My Weekness

Some of these ears' listening enthusiasms from the past week...

"like a soundtrack to a solemn, ancient ceremony - with not-necessarily human participants" 

Kicking off November's Lend Me Your Radio with Aidan Baker's "steady, pulsing & eternal" Steep Uphill Climb - from Deer Park (Muzan Editions)

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"music that enters your room as sunlight...that moves slowly through your room...a slow journey into silence": Martin Hoogeboom & Oberlin's Light/Well (Thirsty Leaves)

Especially keen to hear moody alien's 12-minute Light vs Well remix...

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Much atmosphere & invention in this Precocious Mouse set from Thursday night - 'Type', live at Demerara Records' Vanishing Point Solo

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Sending LMYE love - False Colors (Appropriate Savagery Remix) by J. De Sosa on Vaagner  

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"spellbinding, uniquely decayed renderings of solo piano pieces, it forms a poetic farewell to the 20th century & a reluctant embrace of new technological possibilities" 

Believe the hype [for Akira Rabelais' Eisoptrophobia...]

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"a take on sound as a representation of memory" 

Ultra-ready for Ultrafog's How Those Fires Burned That Are No Longer (Motion Ward)...

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These ears never need much persuading towards new Piiptsjilling (Machinefabriek / Jan & Romke Kleefstra / Mariska Baars) - but champing at the bit for the quartet's 'concentrated yet playful improvisations' with Sylvain Chauveau, Annelies Monsere & Joachim Badenhorst

FEAN

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

White horse

We can argue about whether the Bill Callahan songbook is worthy of it, but there can't be much dispute about the fastidious connoisseurship that already characterises Stephan Mathieu's new vinyl/FLAC-only label, Schwebung (down to details like its customised ringtone & the meaning of its lovely, apt name - "the beats producted by the simultaneous vibration of two sounds, especially in unisons & octaves when nearly, but not quite in tune"). This is true of his work more generally, of course - from the extraordinary care & precision of his live phonoharp placements, as Fluid Radio & The Liminal noted, to that shaping classics like Transcriptions (with Taylor Deupree) or A Static Place (the latter a mainstay of LMYE's Festive 50 + 50 of 2011's exceptional releases)...


A platform for Mathieu's "simultaneously vibrating" collaborations, as well as solo work, Schwebung starts life with an avant-pop encounter with Sylvain Chauveau & Adam Wiltzie. Callahan's "ballades" do little for these ears, but the treatments Mathieu & Chauveau (who has plenty of form in recontextualising pop - exhibits A & B) conjure are quite ravishing, if the the first two instalments from the again beautifully & aptly named Palimpsest, Chosen One & Prince Alone In The Studio, are anything to go by - their stately, swelling shimmers in somewhat other-worldly, even disorienting, contrast to the songs. 


So even if Palimpsest seems like something of an outlier it is ultimately a sister to this year's revisit to Radioland (the scintillating Panoramica live workout with Caro Mikaleff on Line) or the pair's glorious-sounding & looking Constellation or even an absorbing smaller-scale piece like Re-composition from bouzouki from late last year. & so too will be Schwebung's next release (the reference to it seems to have disappeared, but it's with a Japanese artist...) since Mathieu is plainly incapable of making anything not hugely alluring. 

Chosen One (exc.)


Prince Alone In The Studio (Demo)

stephan mathieu + caro mikalef - radioland (panoramica) (album preview)


Untitled Consort Music (fragment; starts around 1:24 in...) - from Radio Web Macba 'Composing with Process' series


Stephan Mathieu - Re-composition from bouzouki [excerpt]


9 loops _ étude _ by caro mikalef

Mini films Design Detox _ two + download link from cabina


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

Saihoji Temple

Footnote to yesterday's look at O: a brief revisit - inspired by their coming joint jaunt round Japan with flau - to Sylvain Chauveau's solo work. Still struck by swelling filmic strings, measured piano delicacy, a little glitch & crackle (more, please), & amazing, lambent space around every note...

Radiophonie No. 2

L'Approache du Nuage

Situation Initiale

Des Plumes Dans La Tête [re-up]

From Stone to Cloud

Stream Chauveau's Type releases in full: the highly recommended S, Nuage & Singular Forms...

YouTube aggregation page...

Sylvain Chauveau + 0 Japan Tour 2011 (via _flau)

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

Story of O

No brainer to follow Steven Hess with On cohort Sylvain Chauveau. & while Chauveau's would still be a major body of work even without his collaborations & engagements - not least with Hess - you wouldn't want to do without them.

Besides the luminous On, Chauveau's involvement in Arca & the defunct Micro:mega, & his partnership with Felicia Atkinson, you'd be missing out on the playfully thoughtful/thoughtfully playful conceptualists O (sometimes Ensemble O, often plinkily percussive, & yes, of course, they've done versions of Cage's 4' 33). Newest from this source - which it's quite appealing to think of as a distilling step beyond On, though chronologically O seems to precede On & is as often as not macro where On is more or less always micro... - is for the black monk on Belgian netlabel etlefeucomme.

Recommended by Stephan Mathieu, a weighty endorsement round our way, these are three diverting rule-driven cut-ups. Their alternate lurking bleakness & alarm clock repetition is oddly rewarding - especially version 2.

Oh, & "for a realistic listening, please play those recordings at low volume"...

Blurb: « the black monk » is how some people used to name american painter ad reinhardt. from 1960, reinhardt had toughened his work to the point of only making black canvases in a square shape until the end of his life. those « ultimate paintings » were invariably divided in nine squares and three different but almost identical blacks. this composition by 0 is based on principles inspired by ad reinhardt's concept: nine juxtaposed fragments of 45 seconds, monolithic and dark, with three different musical colours. the three « colours » have to be created by the performers with the instruments they have chosen.

A gripping earlier piece is Passacaille, a buzzing, twangy encounter with the classical Passacaglia. Probably...

Background: 0 has started in 2004. the members currently live in bayonne (france) and brussels (belgium). the band can include new members for each project and also increase or reduce when needed: percussion ensemble, chamber music, fanzine, field recordings...we perform our own compositions as well as pieces by other musicians: from taku sugimoto to steve reich, from fritz hauser to the jackson 5.

Longer bio.

O > version 2 / version 3 (from for the black monk, etlefeucomme) > Passacaille (Ensemble O, Idiosyncratics)

More O sounds here (trio live) & here (Morton Feldman rearrangement)...

Lots more O video here...

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