Lend Me Your August

Another month's listening: from Ferkat Al Ard & Rainer Maria to Merry Clayton & Wellesley Braham via The Necks, Ornette & Dylan...

A smattering from August's Bandcamp-able portion: 

 

 

If you do Spotify, the whole thing is here & below:

 

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

Sigillaricia

 

Not on the original June 2004 'album-in-progress', this thrilling second part - written, produced & mixed a couple of years later by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde - turns 'SwSR' into (it says here...) 'a throbbing ouroboros of glitches & free flowing energy'.

 

 

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

Twenty is plenty

Presenting 20 releases that lightened & brightened a year in profound need of both...

To state the obvious: these weren't the year's only great releases. Nor do we suggest they were the 'best'. But they stood out to us as especially meaningful or evocative or thrilling - or some combination of these...

It's notable how many of them capture live performance in a year when this was largely impossible, except through streaming. 

Notable too is how many are self-releases. Labels aren't on the way out, to be sure. But Bandcamp has enabled a direct connection with audiences that seems to really work for artists (not least in sharing performance, of course).

As ever, the overall list is a compilation of our two separate lists. Each was limited to one pick per artist/label. 

Again as ever, this constraint (to range as widely as possible within our listening) meant having to exclude outstanding releases such as Lawrence English's 'deepening' Lassitude (among a raft of brilliance, to the earlier point about labels, in Room40's 20th anniversary year...). 

Among other painful losses to the hairshirt were France Jobin's flawless Death is perfection, everything else is relative & the remainder of her Editions Mego labelmate KMRU's outpouring (besides multiple albums, the EPs, mixes & even a piece for The Arsenal are all must-hear)...

 

Ultimately, this list forms only one part of a broader picture of the year's music. This also includes projects that went beyond the bounds of conventional releases, compilations & some alternative picks. 

For now, though, LMYE's Festive Twenty for 2020:

Chris Abrahams :: Appearance (Room40)

Shoeb Ahmad :: im/modesty (Flaming Pines)

William Basinski :: Lamentations (Temporary Residence)

r beny :: Seafoam & Dust (Dauw)

 

 

Flaming Pines · im/modesty (excerpt)- Shoeb Ahmad & Australian Art Orchestra - out November 16

 

 

Black Glass Ensemble & Friends :: Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor (omnempathy)

Sarah Davachi :: Figures In Open Air (Late Music)

drøne :: the stilling (Pomperipossa)

Carlo Giustini :: Gli Spiriti Della Marca (Vaagner)

 

 

 

Chris Herbert :: Kranky NTS Radio (self-release)

Hotel Neon :: Moments (Sound In Silence)

KMRU :: Peel (Editions Mego)

Lamasz :: Nature Morte (Past Inside the Present)

 

 

 

Alva Noto :: Xerrox Vol. 4 (Noton)

øjeRum :: Selected Percussive Works 1998 - 2001 (Opal Tapes)

Jim O'Rourke :: So You Want to Write A Fugue (Steamroom)

Benoît Pioulard :: A Few Moments In (Disques d'Honoré)

 

 

 

Maja S. K. Ratke :: Corona lockdown concert for Tusk Festival 2020 (self-release)

William Selman :: The Life of Lines (Critique of Everyday Life)

Hirotaka Shirotsubaki :: Slowdance, Lowtide (self-release)

thme :: that’s what it will be like (Whitelabrecs)

 

 

 

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

Academy of the Holy Names

Femenine in thrilling, enthralling performance (at the LCMF's 'In Search of Julius Eastman' event - brief clip here) was one of these ears' musical highlights of recent years. So sign me up for a joyful, Reichian new Eastman release - especially one that benefits the exemplary work of the Transgender Law Center...

Moreover, Joy Boy is by the same early incarnation of the S.E.M. Ensemble as on Frozen Reeds' unearthing of Femenine. It could hardly not be, since one immediately preceded the other at the same concert (Wednesday, November 6, 1974 at Composers Forum on the Campus of the Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York). 

Double hat-tip to Frozen Reeds' Ian - both for the release ("sitting on this one for a long time now. One-sided 10" or whatever just didn't feel right - this really does") & for amping up Bandcamp's inspiring effort for TLC tomorrow. 

Time to hand over those Euros...











Finally, Adolfo Doring's fascinating Without a Net on Eastman. 

NB: Sleeve photo courtesy of University at Buffalo Music Library, The State University of New York. 

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

Hidden burn

Drama - the sense of moment, event or even ritual - figures notably large in Touch’s recent output. It always has, of course (think Kiri No Oto or Without Sinking…). But ravishing new releases like Claire M Singer’s  Solas & Bethan Kellough’s Aven seem drenched in it - most obviously because of their string & organ parts, but more broadly because of their shade & light interplay of acoustic, electronic & field recording elements.









It also seems to reflect the imprint’s growing body of live releases this year. Aven is one; Floodlines by Simon Scott – whose gripping Insomni for Touch affiliate Ash International was part of LMYE’s 2015 Festive 33-1/3 - & Fennesz's Mahler Remix two more. All clearly gain great atmosphere & power from being captured in the moment... 



Touch’s US West Coast ‘conference’ in the summer amped up this emphasis on performance. Besides Aven, gripping shows by Philip Jeck, Daniel Menche and Mark Van Hoen were shared through Touch Radio – a wonderfully rich ‘platform for recordings from artists affiliated to or whose work appears on Touch’. 

To these ears at least, it connects too to drøne’s Reversing Into the Future. This thrilling piece – surely the most kinetic non-dancefloor record in an age ("sounds moan and sing, forming their own phonemes") – feels like an honorary part of Touch’s work even if formally a debut for Anna von Hausswolff’s Pomperipossa: a collaboration between Touch co-founder Mike Harding & Van Hoen (whose digital-only Artefacts I came out on the ‘audio-visual resource for ‘emerging artists’’ TOUCHLINE in October 2015). 

Much more Touch performance in tonight's 17th Spire ("organ works past present & future") at Organ Reframed - for which Singer is artistic director. Hope to see you there...

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

"may love prevail"

"June 12, 2016 — I have been working on this piece for a while but it always just felt so dark. Darkness is what I feel today. This work is dedicated to the victims of all violence against LGBTQ people.

100% of the profit from sales/downloads of this work will be donated to: 

THE GLBT COMMUNITY CENTER OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 

+ 

PULSE TRAGEDY COMMUNITY FUND 

may love prevail over hate in all its forms, 

richard chartier 

PS: please also consider donating directly to the links above to help the community as well as the victims' families."

Prompted by tragedy but also in support & celebration of its maker: darkness & a little light in an array of gripping, mostly recent work by Line-lord Chartier - largely in his "more emotional, dare one say musical" Pinkcourtesyphone guise...

NB: Photos from 3particles.com/pinkcourtesyphone.com. 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 Your Band

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.

Minimum length 16 meters

If you're within any kind of manageable radius of Bristol, I assume we'll be seeing each other Saturday week. The chance to witness the vast scale & arcing resonances of Ellen Fullman's 'Long String Instrument' - in seemingly its UK debut - isn't one to spurn lightly. 

For once, describing the event as "singular" & "transcendent" seems more a reasoned statement of fact than hype froth. LMYE's hat doffed & redoffed (read the 'tech rider'...) to Arnolfini for making it happen as part of the Bristol New Music festival.

Blurb: "A transcendental new music experience that finds singular US composer/inventor Ellen Fullman building and performing on her remarkable self-designed Long String Instrument, in collaboration with German experimental guitarist Konrad Sprenger. A UK premiere.

The Long String Instrument is an installation of dozens of tuned wires fifty feet or more in length, suspended across a space. In performance, Fullman slowly processes across the instrument, 'bowing' the strings with rosin-coated fingers to produce warm, immersive and overtone-rich drones that use the acoustic properties of the space as the body of the instrument itself. The Long String Instrument will be purpose-built on the panoramic top floor of the Arnolfini building, with Fullman joined by long-term collaborator Konrad Sprenger on computer-controlled multichannel electric guitar."

Below some alluring 'collateral', including a hand-crafted (sort of) Fullman playlist...















NB: top photo by John Fago, lower by Judy Dater. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Sound, gravity, water

Pro skater, experimental musician, & what next? A CV as varied as Duane Pitre's gives grounds to anticipate equally radical future shifts...so I confidently expect the man's first nanotechnology breakthrough or Bolivian cookbook in due course.  

In the meantime, though, his music stands out as some of 2013's most dazzling & notable (as it has been for some years, of course...). Both his keening, East-West colliding Bridges & the extraordinarily restrained, profoundly other-worldly PITRELEH (a collaboration with, you guessed it, ELEH that I struggle not to call spiritual & that summons a rare & deep musical language) will be seen here & surely elsewhere as obvious highlights of this year's listening. 

Below also hear a bracing, thrilling new piece (performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in June or thereabouts). Glib as it probably is to claim it seems informed by both of the recent releases, despite being significantly more abrasive than either, I'll say it anyway...

The suggestion somewhere that this is Pitre's likely next direction has to be worth a whoop or two, no? 

In other news: a worthwhile Village Voice interview (& an in full version) from a couple of months back, with a welcome reminder of that Cory Allen collaboration previously mentioned in dispatches...

pitreleh (eleh & duane pitre) - self titled (album preview)

IMPREC Podcast#5: Autumn Releases 2013 [features PITRELEH -Vibration: Sine Pools (excerpt) at 24:34 & Duane Pitre - Feel Free Live at Cafe OTO (excerpt) at 41:37]

Imprec Podcast#4: Summer Releases 2013 [features 3 Questions with Duane Pitre at 18:12, Duane Pitre - Bridges: Earth/Ember/Serpent (excerpt) at 25:45 & PITRELEH - Side A (excerpt) at 1:01:31, plus background excerpts from Duane Pitre - Feel Free Live at Cafe OTO]

duane pitre - bridges (album preview)

Bridges (album excerpt) by Duane Pitre

Bridges: Cup/Aether/Crane (excerpt)

Monolithic Youth (excerpt) by Duane Pitre

Music For Microtonal Guitar And Mallets by Duane Pitre

NB: Duane Pitre photo by Dorka Hegedus. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Our tidal flats

It's not just the national cricket team working up a head of steam down under as the year closes. Lately Australia's Room40, LMYE's label of 2011 (joint with Experimedia, trainspotters!), has unleashed a gleaming raft of essential 'editions' that add lustre not only to an already benchmark catalogue but to 2013's output more generally...

This new batch underlines the label's characteristic anti-generic open-earedness. From Eugene Carchesio's manic glitching to Heinz Riegler's therapeutic lullabies, via major statements from Simon James Philips (the gloriously, grandly pealing Chair) & Rafael Anton Irisarri (the crepuscular, clankingly pensive Unintentional Sea), this disparate outpouring somehow reaffirms the uniqueness of Room40's voice. 

Moreover, the label still has the great Chris Herbert's Constants to come (some earlier blather). A delectable, delicate freebie EP, Wintex-Cimex 83, only stokes the appetite for the return of an all too rare releaser - now due in February...

& that's not even to mention head honcho Lawrence English's magnificent collaboration with Liz Harris (Grouper), Slow Walkers - though that's a somewhat less recent vintage (even more so in the video below)... 

Simon James Phillips - Poul

moth to taper by simon james phillips  


Simon James Phillips - Set Ikon Set Remit

Rafael Anton Irisarri - Lesser than the sum of its parts


Rafael Anton Irisarri - Daybreak Comes Soon

rafael anton irisarri - the unintentional sea (excerpts)

Chris Herbert - Soft Quasars

 
Eugene Carchesio - Day 3

Eugene Carchesio - Day 12

Heinz Riegler - SLEEP HEALTH (Side A Excerpt)


Wake - Slow Walkers




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