Austere rerace

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 still a 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. 

celer - truth abandons (album preview)

Variation in White #1 by Leonardo Rosado

nicholas szczepanik - we make life sad (album preview)

La Luna del Este by Nicholas Szczepanik

Portraits - D

Motion Sickness Of Time Travel - Traces (edit)

tim hecker & daniel lopatin - instrumental tourist (album preview)

mind over mirrors - small portion (album preview)

Tgamaghis (clip) by TVO

Mike Shiflet/Joe Panzner - Split (preview)

Sinus 5 by steinbruchel [re-up]

Fata Morgana (excerpt) by Yann Novak & Robert Crouch [re-up]

the swifter - the swifter (album preview)

shackleton - music for the quiet hour/the drawbar organ eps (album preview)

Two People In A Room - Horses In My Head

windy & carl - remember [re-up]

Oh, & in case you missed it yesterday, here's the 7-hour Improbably Late 80 playlist:



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

Austere retracing

Here's a 7-hour (!) playlist derived from Tuesday's 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 there's still a label profile/interview to come as we explore the outer limits of improbable lateness...).  

The list features Alex Durlak & Damian Valles / Andrea Belfi / Between / BJ Nilsen / Chihei Hatakeyama & Asuna / Eugene Carchesio / France Jobin / Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti / Grant Evans / Gregg Kowalsky / Helm / High Aura'd / Hildur Godnadottir / Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier / Kane Ikin & David Wenngren / Kleefstra - Bakker - Kleefstra / Koen Holtkamp / Kyle Bobby Dunn / Lawrence English / Machinefabriek (with & without Chris Dooks) / Oren Ambarchi / Pete Swanson & Rene Hell / pillowdiver / Primitive Motion / Richard Chartier (under his own name & as Pinkcourtesyphone) / Seaworthy / Simon Scott / Stephan Mathieu / Superstorms / Taylor Deupree / Unrecognizable Now / Villages / Windy & Carl. 

Across 36 pieces, contributions range from brief bursts of Hell & KBH to the Between & Gudnadottir releases in full. 

As a counterpoint, below we highlight a further 10 pieces from (or previews of) Improbably Late albums neither captured in the playlist nor featured on Tuesday. For your full trainspotting pleasure the final 16 will follow in a separate post...

llyria by Attilio Novellino

Weerzien (album preview) by Anne Chris Bakker

eli keszler & keith fullerton whitman - split (album preview)

Adikia by Ekkehard Ehlers

Mallet Guitars Two (First Movement) by Ex-Easter Island Head

Felicia Atkinson - Dora

stolen by fieldhead

giuseppe ielasi - untitled 2011 (album preview)

Joe Evans - Affected Piano

lee noble/ensemble economique - motion forever (album preview)

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

Austere retrace

Casting off the hairshirt in which we clad our Furtive 30 key 2012 releases before Christmas (no more than one pick from any artist or label per co-author...), here's a further raft of 80 new sounds that last year would have been much the poorer without. They include a group of exceptional pieces - most notably, Below Sea Level, Coda (For WK),  For/Not For John Cage, Lichtung, Portraits, Recurrence, Secret Photographs, Superstorms & Valence - that only failed to make the original 30 because of its self-imposed constraints. Which begs a question over those constraints, but still...

Even though he claims two slots as it is (one with Steve Roden), other Machinefabriek pieces might well also have been classed in this group - his collaborations with Chris Dooks & Michel Banabila, listed below too, for example. Perhaps the thought reflects these ears growing further into his sound world, but 2012 seems to have been one of the Rotterdammer's finest. 

No other artist is represented as frequently in our two lists this year (even if you lump the fecund Quiet Evenings family together...) - though Stephan Mathieu comes close, inevitably. Fine installations & other commissioned pieces, such as The Breaking Water for the Rotterdam Film Festival, supplemented a raft of memorable Machinefabriek releases. 

Anyway, while this additional list risks irrelevance by only shambling out well into the new year, it still seems important to acknowledge the array of talent & achievement beyond our Furtive 30. So we round out our Hot 110 (ahem) with this appreciative roll-call - plus the obvious but necessary health warning that 2012 featured even more great records than we've found space to acknowledge: 


Alex Durlak/Damian Valles - Guitar and Drums (Komino)
Andrea Belfi - Wege (Room40)
Attilio Novellino - Through Glass (Valeot)
Anne Chris Bakker - Weerzien (Somehow)
Banabila & Machinefabriek - s/t (self-released)
Between - s/t (12k)
BJ Nilsen - Draught #1 (Touch)
Celer - Truth Abandons (Prairie Fire)
Chihei Hatakeyama & Asuna - Scale Compositions (Home Normal)

Banabila & Machinefabriek (album preview)

Chris Dooks & Machinefabriek - The Eskdalemuir Harmonium (Komino)
Dino Sabatini - Shaman’s Paths (Prologue)
Eli Keszler/Keith Fullerton Whitman - Split (NNA Tapes)
Ekkehard Ehlers - Adikia (Staubgold)
Eugene Carchesio - Circle Music (Room40)
Evan Caminiti - Dreamless Sleep (Thrill Jockey)
Ex-Easter Island Head - Mallet Guitar Two/Music for Moai Hava (Low Point)
Felicia Atkinson - A River (Space Slave Edition)
Fieldhead - a correction (Gizeh)
France Jobin - Valence (LINE)

Evan Caminiti f/ Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Rideaux de Nuit

Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti - Gramercy (Miasmah)
Giuseppe Ielasi - Untitled, 2011 (Entr'acte)
Grant Evans - Jewels from the House of Worms (A Guide to Saints)/Solos for Muted Transparent (Tranquility Tapes)
Gregg Kowalsky w/Josef van Wissem - Movements in Marble & Stone (Amish)
Helm - Impossible Symmetry (PAN)
High Aura'd - Sanguine Futures (Bathetic)
Hildur Gudnadottir - Leyfdu Ljosinu (Touch)
Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier - An Age of Wonder (Shelter Press)
Joe Evans - Affected Piano (runningonair/Somehow)

helm - impossible symmetry (album preview)

Kangding Ray - The Pentaki Slopes (Raster Noton)
Kane Ikin & David Wenngren - Strangers (Kesh)
Kleefstra Bakker Kleefstra - Griis (Low Point)
Koen Holtkamp - Liquid Light Forms (Barge)
Kyle Bobby Dunn - In Miserum Stercus (Komino)
Lawrence English - For/Not For John Cage (LINE)
Lee Noble/Ensemble Economique - Motion Forever (Hands in the Dark)
Leonardo Rosado - A Long White Sleep (Laverna)
Machinefabriek - Colour Tones (Fang Bomb)/Secret Photographs (Important)
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Traces (A Guide to Saints)

Plateau ( a single source of truth ) by Kangding Ray

Mike Shiflet/Joe Panzner - s/t (Rubber City Noise)
Mind Over Mirrors - Small Portion (Digitalis)
Nicholas Szczepanik - La Luna del Este/We Make Life Sad (self-released)
Oren Ambarchi - Audience Of One (Touch)
Pete Swanson & Rene Hell - Waiting for the Ladies (Shelter Press)
Pillowdiver - Cassette Recordings (Analogpath)/Frozen Soundtracks (Nomadic Kids Republic)
Pinkcourtesyphone - Elegant & Detached (Room40)
Portraits - Portraits (Important)

pinkcourtesyphone - elegant & detached (album preview)

Primitive Motion - Two Ellipses (A Guide to Saints)
Pye Corner Audio - The Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 [Second Edition] (Type)
Quiet Evenings - Patience Folding Waters (Hooker Vision)
Richard Chartier - Recurrence (LINE)
Richard Skelton - Limnology/Verse of Birds (Corbel Stone Press)
Rick Tarquinio - Waves (Resting Bell)
Seaworthy - Bellows & Breath (Preservation)
Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour/The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart!)
Simon Scott - Below Sea Level (12k)

Limnology - Richard Skelton (Preview)

Steinbruechel - Sinus (The Tapeworm)
Stephan Mathieu - Coda (For WK) (Minority/12k)/Palimpsest (w/Sylvain Chauveau; Schwebung)/Strings (w/David Maranha; Cronica)
Steve Roden & Machinefabriek - Lichtung (Eat, Sleep, Repeat)
Superstorms - Superstorms (Experimedia)
Taylor Deupree - Faint (12k)
Terrence Dixon - From the Far Future Part 2 (Tresor)
The Swifter - The Swifter (The Wormhole)
Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin - Instrumental Tourist (Software)

Part 2 by Superstorms

TVO - Red Night (Broken20)
Two People in a Room - Endless Bummer (Rural Colours)
Unrecognizable Now - Two Rooms (Kesh)
Villages - Theories of Ageing (Bathetic)
Voices from the Lake - Voices from the Lake (Prologue)
Windy & Carl - We Will Always Be (kranky)
Yann Novak - 3 Surfaces (Reductive)/Fata Morgana (w/Robert Crouch; Murmur)/Paradise & Winchester (Unfathomless)

Villages - The Narrows/Growth Rings



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

Line In

2013 transmissions from Basinski + Chartier, AGF, and Simon Whetham notwithstanding, still being received here are four Line Ins from 2012. Lest its late-period labours at the interface between digital minimalism and microsound go unsung, here’s an ear-pique at a spread of chewy offerings from this once Difficult Twin of LMYE label of 2012, 12k (now, of course, non-aligned, under sole stewardship of Richard Chartier) that further cement its place in the vanguard of experimental electronics.

 















 







Built Through finds Line manager Chartier once more ‘exploring inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself’ with trademark microsonic prowess. He ideates an engrossing enquiry into acoustic architecture with more feet-in-the-soil sonician, Robert Curgenven, dealer in immersive resonances via turntables and custom-made vinyl, instrumental harmonics and guitar feedback, and field recordings from remote areas. Built Through’s four pieces find Chartier’s ideology of relationism between sound, silence, focus and the listening act fully realized with Curgenven’s collusion,variously fusing digital and organic. All very academic and process music pukka, to be sure, but does it butter the listening product parsnips? As if in reply, the kat booms: ‘Their sounds are of an incredibly fine calibre and arranged with such a sense of unfolding, albeit abstract, narrative, that we’re sucked in to near-extreme levels of concentration to focus on the slightest fluctuation, and sent reeling by the presence of such overpoweringly physical bass frequencies.’



























Previously on Line, there was Curgenven’s Oltre on which ‘his orchestrations of slight textural shifts, the interplay between hum and drone, found sounds and vinyl crackle effect a satisfyingly uneasy suspension between rapt contemplative and grim angst-ridden.’





The Subharchord, a rare electronic instrument built in a limited edition during the 1960s at the RFZ, the technical centre for radio and TV of the East German postal service, is the obscure object of Frank Bretschneider’s desire on Kippschwingungen. His aim, in line with contemporary electronic music’s current fixation with its pioneering history, is to harness the technology of Then to the music and production methods of Now. It pares things back to basics - one sonic generator and a reduced range of functions. The album deals largely in droning pitches and ring modulator-type sustains, interspersed between rhythm-driven pieces. A sound, in fact, not entirely unfamiliar from a recent release…



… though Kippschwingungen (= ‘tilting oscillations’) ends up quite differently configured from Bretschneider’s recent signature style, whether the tech-gnosis of Komet or the bass-space-funk of Rhythm. A Mancy enthusiast finds it: ‘A long alluringly austere continuum of sound unfolding into astringent spaces - eerie alien plateaus of tone give way to insectile sounds evoking all kinds of minimal rhythm explorations’ and ‘A wormholing 37-minute experience, deftly and intently exploring the machine’s limitations to discover mind-warping cosmic turbulence and penetrate extraordinary, otherworldly sonic dimensions whilst somehow sustaining a tangible narrative arc.’




















 






Those who thrilled to LMYE 2011 pick, The Peregrine, will find in Lawrence English’s For / Not For John Cage a less effusive but no less engrossing work. Cage’s centenary inspired what was conceived as homage to a man who has been a constant touchstone for English; he sought something that offered an openness, that might invite a new perspective of exploration of Cage’s ideas, alighting upon a less celebrated piece - the film for solo light performer, One11.



With video artist Scott Morrison they developed a new piece, One11 (refocused), devised from diverse esoteric Cageisms. The audio outcomes are immediately compelling - soft-edged slightly eerie whorls in slow-mo whirls, shapes with form dissolving, colours collapsing, ravaged by radical reverb - indeterminacy drawing tones from consonance to dissonance and back again, in its shape-shifting blurscapes. ‘It is almost as if themes of music and texture have been extracted from various sections of this original work and gone on to become or inform a much more cosmic and arguably contemporary counterpart,’ projects Fluid Radio, before pertinently observing ‘there is no real extreme positive or negative effect to any of the tracks, the otherworldliness is instead at the forefront and thrusts the listener into a strange, exotic mental space where such psychological concerns are skewed and thrown into a rather more mysterious abstract.’



























Returning to source, Chartier’s Recurrence is a re-imagining of inaugural Line release, Series, which, after its coming out in 2001, apparently remained unperformed, even “unperformable” due to noise and audio system limitations of live environments. More recently a revisiting was finally essayed - to impressive effect, as heard on “Recurrence (room/crosstones),” an exploration of wavering sinetones captured from (one assumes) room reverberations; essentially a slow-mutating tonal throb, it has echoes of his Transparency (Performance), though a more assertive than customary demeanour yields an unusual hybrid reference point: ‘the kind of low-end destruction you’d more likely expect to hear from doom pioneers, Sunn o))), but with the meditative edge of Steve Roach.’ 



‘If Transparency was a spotless white laboratory room, Recurrence is a swamp of thick vibration, deliberately swirling crumples of static in with the whines and beeps of the foreground’ is this writer’s analogy, further extended to ‘throbbing gently like a power generator or chirping like electronic crickets, or stuttering between tone and static like a radio transmission falling away from clear signal.’





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

Eureka reduct

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 on LINE - 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)

Mark Templeton - Buffalo Coulee

Mountains - Living Lens

Cory Allen - The Great Order (Movement II) [re-up]

Stephan Mathieu - Félicité

william basinski & richard chartier - aurora liminalis (excerpt 2)

Yann Novak - Blue.Hour (Excerpt)


Yann Novak - Blue.Hour

Nunki (unmastered final) by chris herbert

A pond begging you to leap - Celeste's Fall [re-up]


Slips Into The Ether (Excerpt) by Andere.


Lawrence English's Lonely Women's Club

 
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.