As promised, a trainspotter's delight to complete the unveiling of & revelling in our Improbably Late 80 - the broader counterpoint to our earlier Furtive 30 & some kind of a conclusion to our end of year-listing for 2012 (though, as noted, there's stilla label profile/interview to come as we explore the outer limits of improbable lateness...). This final batch of pieces from (& previews of) IL80 releases features Celer / Leonardo Rosado / Motion Sickness of Time Travel / Mike Shiflet & Joe Panzner / Mind Over Mirrors / Nicholas Szczepanik / Portraits / Shackleton / Steinbruechel / The Swifter / Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin / TVO / Two People in a Room / Windy & Carl / Yann Novak & Robert Crouch.
Having unveiled our 2012 picks characteristically late in the day, here's an anticipatory 'Best of' for the new year to jump the gun on next December's list frenzy - & even provide some kind of benchmark for our eventual contribution. The list is unencumbered by the restrictions - no more than one pick per artist/label - imposed on the recent Furtive 30... This initial selection of some 20 coming highlights ranges from Stephan Mathieu's ravishing David Sylvian remix album, Wandermuede, which is already out as a download & has an imminent formal release, as does his Un Coeur Simple, to more speculative ones. They also include long-awaited pieces such as Aurora Liminalis from William Basinski & Richard Chartier onLINE - the pair's first since their Untitled series was expanded in 2008 (having begun in 2004).
This 'pined-for' category also features Chris Herbert's Constants (label unannounced), which will end an absence even longer on some measures - since Mezzotint in 2006. Nor has there been a full release from Mark Templeton to savour since 2009.
Several works in progress will add further lustre to 2013 if/when they surface. These include a new solo album from Steinbruechel & an epic remix/re-interpretation/e-book project for Kenneth Kirschner (involving Steinbruechel, incidentally...) Also factored in: prospective debuts from two drone collaborations, Andere (Anduin & Radere) & A pond waiting for you to leap (Le Berger & Pascal Savy). The latter may still be some way off (though, happily, Sam Le Berger threatens "much more music" this year in any case).
NB: obviously enough, this year will bring many more great releases than those highlighted here. Many outstanding artists & labels are unrepresented here. Please let us know what else these ears should be anticipating...
Andere - s/t (label unknown) A pond begging you to leap - title unknown (label unknown) Chris Abrahams - title unknown(Room 40) Chris Herbert - Constants (label unannounced) Cory Allen - The Great Order (Quiet Design) David Sylvian/Stephen Mathieu - Wandermuede (samadhisound) Duane Pitre - Bridges (Important) Kenneth Kirschner - remix album/e-book (Tokafi) Lawrence English - Lonely Women's Club (Important)
Mark Templeton - Jealous Heart (Under The Spire) Mountains - Centralia (Thrill Jockey) Philip Jeck - title unknown (Touch; also Rosy Parlane/Sohrab 7"s) Steinbruechel - title unknown (label unknown) Stephan Mathieu - Un Coeur Simple (Baskaru) Tashi Wada & Stephan Mathieu - Revenant (Schwebung) Taylor Deupree & Ryuichi Sakamoto/Taylor Deupree & Stephen Vitiello - titles unknown (12k) William Basinski - Nocturnes (2062)/Aurora Liminalis (with Richard Chartier,LINE) Yann Novak - Blue.Hour (Farmacia901)/Undefined(with Richard Chartier, Farmacia901)
NB: top photo 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.
No one can accuse Yann Novak & Robert Crouch of aiming too low. Their Fata Morgana, part of last year's AxS Festival & released on Murmur this week, "mirrors the rare and complex mirage phenomenon which hauntingly inverts the boundaries of figure and ground over both desert lands and seas."
This exquisite, heat-hazed piece - a distant shimmer, a wispy chimera- is "a kind of fragmented travelogue, reconstructed through field recordings from the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah and Lake Mead in the Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada".
Below hear a stereo mix "recomposed for home listening". Or stream the full 45 minutes (Spotify).
Footnotes coming out of our ears, or something like that...anyway, a batch of compelling new material that usefully augments some of LMYE's posts this week.
Firstly, two more of Tim Hecker's diverting piano 'sketches' for the immense Ravedeath, 1972- more muted & reflective than Sketch 5 (covered here), but still highly affecting.
Plus a few stand-outs from the latest Ovalsalvo - 10 more (did I see 15 claimed somewhere?) slivers of snappy Popp from the bonus to the forthcoming OvalDNA (earlier coverage, & before that).
Portrait by Steven Miller. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
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)...
