Plenty more

 

One final transmission from the last-chance saloon: in the spirit of maximising inclusion & recognition, here are 25 more 2020 releases that lightened & brightened a year in profound need of both...

This alternative list is a way of acknowledging the inevitable limitations of the original Festive Twenty (or any list...). While those 20 stood out to us as especially meaningful or evocative or thrilling, they are of course very far from constituting last year's only great releases.

It also completes our broader picture of the year's music. Besides the two Twenties, this also includes a baker's dozen of compilations & 10 'projects' beyond the bounds of a single release.

 As ever, this list is constrained to one pick per artist/label - in order to acknowledge as wide a listening range as possible. Moreover, this one had no prospect of picking up votes for multiple releases from the same artist or label since it's all on jl (whereas the original Twenty is the combined work of al & jl...).

Again as ever, this constraint also meant having to exclude outstanding releases such as Geneva Skeen's Double Bind, Past Walls & Windows by Todd Anderson-Kunert & Pinkcourtesyphone's Leaving Everything To Be Desired (all among a raft of brilliance in Room40's 20th anniversary year, as noted...) - never mind other losses to the hair shirt like Grand River's Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes (Editions Mego) & Romeo Poirier's Hotel Nota (sferic). 

 

Anyway, the (alternative) list:

William Basinski & Richard Chartier :: Something From The Pink House (self-release)  

Black to Comm :: Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens (Thrill Jockey)

Celer :: Wasted In The Waiting (self-release)

John Chantler :: Doing Nothing / Nothing Doing (self-release)

CLEARED :: The Key (Touch) 

EMRA GRID :: five cycles through an empty chamber (LINE)

Lawrence English :: Lassitude (Room40)

FEAN :: II (Laaps) 

FRKTL :: Excision After Love Collapses (self-release)

David Fyans :: Crushing Depth (self-release)

Haarvol :: Ridge of Humming Spoils (Moving Furniture)

ISAN :: Nothing Picked & Placed Nowhere (wiaiwya) 

Kassel Jaeger :: Swamps/Things (Shelter Press) 

France Jobin :: Death is perfection, everything else is relative (Editions Mego) 

Kim's Spirit :: Blossom Everywhere (A Red Thread)

The Necks :: Three (Northern Spy)

Jake Muir :: the hum of your veiled voice (sferic)

Lynette Sandholm Evvers :: Fundamental Colours II (Other Forms of Consecrated Life)

Simon Scott :: Apart (12k)

Tom James Scott :: Mine Is The Heron (Students of Decay)

Sontag Shogun, Stijn Huwels :: The Floating World & The Sorrowful World (Thesis)

Richard Skelton :: LASTGLACIALMAXIMUM (Aeolian)

Three Point Circle :: Layered Contingencies (Palace of Lights)

Ida Toninato :: We Become Giants (Dragon's Eye)  

Jeremy Young :: Filaments (Eliane Tapes) 

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

with God Herself

Still clunky, still well intentioned: the formula for our annual Festive 33-1/3 is, once again, no more than one pick per artist/label by each of us. 

We then augment the resulting list (two sets of 15 releases selected independently, meshed & supplemented when doubles necessitate a bit of horse-trading...). The addition comes from four further projects that fall outside the normal 'release' boundaries - bigger &/or more ambitious (in multiple media, for example), or unexpected collaborations.

The rationale remains to spread recognition as far as possible. Over & above LMYE's desire to embrace - rather than limit  - the multiplicity of sounds & artists we love, this is an attempt to acknowledge & respond to year-end lists' inevitable partiality. How different ours & others' might look on another day or in another mood, given the vast amount of great music every year brings...

As previously, the striking quality of some labels' output forces unpalatable choices. Outstanding releases like Lawrence English's Cruel Optimism, Kassel Jaeger & Jim O'Rourke's Wakes On Cerulean, Robert Crouch's Sublunar or Marc Kate's As If We Were Never Here didn't make the cut here only because something else on their particularly strong imprints (Room40, Editions Mego, Touch & Dragon's Eye, respectively) meant even more to one of us. But in any broader sense they are clearly core parts of the year's best...

As always, for a more inclusive picture of our listening pleasures please check out the monthly Lend Me Your Radio series on SoundCloud, al's Mixcloud & jl's Bandcamp (collection & wish list).

Olli Aarni :: Nielu (Florabelle)
Olivier Alary :: Pieces for Sine Wave Oscillators (Line)
Anjou :: Epithymía (Kranky)
Aquarelle :: Leave Corners (Debacle)
ASC :: Trans-Neptunian Objects (Auxiliary)
 



Andrea Belfi / Taylor Deupree & Marcus Fischer / Masaya Ozaki & Kaito Nakahori - Alveare / Lowlands / Mythologies (Iikki)
Benoît Pioulard :: Lignin Poise (Beacon Sound)
Celer :: Plays Liberace (Celer)
Dominic Coppola :: Golden Blonde Air (Boudoir)
Dramavinile :: 7 (Unknown Tone)
 




drøne :: A Perfect Blind (Pomperipossa)
Endurance :: Echoic Architecture (Polar Seas) / Molecular Shrine (ACR)
Forest Management :: The Elevated Quiet (Constellation Tatsu)
David Fyans :: Subscriber Series (Erstlaub)
 




IJO :: Melancholika Vol. 2 (ACR)
The Inward Circles :: And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies (Corbel Stone Press)
Hannu Karjalainen :: A Handful Of Dust Is A Desert (Karaoke Kalk)
Steven Kemner :: Gradation Movements (Fluid Audio)
Moon Zero :: Relationships Between Inner and Outer Space (Denovali)
 




Jake Muir :: Acclimation (Dragon’s Eye)
The Necks :: Unfold (Ideologic Organ)
Ogive :: Folds (Room40)
Orphax :: Somniātōrēs (Orphax)
Pausal :: Avifaunal (Dronarivm)
 



poemme :: Soft Ice (Polar Seas)
the prairie lines :: eyes down slowdown (Whitelabrecs)
Steve Roach :: Nostalgia for the Future (Timeroom)
Claire M. Singer :: Fairge (Touch) 
Sontag Shogun & Moskitoo :: The Things We Let Fall Apart / The Thunderswan (Home Normal)



 
Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet :: Hafvet (Low Point)
The Transcendence Orchestra :: Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals (Editions Mego)
Various Artists/Jon Wozencroft :: Movements (Touch)
Velleitie :: Scheming the Afterimage with God Herself (Sounds Against Humanity)




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

Dark calm

Contrasting pieces from two very different artists united by inspiration from Coil. 

David Fyans/Erstlaub's Sedna follows being "on trains the last few weeks looking at the sea & thinking about what a great chasm has been left in the absence of Coil" & "is dedicated to Peter Christopherson on the 6th anniversary of his passing". Similarly, Fred Welton Warmsley/Lee Bannon's Dedekind Cut "draws out the dark calm of Coil, in the guise [of] a modern approach to Noise, New Age & Ambient music". 

DC's ravishing Conversations with angels (from $uccessor [Wikipedia]) draws on an appropriately celestial palette. Where Conversations is vast & nearly weightless, Sedna carries a queasy, wilting physicality. Although both have a satisfying spaciousness, Fyans' diverting piece (bearing his characteristic 'experimental drone eurorack modular magick modular synthesizer noise ritual synthesis' tags) draws its weighty power from a sense of machines running down - indifferently repeating tasks, but with growing warp & drift...





Hat-tip to Shimmering Moods, whose new Resonance Extra #5 tipped these ears to DC... 

Bonus: Surgeon's immense Peter Christopherson tribute mix ("The first hour of my DJ set at Bleep43 on December 3rd was a tribute to Peter Christopherson, who died on November 25th. I chose tracks that either featured his voice, or that I especially connected with him. Recorded at Corsica Studios, London, between 11pm & midnight on December 3rd, 2010.")



NB: top photo by David Fyans. 

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 Three Radios

A neglected trove of listening riches: 50 compelling tracks spread across three playlists chucked together over the past quarter. Each should have been shared here in our Lend Me Your Radio series already, but oops...

The many highlights include the first resurfacing of Richard Skelton's Harlassen in nine years (a blistering addition to his Archival series that amplifies & expands our conception of 'new' Skelton, also embodied by his 'Delerious' Inward Circles soundtrack), plus a reminder of his classic sound through a 10th anniversary collection; a ravishing Jacob Kirkegaard piece for Holotype; &, first up, a rich meshing of Robert Donne, Stephen Vitiello & The OO-Ray's sounds on Geographic North. 

As always, please accept these lists as inevitably partial pictures of the period. No doubt other entirely worthwhile stuff should also have featured - but this is what grabbed these ears as they trawled through SoundCloud over the quarter.   

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

O Come LMYE Faithful

Furtive30version by Albient on Mixcloud

A bit like a low-rent Pop Ambient, it’s become an annual tradition for LMYE to pop a peck of its Festive picks into a homespun cloud-mix (see 2010 and ’11), but with JL going over to the spotty side, you might wonder if rdio killed the mixcloud star. Well, we're keeping the cloud flag flying in this wing of Earslend Mansions with an alternative Furtive 30 version (n.b. leaning towards al picks as missing half of JL’s).

albient furtive30version (track list)
Lee Gamble - Digbeth
Heathered Pearls - Left Climber
Damian Valles - Movement III
Kyle Bobby Dunn - Diamond Cove (And Its Children Were Watching)
Drape - Solo in High Dreary
Gimu -You're No Longer On Sertraline Hydrochloride
Erstlaub - Marconi’s Shipwreck
Kane Ikin - Compression Waves
Silent Harbour - Aquatic Movement
Stephan Mathieu & Caro Mikaleff - Radioland [Panoramica]
Alex Cobb - The Immediate Past
Pausal - Fertiliser/Horticulture/Mower
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Blood Variations II
36 - Deluge
En - Elysia
Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light
Radere - Good Evening, Ghosts (Version)
Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings
Thomas Köner - Novaya Zemlya 2
Robert Hampson - Antarctica Ends Here

Mix note: composed mainly of edits of long tracks seguing from one to another, sympathetic fades and felicitous overlaps were sought, 1 part design to 2 parts indeterminacy; final section diverges, running 2 tracks in parallel rather than in series to play Köner lows off against Hampson highs, the similarity of theme of geographical extreme providing further pretext for convergence.
Track sidenote: seeing as ’tis the season to be jolly and all, those with ears properly lent will find a seasonal note provided by Fescal, whose Ambient Drone recon of “Silent Night” starts at 1:13:30. 

Quick Yuletube: 



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

Austere embrace

2012 brought many more great releases than 30, obviously. But after some increasingly expansive Festive 50s LMYE has embraced the austerity of the times. This year each co-author was confined to a more modest 15 picks, with no more than one going to any artist or any label & no smuggled expansion by throwing in multiple releases from the same name. 

Although these constraints could - & did - still accommodate two choices from the same stable across the co-authorial divide (policed by a strict Chinese wall, naturally...), they ended up regrettably harsh on some outstanding music - like Below Sea Level,  Portraits, Secret Photographs or Superstorms. All might well have bludgeoned their way into these ears' top 15 if the rules hadn't restricted 12k, Important & Experimedia to a single release each. The same goes for LINE, Low Point & Touch's output, incidentally. 

Similarly, even allocating his ravishing David Sylvian remix album Wandermude (out next month, but downloadable now...) to next year's list, a case could credibly have been made for including several Stephan Mathieu pieces. With the possible exceptions of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and (as The Liminal point out, ditto Marc Masters) Oren Ambarchi, it's challenging to think of an artist who had a more impressive year - though each of Kane Ikin's releases also resonated powerfully with us. 

Still, accepting that all such lists are a bit arbitrary, our goal was to distribute recognition as widely as possible. We'll anyway be back soon(-ish) with a more capacious supplementary list to try to capture everything else that stood out over the year.  

For now, though, & subject to the restrictions rehearsed above, these are 30 releases that particularly mattered to us in 2012. Each co-author is identified with their 15 picks, though note that both of us nominated Already Gone, I'll Make You Quiet, Novaya Zemlya & Radioland [Panoramica] originally...

36 - Lithea (3Six; al)
Alex Cobb - Passage to Morning (Students of Decay; al)
Charlemagne Palestine & Janek Schaefer - Day Of The Demons (Desire Path; jl)
Damian Valles - Nonparallel [In 4 Movements] (Experimedia; jl)
Drape - An Idea And Its Map (Infraction; al)
Duane Pitre - Feel Free (Important; jl)
En - Already Gone (Students of Decay; jl)
En/Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Split (Constellation Tatsu; al)
Erstlaub - Marconi’s Shipwreck (Broken20; al)
Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings (Time Released Sound; al)

Gabriel Saloman - Adhere (Miasmah; jl)
Gareth Hardwick/p jørgensen - S/T (Low Point; jl)
Gimu - All The Intricacies Of An Imaginary Disease (T.O.C; al)
Heathered Pearls - Loyal (Ghostly; al)
Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (Komu; al)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Visiting This World (EN/Of; jl)
Kane Ikin - Sublunar (12k; al)
Kyle Bobby Dunn - Bring Me The Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point; al)
Lee Gamble - Diversions 1994-1996 (PAN; jl)
Mike Shiflet - The Choir, The Army (Under The Spire; jl)

Pausal - Forms (Barge; al)
Radere - I'll Make You Quiet (Futuresequence; al)
Robert Hampson - Repercussions (Editions Mego; jl)
Silent Harbour - Silent Harbour (Echocord; al)
Steinbruchel & Cory Allen - Seam (Quiet Design; jl)
Stephan Mathieu & Caro Mikaleff - Radioland [Panoramica] (LINE; jl)
Steve Peters & Steve Roden - Not A Leaf Remains As It Was (12k; jl)
Tetras - Pareidolia (Flingco Sound System; jl)
Thomas Köner - Novaya Zemlya (Touch; al)
Various Artists - 30 Years And Counting (Touch; jl)

Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings

Gabriel Saloman - 03

Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (album preview)

robert hampson - repercussions (album preview)

Moitié et Moitié - kyle bobby dunn

mike shiflet - the choir, the army (album preview)

Pausal - Fruiting Bodies / Liberty Capped

lee gamble - diversions 1994-1996 (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.

Duncan of Jordanstone

Exclusive: a thrilling extract from the imminent immensity that is The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep - new Erstlaub on Broken20 (LMYE’s New Label of 2010). Deftly controlled & shaped, often deeply affecting, TLFSBS underscores again how Dave Fyans’ Erstlaub stands out as a beacon of a special, cherishable integrity. To these ears few other artists – working in drone or elsewhere – can summon the same intensity or harness the same single-mindedness (yes, heckler, those two probably are facets of a single quality...).

Blurb: “Aware of this clarion call but powerless to act. I know this sound inside out, a minute piece of sonic cartography that contains all the information in the universe, like the whirring of a vast organic hard-drive as the processor performs a memory dump between logic and something much bigger…much weirder. Delay lines feed back to Omega Point; choirs of particles stream towards event horizons. Perceived time holds no sway here; this vast but tiny sound contains all of time and space and possibility.”

Erstlaub - The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep [extract] (from The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep, Broken20)

Other recent Erst generates similar beauty from its restraint. Stream three exemplars (Disconnect, Deadending & At The Border Of Nothing) below, plus a quite different piece (the wildly skittering ReCollection(s), under his own name).

Disconnect

Deadending

At The Border Of Nothing

ReCollection(s) Part II (sketch)

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