fragment) by Wist Rec

Not to neglect the other half, MWtS has previous: Elements 1, a compilation from Mumbai-based collective, The Future Elements, and Qoheleth, a collection of live improvisation performed and recorded in September 2012 ‘meant to capture bare expression, live composition, and spiritual reflection through sound,’ available for free download.

The Fires of Spring Incarnadine by Man Watching the Stars

Qoheleth (Album Preview) by Man Watching the Stars

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

Lend Me More Shorts

All the way from Yann Novak's lovely diaphanous tranquillity to Sean McCann's analogue storm freak-out, seven more or less exceptional recent pieces to pass along after they lodged in these ears. Also featuring Machinefabriek (sultry slo-mo solo [made still more pungent by an epic Earlabs remastering], X-raying sea shanties in his slow-burning Piiptsjilling collab with Jan & Romke Kleefstra & soccer Committee), Billy Gomberg (ultra-dense & somehow ultra-close intensities), Minamo (groaning beguilement conjured out of a jangling, belling bed) &, several months after the rest of the world but anyway, Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo, Lopatin (way more reflective & mostly rather less kosmische than expected)...

Machinefabriek - Kreupelhout (EARLabs remaster)


billy gomberg - quiet barrier (album preview)


Yann Novak - Presence

Piiptsjilling - Skobbetreden


Minamo - Bound Letters




borden, ferraro, godin, halo, lopatin - frkwys vol. 7 (album preview)


Sean McCann - Broken Replicator

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

Optional to view

Disclosures: 'track of the day' isn't going to be every day & its notion of what constitutes a track may not be yours. Regardless, this preview of Billy Gomberg's Give or Give In C60 cassette for Digitalis demands attention.

The tape's first side (called Rude Divides, seemingly...) punctures a brooding, burbling backdrop with nicely loping trills & fills. But things turn really exceptional on the flip (the beautifully titled Shown Up In Your Chest Like Silver) as affecting tones pierce a murky fog in a kind of sonar navigation of the depths. Even just seven minutes of this (out of a full 30) deliver a nearly hallucinatory & entirely diverting immersion.

strictly lower-case blurb (to reassure us we're in the tape underground, presumably...): "billy gomberg operates out of brooklyn, utilizing whatever tools and instruments he can get his hands on to create sprawling compositions. these two 30 minute treks of synthesizer & field recordings morph in countless and often unexpected ways. irregular drones and muddy rhythms inhabit strange, interplanetary dance zones, pumping along until a spectral wave of tones overrides everything and slows it down to a crawl. gomberg has an innate skill in combining so many fine details into a deliciously cohesive whole. edition of 75. chrome."

More at SoundCloud (also here, here, here, here - the first a mesmerising (& free!) download from a forthcoming release on rest + noise, the last also downloadable & arguably even better - & much more ...) & Vimeo.

UPDATE: Billy notes that Give's first side was recorded during this appearance at the Qwartz awards & gives further background to the release.

billy gomberg - give or give in (album preview)

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