Dark asphalt

A little LMYE paean to Gareth Hardwick, whose Low Point (our label of the year back in 2010*...) has now racked up a decade as a beacon of challenging, compelling music - both his & others'.

Below, a vaguely reverse-chronological immersion in Hardwick's deeply reflective, always affecting work - not quite all the way back to that Bologna Pony LP001 or his subsequent solo I Dream of Red, but almost: from the soothing dreaminess of 2005's home-recorded Three Degrees of Separation to the rich, inter-locked textures of this year's Two Songs. 


* Profile includes an illuminating interview with Hardwick that explores Low Point's "logical progression", as well as vinyl love & label challenges...

Blurb: "Employing the same minimal palette of guitar and field recordings but now drawing upon urban, rather than coastal themes; Two Songs is iron, brick and dark asphalt in response to the grey-blue swell and salt wind of Of the Sea and Shore. 
Side A is built around a buzzing drone, an arc light on concrete, which by degrees dissolves to an autumnal hiss; that low, constant mixture of rain, distant traffic and human life which sits just below the threshold of consciousness for anyone living in a city framed by spare, untreated guitar. The same drone, now dulled and ragged, reappears on Side B as a coda to a gently oscillating wash of interwoven harmonics. 
Small shifts in texture, timbre and dynamics are concisely entwined to create an atmospheric and evocative EP." 









(from sound&fury comp Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow, Vol. 1)
Photos by Abbey Rees-Hales.
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.

Keep a Weather Eye Open

A Gareth Hardwick post pushing current Low Point releases listing Ben Fleury-Steiner forthcoming: prompted harking back to and digging out of lamentably overlooked gem from last year (March 2010 release). Ben's Keep a Weather Eye Open on the estimable Infraction got an ‘Also outstanding’ in LMYE’s Festive 50, but there's been barely a peep from anyone elsewhere on this accomplished bit of ambient-drone gear. Good pretext for bigging it up a bit.



Ben F-S lists among his ‘influences’ "Gavin Bryars, Robert Rich, Celer, and Mystery Sea," and his ‘sounds like’ as “A swell of broken and breaking emotion: beautiful shipwreck.” Sounds about right.



What the label says...

“From the inset, "Tender is the opaque morning" the scene has been set on 'Keep a Weather Eye Open' into a Bryars-esque dip into the sunken Titanic. Gently clattering china on a slow drop to the bed of the ocean, faint light filtering through. The band plays on, the notes become submerged & eventually a hymnal drone emerges repeating over and over in slow cycles. This is not the end however, as unlike the ill-fated Vessel of Sleep, this work re-emerges to the surface and into hazy light. Roughly 2 years in the making for release on Infraction - KAWEO is presented in a digipak with a 12 page color booklet in an edition of 900 copies. In addition the first 250 copies will receive a numbered, bonus 3" CDR, "Vessel of Sleep" (INFX 041) which contains 3 additional unreleased tracks, housed in a 6 panel cardstock folder. KAWEO was mastered by Robert Rich. "...from aft came the tunes of the band..... The ship was gradually turning on her nose - just like a duck that goes down for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind - to get away from the suction. The band was still playing. I guess all of the band went down. They were playing "Autumn" then." - Harold Bride, 1912.”



(What Norman Records says)

Audio samples retrievable “Feedback of Day : Sunlit in Stop Frame - Part 1” and “Vessel of Sleep – Part 3”

Keep A Weather Eye Open is dedicated to Danielle Baquet-Long.



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