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Unexplained Sounds Group's amazing geographic anthologies follow Electroacoustic Lebanese Music forming part of LMYE's unpublished selection of 2019, for what that's worth...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

Capelli camicia

Ineptitude or high-mindedness? Either way (both, really), LMYE's Festive 33-1/3 - a selection of the releases that meant most to us in 2016 - again emerges on the last day of the year...

The song remains the same too: a clunky but sincere attempt to acknowledge how much more great music was released over the year, even just in our narrow corner of endeavour, than an inevitably partial list like this can begin to embrace. 

To spread the love as far as possible the two of us select 15 releases each, but no more than one per label or artist. After a bit of jostling & horse-trading over duplicates (though barely any this year, when we've evidently been further apart in our listening than previously...), we supplement the 30 with four projects that fall outside the normal 'release' boundaries - bigger &/or more ambitious (in multiple media, for example), or not strictly new - to derive our 33-1/3. 

This year's list has been unusually challenging since a number of key labels were in overdrive. Grand projects have multiplied too. So our self-constraining methodology became even more masochistic.

How, to take an especially painful example, to choose between Bethan Kellough's Aven & Claire M. Singer's Solas? Two exceptional releases that each expanded notions of sound palettes & what could be done with them, but both on Touch (about whom more shortly...). 

& that's to exclude Yann Novak's Ornamentation, Simon Scott's Floodlines, Anna von Hauswolff's Kallan (Prototype) & Fennesz's Mahler Remix, despite all four clearly demanding recognitition as part of the year's 'best'. 

Ditto conflicts between multiple pieces of outstanding work on Dragon's Eye, Editions Mego, Line, Room40, Sonic Pieces & Students of Decay - to highlight the concerns of only one pair of LMYE ears. 

Note to self: a follow-up without the hair shirt may be needed to honour all these exclusions.

At the very least, for a less partial picture of our listening priorities please check out the monthly Lend Me Your Radio series on SoundCloud, al's Mixcloud & jl's Bandcamp (collection & wish list). 


2016 Festive 33-1/3:

Jeremy Bible - Music for Black Holes (Aole) [jl]
Dirty Hope/Graham Dunning/David Fyans/Mark Lyken/Orphax/TVO/Arne Weinberg - li series (Broken20) [jl]
Stephan Mathieu - Radiance series (Schwebung) [jl]
Abul Mogard - Works (Ecstatic) [al]





1991 - No More Dreams (No More Dreams) [al]
Chris Abrahams - Climb (Vegetable) [jl]
anthéne - Black Carbon (Assembly Field) [jl]
Beautumn - Bordeaux (Infraction) [al]
Benoît Pioulard - Thine / Radial (self-released) [al]
Bruised Skies - Guide (Blank Editions) [al]
Celestino - Beyond Enemy (A Guide To Saints) [al]
Dominic Coppola - Ladylike EP (Overview Ltd.) [al]





drøne - reversing into the future (Pomperipossa) [jl]
Drottning Omma - Iris av is (offworldcolonies ltd.) [al]
Christian Fennesz & Jim O'Rourke - It's Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry (Editions Mego) [jl]
Francesco Giannico & Giulio Aldinucci - Agoraphonia (Dronarivm) [jl]
Billy Gomberg - Slight at that Contact (Students of Decay) [jl]
Tobias Hellkvist - Vesterhavet (self-released) [jl]
Chris Herbert - Katushki (Low Point) [jl]





Braeyden Jae - Fog Mirror (Whited Sepulchre) [al]
KETEV - I Know No Weekend (Portals Editions) [al]
Bethan Kellough - Aven (Touch) [jl]
L’eoscombu Couti - Five Cambridge Utilities (Constellation Tatsu) [al]
Sophia Loizou - Singulacra (Kathexis) [al]
Sana Obruent - Prince of the Air (Blackjack Illuminist) [al]
Marsen Jules - Shadows in Time (Oktaf) [jl]
Moss Covered Technology - Speicherbank (Eilean) [al]





New Rome - Nowhere (Room40) [al]
Nils Quak - Ad Interim (Phinery) [jl]
Alex Smalley - JAN SBR 15 (Rural Colours) [jl] 
The Swifter - Wall Sailor (Sonic Pieces) [jl]
Triac - Here (Line) [jl]
Willamette - Diminished Composition (Scissor Tail) [al]
Uwe Zahn/Porya Hatami/Darren McClure - Veerian (Eilean) [jl]





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 Three Radios

A neglected trove of listening riches: 50 compelling tracks spread across three playlists chucked together over the past quarter. Each should have been shared here in our Lend Me Your Radio series already, but oops...

The many highlights include the first resurfacing of Richard Skelton's Harlassen in nine years (a blistering addition to his Archival series that amplifies & expands our conception of 'new' Skelton, also embodied by his 'Delerious' Inward Circles soundtrack), plus a reminder of his classic sound through a 10th anniversary collection; a ravishing Jacob Kirkegaard piece for Holotype; &, first up, a rich meshing of Robert Donne, Stephen Vitiello & The OO-Ray's sounds on Geographic North. 

As always, please accept these lists as inevitably partial pictures of the period. No doubt other entirely worthwhile stuff should also have featured - but this is what grabbed these ears as they trawled through SoundCloud over the quarter.   

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 Another Radio

Another month, another belated, inevitably partial sample of the period's riches...

Highlights include a strikingly poised, shimmering Christopher Bissonnette piece (from a forthcoming kranky release); a ravishingly bucolic, meditative version of LMYE's old flame Le Berger, for Home Normal; the glowing, gathering warmth of Maxwell August Croy & James Devane's returning En (on the ever more essential Students of Decay); a quite lovely Lee Ranaldo workout for Important; a valuable "atypical & personal" Chris Herbert set of "phasing & stippled atmospherics" for Sydney's Ears Have Ears; & a refracting first taste of the as-yet unreleased Tsjinlûd (a Frisian collective that includes Jan & Romke Kleefstra & Anne Chris Bakker, who appears under her own name too...). 

Also notable, TVO & Andrew Sharpley's provocative, caricaturing 'Feast Of Fools' - leering at the "dancing bears" of the "dead-eyed" Labour leadership losers, with exemplary agility (released at the moment of the Corbyn coronation). 

Further contributions from the Broken20/Moving Furniture axis are a powerful Digisizer dirge from Orphax & yet more rumbling longform beauty from D. Fyans (aka Erstlaub). 

September's 'radio' also features compelling new work by Chambers (Michael Red & Gabriel Saloman), Will Bolton, Scott Cortez, Emptyset, From The Mouth Of The Sun (Aaron Martin & Dag Rosenqvist, who also appears in his own, post-Jasper TX right...), L A N D, The OO-Ray, Andrew Pekler, PERILS (Kyle Bobby Dunn & Benoit Pioulard), Ruhe, Ryuichi Sakamoto & Taylor Deupree, Small Things on Sundays, Undisclosed & Voyou. 

The full 3-hour SoundCloud playlist, plus a few supplementary streams & videos, is at the bottom here. 

Disclaimer: no doubt September brought reams of deeply worthwhile releases besides this lot. Apologies that these ears haven't got to them yet. 

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

Thirty-three & a third

You may know the drill by now: in a sincere though inevitably clunkily artificial attempt to spread recognition as widely as possible without devaluing it too much, LMYE’s co-authors each independently pick 15 releases that particularly mattered to them during the year – but under two faintly hair-shirted constraints: no more than one selection per artist & one per label. 

Duplication across our 2014 line-ups was very limited. Only Lawrence English’s Wilderness of Mirrors (a highlight of another stand-out year for his Room40 imprint, our 2012 Label of the Year), Fennesz’s Bécs (eMego), Stephan Mathieu’s Sacred Ground (Schwebung) and Janek Schaefer’s Lay-By Lullaby (12k) featured on both initial drafts. 

This year we expand the resulting master list to a Festive 33-1/3. In particular, we throw in two epic collections that were too significant to exclude, even if they weren’t strictly speaking new music: Chris Dooks’ The Motherlode & The Otherlode (Broken20) & Kenneth Kirschner’s Imperfect Forms (Tokafi). 

In addition, a wry part-vote for Le Berger’s Interwoven Sonic Tapestry – formally released at a minute to midnight (EST, presumably) today “to ensure avoidance of any 2014 and / or 2015 'top' lists” – rounds out our initial 2014 roll-call. 

Mandatory health warning: plenty of other artists & other labels than those featured here made great music this year. As previously, we’ll acknowledge the broader universe of releases that resonated with us in a follow-up post…

Anjou – Anjou (Kranky) [jl]
Thomas Ankersmit – Figueroa Terrace (Touch) [jl]
Andrea Belfi – Natura Morta (Miasmah) [jl]
Nicolas Bernier – frequences (a / fragments) (LINE) [jl]
Alex Cobb – Marigold & Cable (Shelter Press) [jl]
Robert Curgenven – SIRÈNE (Recorded Fields) [jl]
Dalhous - Will To Be Well (Blackest Ever Black) [al]
Deaf Center – Recount (Sonic Pieces) [jl]
Loren Dent - Anthropology Vols. 2 & 3 (Infraction) [al]
Chris Dooks – The Motherlode & The Otherlode (Broken20) [jl]

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Kyle Bobby Dunn & the Infinite Sadness (Students of Decay) [al]
Lawrence English - Wilderness of Mirrors (Room40) [al/jl]
Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello – Fable (Dragon’s Eye) [jl]
Fennesz - Bécs (eMego) [al/jl]
Chris Herbert – Constants (Room40) [jl]
The Inward Circles - Nimrod is Lost in Orion & Osyris in the Doggestarre (Corbel Stone Press) [jl]
P Jørgensen – Gold Beach (Low Point) [jl]
Kangding Ray - Solens Arc (Raster-Noton) [al]
Sima Kim - Debris (Soft Corridor)
Kenneth Kirschner – Imperfect Forms (Tokafi) [jl]

Le Berger – Interwoven Sonic Tapestry (in the key of) (self-released) [jl]
Stephan Mathieu – Sacred Ground (Schwebung) [jl/al]
Neel - Phobos (Spectrum Spools) [al]
Duane Pitre & Cory Allen – The Seeker & The Healer (Students of Decay) [jl]
Abdulla Rashim - Unanimity (Northern Electronics) [al]
M. Sage - A Singular Continent (Patient Sounds) [al]
Pascal Savy - Adrift (Eilean Records) [al]
Janek Schaefer – Lay-By Lullaby (12k) [jl/al]
Shifted - Arrangements in Monochrome (Part 1 & 2) (Avian) [al]
Nicholas Szczepanik - Not Knowing (Desire Path) [al]






TCF - 415C47197F78E811FEEB7862288306EC4137FD4EC3DED8B (Liberation Technologies) [al]
Tegh - Night Scenes (Inner Ocean) [al]
Mike Weis – Don’t Know, Just Walk (Type) [jl]
Cody Yantis / Nathan McLaughlin / Josh Mason / Joe Houpert – Line Drawings (Desire Path/FET Press) [jl]



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

Hair skirt

Weeks into the new year but still, er, partying like it's 2013 (fretting ludicrously over inclusions even now, more like...), we finally get round to highlighting 50 more releases that particularly mattered to us last year.

Listed below, they provide a companion to & expansion of last month's Festive 30 - & together form this year's Improbably Late 80 (successor to last year's here & there). 

Though you'd probably appreciate never hearing more of it again, please note that these releases were selected after shedding the 'no more than one pick per artist or label' hairshirt in which each co-author was clad when determining our initial group. Like them, these 50 have their own playlist - tracks below are from the 18 releases unavailable for that list.

Disclaimer: inevitably, 2013 brought many more great pieces of music than the 80 we've managed to highlight. But these were the ones that really resonated with us during the year...



36 :: Shadow Play (3Six)
Aquarelle :: August Undone (Students of Decay)
Anne Chris Bakker :: Tussenlicht (Somehow)
B/B/S :: Brick Mask (Miasmah)
Ben Fleury-Steiner :: Clearings (Rural Colours) 
Bengalfuel :: Keewadin (self-released)
Celer :: Climbing Formation (Entropy)/Radish (Commune)
Chris Abrahams :: Memory Night (Room40) 
Chris Watson :: In St Cuthbert’s Time (Touch)





Cindytalk :: A Life is Everywhere (eMego)
CMKK :: Gau (Monotype)
Dadub :: Untitled EP (Stroboscopic Artefacts) 
Dalglish :: Niaw ot Vile (PAN) 
Daniel Menche :: Marriage of Metals (eMego)
David Sylvian & Stephen Mathieu :: Wandermuede (samadhisound) 
Duane Pitre :: Bridges (Important)  
Erstlaub :: Twenty Paces Outward in a Spiral (Broken20)
Fabio Orsi & Pimmon :: Procrastination (Home Normal) 
Faures :: Continental Drift (Home Normal)





Gabriel Saloman :: Soldier’s Requiem (Miasmah)
Ithaca Trio :: Music for Piano & Patience (Home Normal)
Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier :: Dark Morse (Shelter Press)
John Davis :: Ask the Dust (Students of Decay)
Kangding Ray :: Tempered Inmid EP (Raster Noton)
Keith Berry :: Towards the Blue Peninsula (Infraction)
Koboku Senju :: Joining the queue to become one of those ordinary ghosts (MIE Music)
Kwaidan :: Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright (Bathetic)
Machinefabriek :: Attention, the Doors are Closing! (self-released)/Vergezichten (Alien Transistor)





Mark Templeton :: Jealous Heart (Under The Spire)
Miko Vainio & Joachim Nordwall :: Monstrance (Touch) 
Mountains - Centralia (Thrill Jockey) 
Nils Quak :: Infinite Folds (self-released)/Und Unsere Häuser Sind Särge (SicSic)
Phill Niblock :: Touch Five (Touch)
Pillowdiver :: Bloody Oath (Dronarivm)
Quiet Evenings :: Impressions (Aguirre)
Rachad Becker :: Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. 1 (PAN)
Rafael Anton Irisarri :: The Unintentional Sea (Room40)





Richard Chartier :: Interior Field (LINE)
Ryuichi Sakamoto & Taylor Deupree :: Disappearance (12k)
Simon Fisher-Turner & Philippe Petit :: A Ti Dou Li Dum A Ti Dou Li Dum Ti De (hellosQuare) 
Stephan Mathieu :: Un Coeur Simple (Baskaru)
Stephen Vitiello & Molly Berg :: Between You & the Shapes You Take (12k)
Svarter Greiner :: Black Tie (Miasmah)
Tobias Hellkvist :: Turquoise (Small Fragments)
William Basinski :: Nocturnes (2062) 
Yann Novak :: Blue.Hour (Farmacia901)
Yann Novak & Richard Chartier :: Undefined (Farmacia901)







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

Shirt listing

A quick supplement to our recent Festive 30: from 30 releases that particularly mattered to us in 2013 (each co-author restricted, as noted with tedious if sincere scrupulousness, to a single pick per artist & label...) a playlist from the 15 available on Spotify - 3013. 

Drawn roughly half & half from each co-authorial selection, the line-up comprises William Basinski & Richard Chartier (jl), Boards of Canada (al), Dalhous (al), Eluder (al), Bruce Gilbert & BAW (jl), Tim Hecker (al/jl), Jon Hopkins (al), Kiln (al), Main (jl), Mohammad (jl), Tomas Phillips & Kenneth Kirschner (jl), Orphax (jl), Pausal (al), Slow Walkers (jl) & Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree (jl). 












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