Plenty more

 

One final transmission from the last-chance saloon: in the spirit of maximising inclusion & recognition, here are 25 more 2020 releases that lightened & brightened a year in profound need of both...

This alternative list is a way of acknowledging the inevitable limitations of the original Festive Twenty (or any list...). While those 20 stood out to us as especially meaningful or evocative or thrilling, they are of course very far from constituting last year's only great releases.

It also completes our broader picture of the year's music. Besides the two Twenties, this also includes a baker's dozen of compilations & 10 'projects' beyond the bounds of a single release.

 As ever, this list is constrained to one pick per artist/label - in order to acknowledge as wide a listening range as possible. Moreover, this one had no prospect of picking up votes for multiple releases from the same artist or label since it's all on jl (whereas the original Twenty is the combined work of al & jl...).

Again as ever, this constraint also meant having to exclude outstanding releases such as Geneva Skeen's Double Bind, Past Walls & Windows by Todd Anderson-Kunert & Pinkcourtesyphone's Leaving Everything To Be Desired (all among a raft of brilliance in Room40's 20th anniversary year, as noted...) - never mind other losses to the hair shirt like Grand River's Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes (Editions Mego) & Romeo Poirier's Hotel Nota (sferic). 

 

Anyway, the (alternative) list:

William Basinski & Richard Chartier :: Something From The Pink House (self-release)  

Black to Comm :: Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens (Thrill Jockey)

Celer :: Wasted In The Waiting (self-release)

John Chantler :: Doing Nothing / Nothing Doing (self-release)

CLEARED :: The Key (Touch) 

EMRA GRID :: five cycles through an empty chamber (LINE)

Lawrence English :: Lassitude (Room40)

FEAN :: II (Laaps) 

FRKTL :: Excision After Love Collapses (self-release)

David Fyans :: Crushing Depth (self-release)

Haarvol :: Ridge of Humming Spoils (Moving Furniture)

ISAN :: Nothing Picked & Placed Nowhere (wiaiwya) 

Kassel Jaeger :: Swamps/Things (Shelter Press) 

France Jobin :: Death is perfection, everything else is relative (Editions Mego) 

Kim's Spirit :: Blossom Everywhere (A Red Thread)

The Necks :: Three (Northern Spy)

Jake Muir :: the hum of your veiled voice (sferic)

Lynette Sandholm Evvers :: Fundamental Colours II (Other Forms of Consecrated Life)

Simon Scott :: Apart (12k)

Tom James Scott :: Mine Is The Heron (Students of Decay)

Sontag Shogun, Stijn Huwels :: The Floating World & The Sorrowful World (Thesis)

Richard Skelton :: LASTGLACIALMAXIMUM (Aeolian)

Three Point Circle :: Layered Contingencies (Palace of Lights)

Ida Toninato :: We Become Giants (Dragon's Eye)  

Jeremy Young :: Filaments (Eliane Tapes) 

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

Bells At Boudha

Two exemplary, contrasting releases in support of Nepal: Hibernate's Dayalu / for Nepal & Aaron Dilloway's Sounds of Nepal Volumes 1 - 3. Beneficiaries are the British Red Cross & the America Nepal Medical Foundation, respectively. 

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

Flame attire

Our provost of Cambridge, Simon Scott showcases long learning, a venerable past & ears sharper than a King's College spire on a Track of the Day exclusive to the vinyl version of his new Bunny for Miasmah (also stream the CD release in full below). Don't know quite how those halving colons fit into a badger's lair, but SETT::: :: : is a fuzzy, fragile soundscape of scudding clouds & reflective filigree. 


Bonus: Scott's delicate, somehow yearning Flame Attire remix of Isan's Eastside on his own Keshhhhhh label (previously featured here)....


SETT::: :: : by Simon Scott


Simon Scott - Bunny


ISAN - "Flame Attire" remix by Simon Scott

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

Empty gallery

The transfer window may have closed, but Premier League talent - Taylor Deupree! Steinbruechel! Simon Scott! - converges on our old friends ISAN as each contributes a remix of the pair's gently, twinklingly unfolding 'composite', an installation tone poem, all then packaged into a ravishing 12" for Scott's keshhhhhh label.


Hear all four compelling takes on the lambent original in a single preview below. 


Blurb: "It started a couple years ago - we had been working on a sound installation for the Eastside Gallery in Birmingham. The installation was based on ambient recordings made in and around the empty gallery, also from synthesised tones played out and recorded in the same space. We then constructed a multi-layered piece to be played from un-synchronised CD players, with new layers added over a period of 9 weeks.

Sometime after it was all up and running, we sent a "composite" of the work to our friend Simon Scott as he was really curious to hear it... Simon came back to us straight away with a vision to remix and release this on vinyl for his Keshhhhhh label, along with guest remixes from Taylor Deupree and Ralph Steinbrüchel (and more to come with the future digital release).

It's been a labour of love - beautifully mastered by Lawrence English, hand-stamped labels by Carl Harris, all lovingly assembled by Simon..."

Eastside (Remix 12" Preview) by isan


Extras - ISAN contributions to two giant & hugely worthwhile compilations, Sequence1 & 31 songs for japan: 









A dramatic exit of tosca from Rosa Menkman


EB.TV interview. 


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

International Standard Audiovisual Number

Hissing, clanging intricacies winningly entwined - life has been poorer without ISAN's blanketing analogue warmth. Now though, as noted, the trans-North Sea 'tronica partnership ("tone poems on the aural autobahn between Sweden and Southend") is back in action with the forthcoming Glow in the Dark Safari Set (morr music). From which, the endearingly stately (& downloadable...) bleeps of Channel Ten:

ISAN - Channel Ten

Bonus: a trio of characteristically wry recent-ish remixes...

Keet (ISAN saved by the bell mix) by rump

Yuki (ISAN remix) by visualdisplayunit

Losing Places (ISAN Remix) by The Leaf Library

Also hear ISAN's space bossa remix of Clouds' Protecting Hands (& Geiom's, for that matter) here.



Finally, having thrilled to their February King's Place show (streaming below if you somehow neglected it...), you'll want to hear ISAN's Robin friskily live on home turf for Telephasic a few years back - the two are also combining for "an evening of laid-back electronica" quite soon:

Robin Saville @ Telephasic 3

live at kings place london 250210 by ISAN

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

Dripping glory

Isan & Inch-time - an old-school line-up for LMYE perhaps, but with both purveyors of subtle, slyly wayward electronica re-emerging after long absences (the now trans-North Sea Isan with a superb live show [extracts & in full below] for Arctic Circle's Bubbly Blue & Green festival, Inch-time with a new album to come [two streams below] & recent EP [Spotify, title track also streams below]) we're glad to remake their bleepy, loopy acquaintances...



Isan > First King / Second Place / Bubbly Blue / Green Festival / Dangling Extra (all hacked from Kings Place performance below)

isan live at kings place london 250210
"featuring the isan Dripsophone in all its low key glory..."



Aurora
"Title track from the Aurora EP, out now on Static Caravan"

Two Courtesans

Suspension
Both "from upcoming album 'The Floating World'"


Photo by Rosie Reed Gold.

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

"To sulk upon my mother's breast"

So Infantjoy is over, in a MySpaced squabble ("due to the continued and mysterious absense of one half of infantjoy (Paul Morley) it is with regret that infantjoy has become but the ghost of infantjoy.").

Ho hum. Had been quite looking forward to the third part of the 'kind of trilogy' ("Half way through the making of With, about half way through 2006, about half way through June, about half way through a Wednesday, half way through the afternoon, it occurred to us as Infantjoy that there was every likelihood that With was becoming the second part in a kind of trilogy dedicated to the memory and illusion of Erik Satie, and the subsequent gentle removal of Erik Satie.")...

A reminder: Application #4 (from the Isan & others-enhanced With).

Good Morley piece on Eno, selling out, blogging & Infantjoy here. & an amiable interview here. Blake songs here & here.

isan - gunnera