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.

Lend Me Your Second Week

Another week's listening: from Dennis Young (Liquid Liquid) & Randall Kennedy's punk-funk poetics to modal Duke Pearson pleasures, via the Benelux post-punk of Jo Bogaert, Betty Padgett & Arnie Love's biscuit tin productions & DJ Nature & Jamie xx bangers (& even Kieren Hebden's first LMYE appearance in an age)...

Some tracks (Bandcamp where possible; YT if not...): 

 

 

 

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.

Lend Me Your First Week

Another week's listening: from the post-punk/synth pop interface of Talking Drums & Linear Movement to the majesty of Don Cherry/Johnny Dyani & Coltrane, with intermediary stops including Bill Nelson, State of Art, Astrud Gilberto, Bessie Jones, Eagles Lupopo '77, Afro 70, The Smile, Seven Davis/John Cale (somewhat improbably), Lloyd Cole/Mogwai (at least equally improbably...), Paul Haig & Abdullah Ibrahim.

Some tracks (Bandcamp where possible; YT if not...):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Pre-dead

 

The astounding 3-minute rush of Microfilm's '80 single 'Centrefold' (producer 'Ron Rude'). 

'Piano strings & vocals': pre-Dead Can Dance Lisa Gerrard...

#Melbourne #UnforgettableMusic

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

Low slung

 

"low slung, dub-punk beauty" from '81, it says here (rightly)...

Also, "a killer gem of pop-punk-dub oddness that gets your head nodding to its infectious, repetitive rhythm and laden fx".

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 Another Week

'Sure, here are some comments on the tracks you mentioned:

Walking in the Rain by Flash in the Pan is a catchy and upbeat pop song that will have you grooving along. The song's infectious melody and relatable lyrics make it a timeless classic.

Let's Be Adult by Arto Lindsay is a quirky and experimental track that is sure to challenge your eardrums.The song's unconventional instrumentation and off-beat rhythms make it a unique and intriguing listen.

 

You Know More Than I Know by John Cale is a haunting and atmospheric song that will transport you to another dimension. The song's dissonant chords and Cale's haunting vocals create a palpable sense of dread.

Samba Dee by The Southern University Jazz Ensemble is a lively and energetic track that will get your feet tapping. The song's infectious groove and upbeat tempo make it a perfect party starter.

Jungle Gods (1977 Version) by William Onyeabor is a psychedelic and otherworldly track that will leave you feeling disoriented and amazed. The song's swirling synths and driving rhythms create a chaotic and exhilarating soundscape.

Jungle Magic by Benni Cletin is a funky and groovy track that will have you moving your body. The song's infectious bassline and catchy melody make it a surefire dancefloor hit.

The Party by Godley & Creme is a playful and lighthearted track that is sure to put a smile on your face. The song's upbeat tempo and catchy lyrics make it a perfect mood booster.

That Rongeng Sound by Leong Lau is a traditional Chinese opera song that is both beautiful and haunting. The song's delicate melodies and powerful vocals create a captivating and immersive listening experience.

Mansion Worlds by Pharaoh Sanders is a spiritual and meditative track that will transport you to a higher plane of consciousness. The song's ethereal melodies and otherworldly textures create a sense of peace and tranquility.

Land of the Lonely by McCoy Tyner is a soulful and introspective track that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt alone. The song's melancholic melody and Tyner's expressive piano playing create a powerful and poignant listening experience.

I hope you enjoy these tracks!'

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.

Lend Me Your Week

Back after a while... 

A week's listening: from Malaria! & Populaere Mechanik to Andrew Hill & Steve Kuhn, with intermediary stops including Pere Ubu, Su Kramer, Michael Bundt, Kahil El'Zabar, Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, New Order, Dianne Marie & Victor.

Some tracks (Bandcamp where possible, even when linking to slightly ropey compilations as a result; YT if not...): 

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.

And counting...

Factory never died, it turns out. It just moved south. For LMYE's Label of the Decades, Touch, is the label Factory promised to be and might even have proved to be had it sustained its own model of a defiantly independent, endlessly ambitious imprint (something more than just a record company) - as Touch so manifestly & triumphantly has across its now 35 years of inspiring operation. 

So many happy returns today - the latest anniversary of co-founder Jon Wozencroft's first contact with New Order (by Touch mythology, the official start...).  

Factory has been a profound influence on Touch across the years, of course. Both New Order & Tuxedomoon feature on that first Touch tape later in 1982. Even today Chris Watson (of Factory Sample-ed Cabaret Voltaire) remains a core Touch artist. 

The connection was highly evident at Touch's last big birthday event at the end of 2012 - from the pontifical blessing of Atmospheres 4's audience with Peter Saville to the Ian Curtis postcards handed out to Wozencroft's willingness to frame almost anything in terms of Joy Division/New Order (& his Blue Monday beat-boxing to send the last night audience home) to an in absentia rendition by Watson. 

You might also compare Touch with the even more long-lived ECM. The two clearly share an insistence on the integrity of the whole product - emphasising recording & presentation - with quite a shared visual aesthetic - alongside/around the music. 

But where ECM has been underwritten for most of its near 50-year life by the earnings of a few outlying successes (Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert, in particular - as Factory was too, of course: think Blue Monday...), Touch has sustained itself despite a championing a more resolutely uncommercial output - one that has been subsidised neither by the market nor public money.  

After all this time it combats middle-aged spread with an unmatched appetite for going beyond conventional boundaries. Who else runs a mentoring programme, hosts conferences, publishes print & audio-visual work, repositions the organ, curates free recordings by aligned artists, experiments not just with formats but multi-channel recording, proclaims a psychological/digital 'Kingdom', & even collates recipes & commissions its own beer mat?!

As a label Touch remains the benchmark despite its age - essential, genuinely pioneering, unself-consciously experimental, constantly reinforcing & broadening its unmatched body of work. One mark of its greatness: even 34 years in, few other labels - apart perhaps from eMego - rivalled the richness & vitality of its 2016 output. 

Ditto almost all of LMYE's 10 years...

Of course, Touch's non-pareil roster of artists - from Oren Ambarchi to Fennesz to Philip Jeck to Phill Niblock to Watson - is ageing with the label. Will it outlive them & its founders?

That's still unclear. As Mike Harding, Wozencroft's partner in Touch, considers in a typically thoughtful response (taken from an unpublished interview): "The artists we work with tend to be middle-aged – they’re in their 30s, 40s, 50s. I’m stretching middle age to encompass not-youth & not-extreme old age, that period. So ‘will Touch survive the artists around whom we are flourishing?’ I honestly don’t know because I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I don’t know what’s going to happen in relation to the reaction against things digital which is definitely alive and kicking hard. You never know. Someone completely outside our experience might come along and find a huge amount to relate to and vice versa, because all of our relationships are completely collaborative." 

"Maybe, thinking about it, there’s something generational about what we’re doing and young people relate to it in a different way compared to people who have lived through the same period that we’ve lived through and have themselves experienced the evolution and development of recording technology but also the cultural responses – digital and all the rest of it that we’re also horrified and fascinated and preoccupied with in equal measures." 

"We never react to anything. We respond, giving it the dynamic activity of a communicative dialogue-based relationship. Something doesn’t happen & we go ‘Ooh’. We do thoughtfully and carefully respond to issues that arise. And it may not seem to be necessarily very direct but all the time we’re having this discussion and these debates and conversations about what we think’s important."

Certainly Touch is far from winding down with age. On the contrary, it's been replenishing its ranks. As noted, its most compelling releases last year were Bethan Kellough's Aven & Claire M Singer's Solas. 


More established parts of its canon, BJ Nilsen & Hildur Gudnadottir are other younger artists who could "carry the flag into the long-term future". Moreover, the label has embraced Simon Scott in recent years. 

It is also mining an increasingly rich seam on the US west coast - scene of its 2016 'conference'. This connection links it with Kellough, the Richard Chartier/Robert Crouch/Yann Novak nexus & older Touch connection Mark van Hoen (Harding's collaborator in the excellent drøne), as well as Lustmord (Dark Matter). 

Novak's outstanding recent Ornamentation is soon to be followed by Crouch's Sublunar & Something You Are Or Something You Do by Chartier alter ego Pinkcourtesyphone for the allied Tapeworm... 

Pinkcourtesyphone – Live at LACE

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

Ceased to Exist

Post-punk leviathans dept: no Genesis, once again (& now no Sleazy either, sadly), but the Gristle still throbs on - or musters a late spasm, at least - in the live improvising form of X-TG. Below stream a couple of precious tastes of one of their solitary pair of performances to date - the only two that will ever feature all three founders, who are left as Carter Tutti (having previously shed their Chris & Cosey persona)...

Both pieces generate increasing impact across their 8-10 minutes, pushing on from the post-nuclear cocktail jazz that starts XPad to the scattered, skittering abstraction in which both it & bleepier companion XVox end. As he foreshadowed recently in a comment on his intriguing CCCL Leploop Experiment, each draws strongly on Chris Carter's fine recent work - XPad especially.

NB: video (& three subsequent sections) is X-TG, title notwithstanding...

All eight tracks on Carter's SoundCloud (several downloadable) are worth your time. Highlights include the bone-dry warpings of no MIDI no keyboards, the deeply Tannoying This Train..., the intense, Radiophonic Experimental Tribute & Carter Tutti's ravishing, remote Harmonic Coaction Part One.

Chris & Cosey are also the latest of the often alluring 14 Tracks selections.

XVox Live at Porto Casa Musica (via Industrial Records)

XPad Live at Porto Casa Musica

no MIDI no keyboards

This Train...

Harmonic Coaction Part One (live excerpt)

Experimental Tribute

Bonus: Listening Mirror's appropriately mournful, muffled tribute...

Listening Mirror > Spires, spirals and stones. For PC

NB: photo above by Paul Smith; others by Chris Carter.

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

Swirling dots

At this rate, the Clock DVA revival can't be far off... A characteristically brilliant Philip Sherburne links a host of currently swirling dots & helps explain why FACT are hosting Ike Yard, Judy Nylon &, even more improbably, Eyeless in Gaza, as well as being deeply implicated in the painfully fashionable but also quite decent Raime (on Blackest Ever Black - Interview/mnml ssgs).

These ancient ears were brought up on post-punk - ah's too. So a newly dark aesthetic that lauds Cabaret Voltaire &, say, Crispy Ambulance (talking of improbable...) is both a welcome swerve & a potentially useful provocation to original attachments.

Note to self: try to listen, not pontificate in face of championing of stuff that didn't seem to count so heavily at the time & whose relative obscurity is probably part of its capital & cachet now...apart from avoiding sanctimonious prickdom, your reward will be treats like these:

Ike Yard > Robot Steppes (via factmag)

Judy Nylon > Information Rain (ditto)

Eyeless In Gaza > Veil Like Calm (& again)

Raime > We Must Hunt Under The Wreckage Of Many Systems [Edit]

Raime > This Foundry (via factmag)

You Can't Hide Your Headcrack - compiled & edited by Raime

Scripts For The Pageant - a Blackest Ever Black mixtape

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