Not everything is on SoundCloud, though it can sometimes seem that way. So our 'Radio' round-up of releases that attract these ears is splitting up, with a separate exploration of new material only encountered on Bandcamp alongside a dig into the monthly SC playlist (try this one & this if you're after our as yet undocumented latest...). This Japan & live performance-oriented first LMYB features Andrew Tuttle, Chihei Hatakeyama, Cinchel, Laica, Machinefabriek, Marcus Fischer, Matt Christensen, Michel Banabila, sleepland & Stephan Mathieu. If you're interested, LMYE is on Bandcamp here.
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Taking a painfully overdue moment today to laud Ted's excellent adventures - the Ted in question being the 'shoegaze cellist' Ted Laderas (who goes - a bit bafflingly, to me at least - by The OO-Ray), & the adventures his fine collaborations this year with Marcus Fischer (a self-released digital-only typhoon fundraiser for The Philippines) & Le Berger (a 50 copies-only C20 cassette for Twin Spring Tapes)... The inspiredly-named Le B'OO-Ray is a new & almost certainly virtual Montreal-Portland partnership. In contrast, the pairing of Ted & Marcus (Rayfish?) is a quite long-standing collab of Oregon neighbours that produced the Tessellations release back in 2012. Though linked by the sonorous Laderas cello, of course, & a kind of shared restraint, the releases are likewise dissimilar. The largely acousticTulong is a pair of delicate, hushed & affecting mutual explorations of tone that swell & recede like the archipelago waters of their setting. The more shaped (composed, really) V is a more textured to & fro between its parents - a glinting, echoing unfolding in crepuscular half-light Let it also be said: the bleary beauty To Be Twice Put In Jeopardy ("Composed by Le Berger, inspired by The OO-Ray") is one of the most ravishing things yet from LMYE's cherished Berg... Tulong context: "Tulong is Tagalog for aid or assistance. All Proceeds will be donated to Humanitarian Response Philippines, a charity that is assisting in the rebuilding of homes of those devastated by Haiyan. Marcus Fischer + Ted Laderas/The OO-Ray are both of Filipino descent. Upon hearing of the destruction wreaked in the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, they immediately wanted to help. The result is the Tulong EP. This EP continues their long standing collaboration (starting with their LP Tessellations) with two long form pieces, one improvised live (“Deluge”), and one recorded especially for this EP (“Reconstruction”). They use synthesizers, guitar, cello, and loops to build two distinct sonic pieces that evolve to powerful conclusions." B'OO blurb: "The three minimalist pieces that comprise "V" play like something lost to time...akin to a fond memory retrieved over and over throughout the years until it is uncertain what is left: reality or fantasy? So too, are the simple refrains of "V". They are like those threads of muted memories becoming more bare as time moves on - less certain, more surreal. The progressions may seem to be the same, but the context is always changing, influencing an accurate sense of recall. Yet, however ambivalent the musical progressions may be, they evoke an austere sense of conviction as if something DID happen and it WAS meaningful, but...that is where the thread ends - the point beyond which memory can no longer breach. The rest will have to be summoned by another means. Perhaps by you, dear listener..."
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Even in an era of mega-compilations, Headphone Commute's ...and darkness came is a giant. Not just for its epic scale, though at 87 tracks its self-description as "colossal" is an un-hyperbolic statement of fact, but for its ambition: "to benefit all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, which has devastated portions of the Caribbean, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States in late October 2012." Specifically, HC will donate "100% of all the proceeds generated from the sale of this album."Beneficiaries are The Humane Society & the US arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres. The compilation costs $10 - 11.5 cents a track, value hounds. Though you can also opt to pay more. Is it any good? The question of quality may seem in poor taste when the cause is exemplary or irrelevant when the price is so modest. But the contributors anywayinclude an alluring raft of LMYE alumni, including Lawrence English, Ezekiel Honig (solo & with Mark Templeton), Erik K Skodvin, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Simon Scott (solo & in a quartet with Corey Fuller & Marcus Fischer, who also features solo), Kane Ikin, Kreng, Machinefabriek, Celer, loscil, Scanner, Black Swan & Radere - some with exclusives to satisfy trainspotting impulses... Probably very pompous, but: commended
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Still under the gun (& staying there for another four weeks), but to keep our collective hand (& ears) in: a quartet of compelling pieces harvested a while back, slackly stacked in draft... Featuring Marcus Fischer (whose lulling Unrecognizable Now project - including a fine album for Kesh, Two Rooms - will be covered here soon-ish...); Celer (among whose inevitable torrent of releases since our last post his unexpected - & unexpectedly frisky - series of collaborations with Machinefabriek are particularly notable &, again, due coverage here 'shortly'); & Nobuto Soda&Chihei Hatakeyama, both in what I'm guessing are new partnerships (with Danny Clay&Asuna, respectively). By happy coincidence, the Hatakeyama/Asuna was due to be released today. Other sources have it already out at the start of this month, but as that would mess with the synchronicity let's agree it didn't happen... Anyway, back in what passes for full in late September.
A throbbing, gloriously saturated "real-time experiment" recorded this month & posted yesterday underlines the assured daring throughout Stephen Vitiello's work - & sends these ears back to his notably rich (&, unusually, almost always downloadable) SoundCloud.
Other highlights include rewarding, burbling collaborations with/remixes of12k fellow travellers Molly Berg, Marcus Fischer (augmented with the Twilight Zone, thanks to Vitiello...) &, of course, Taylor Deupree.
NB: first & last photos by Stephen Vitiello; second by Taylor Deupree. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Two alluring, affecting new-ish collaborations - with Steinbruechel (Seam) & Marcus Fischer (Two / Twenty-Two) - add further lustre toCory Allen's lovely body of work. While both exhibit what Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet) nicely terms "gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient" (in his predictably insightful reflections around Two / Twenty-Two: see below), Seam is distinctive for its happy marriage of intensely detailed, almost gritty microsound with a huge bass rumble. Two / Twenty-Two, in contrast, deploys a larger, messier palette (twangs & groans, even...) to shape a more urgent, more 'narrative' sound - especially in the second part, Seventy-Seven.
A fair few Allen streams here. Several albums on Spotify too...
Blurb: "Fourteen months and countless folders of audio files later, Steinbrüchel and Cory Allen offer their first collaborative album entitled «Seam». An intensive and process driven work period resulted in an album that integrates the two artist's individual soundworlds. Each sound was processed and multiplied by both artists, forming a sound archive of individual threads. The compositions were then sewn and stitched together using the collection of the archive. Connecting each composition is an inbetween thread which weaves the album's tracks together.
The «- -- - --» audio process was extended into the design and production of the physical packaging. The cover design is based on a system which reflects the track order and the artists' contributions to the creation of the compositions."
Way beyond blurb (Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet): "The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing. Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family.
Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart.
Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly. Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22."
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Two alluring, affecting new-ish collaborations - with Steinbruechel (Seam) & Marcus Fischer (Two / Twenty-Two) - add further lustre toCory Allen's lovely body of work. While both exhibit what Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet) nicely terms "gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient" (in his predictably insightful reflections around Two / Twenty-Two: see below), Seam is distinctive for its happy marriage of intensely detailed, almost gritty microsound with a huge bass rumble. Two / Twenty-Two, in contrast, deploys a larger, messier palette (twangs & groans, even...) to shape a more urgent, more 'narrative' sound - especially in the second part, Seventy-Seven.
A fair few Allen streams here. Several albums on Spotify too...
Blurb: "Fourteen months and countless folders of audio files later, Steinbrüchel and Cory Allen offer their first collaborative album entitled «Seam». An intensive and process driven work period resulted in an album that integrates the two artist's individual soundworlds. Each sound was processed and multiplied by both artists, forming a sound archive of individual threads. The compositions were then sewn and stitched together using the collection of the archive. Connecting each composition is an inbetween thread which weaves the album's tracks together.
The «- -- - --» audio process was extended into the design and production of the physical packaging. The cover design is based on a system which reflects the track order and the artists' contributions to the creation of the compositions."
Way beyond blurb (Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet): "The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing. Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family.
Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart.
Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly. Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22."
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
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