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.

Tennis courted

Two modern masters in ravishing first-time live collaborations for the increasingly vital Cronica: Philip Jeck crowns the recent Crossovers set of baton-passing duos in a bucolic, filigreed pairing with lever harpist Rebecca Joy Sharp, while Stephan Mathieu combines with violinist/shruti boxer David Maranha on the radiant, richly groaning Strings (as "sun-drenched yet gusty" as the Porto day of its performance...). 


Crossovers was initiated by Simon Whetham (a sometime Bristol neighbour of LMYE's, though the collection grew out of time in Tallinn). "During the residency he met and worked with many artists who were all working with sound and music in different and interesting ways, prompting him to exhibit the work he composed alongside work created by those he met and worked with throughout his time in Estonia and Latvia.


Performing at events a number of times during the residency became an 
integral part of the project, so when Whetham came to exhibit the works 
in the UK, each exhibition began and ended with a live performance event, 
drawing on a pool of diverse local artists and musicians. The format for 
each performance was that artists were organised into pairs, with one 
artist beginning to play solo, would then be joined by the second for a 
short collaborative crossover section, and then the first would end their 
performance, leaving the second to play their own solo piece.


Gathered on this compilation are a number of the crossover sections, where 
artists who had not met or collaborated before are captured performing 
together for the first time."


Oh, & it's free (though donations welcome)...

Blurb: "“Strings” documents the long awaited first encounter of David Maranha and Stephan Mathieu, taking place in the Tennis Court of the Parque de Serralves, in Porto, on a sun-drenched yet gusty late-afternoon in July 2011. Having discussed in advance which instruments, tuning and notes to use, the piece was accomplished as an improvisation on the violin, shruti-box and virginals, reflecting both players love for classic minimalism, but also their ability to transform this language and make it their own. The acoustic instruments were amplified through a quadrophonic system to captivating volume, that nevertheless allowed environmental sounds to permeate."

Predictably thoughtful Liminal review...

Rebecca Joy Sharp + Philip Jeck: Crossover


Stephan Mathieu & David Maranha: Strings (Excerpt)

Photo above by Pascal Savy (from a lovely Fluid Radio review). Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Databases flee leer

Labels' role as visible exercisers of taste, as rallying points, as cultural lenses, was at least as crucial this year as last. Following our label of the year (Low Point), LMYE highlights five other curatorial efforts that helped define 2010.

Besides our picks - below, alphabetically - you could also make credible cases for Raster-Noton, Root Strata, samadhisound & Under The Spire, which all had notably strong years. So too did the fine alternative choices (just one overlap with our lot) over at The Liminal.

Broken20 - LMYE's new label of the year: making the alluring promise of "releases concerned with decay, erosion, entropy, mistakes and errors, line noise and tape hiss, hum and buzz" - & delivering. Even if only a couple of official releases emerged (though you could treat the excellent Rose & Sandy Play Cat's Cradle on Moving Furniture & Erstlaub's typically huge Sleepwalking Into The Underworld for the soon-gone-&-already-much-lamented Highpoint Lowlife as honorary B20 works), not only were they outstanding but their supporting cast of precursors & 'casts was spectacular - particularly the genius down-pitching of Erik XVI's The Fading Splendour of a Technological Future & label chief ruaridhTVO's 4-hour, cast of thousands Broken Roots epic...

TVO > Keep Away From Fire And Flames [excerpt; re-up]

Erstlaub > The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep [excerpt; re-up]

hellosQuare - LMYE's neglected label of the year: distance may play a part in it, but hellosQuare's low profile was never more baffling than this year when the great Australian label was dishing up must-hear releases from Scissor Lock, Spartak & label head/Spartak member Shoeb Ahmad (plus a part-exclusive release for Mapstation) - deep & often deeply different sounds from down under...

Spartak > 5 44 (Pillowdiver remix)

Raven > In Marrickville, In The Dirt / Adrian Lim-Klumpes > Hillside (both from Bown.Hollo.Lim-Klumpes.Ahmad.Dorrian, hellosQuare; NB: lo-res - higher-res versions on free download)

Thrill Jockey/kranky - LMYE's larger labels of the year: while kranky had the edge on its fellow leviathan last year, there was little to separate them in 2010 as each underscored improbable vigour this far into their craggy careers with a raft of valuable releases (to both rack up an improbably gorgeous bee-related album. Yes, really...) Thrill Jockey had the somewhat bigger names - Oval/Fennesz Daniell Buck/Koen Holtkamp - but kranky's sponsorship of Brian McBride, Jonas Reinhardt & Loscil, plus its re-release of the Pan.American classic For Waiting, For Chasing, demands equal acknowledgement.

pan•american > still swimming

brian mcbride > supposed essay on the piano b major piano adagietto

Oval > Encore

Sam Prekop > The Silhouettes

Touch - LMYE's pioneering label of the year: shepherding magnificent new releases by Philip Jeck & BJ Nilsen that were among the year's best anywhere is qualification enough for recognition. But Touch went further, bringing Sohrab's unmissable A Hidden Place, Daniel Menche's extraordinary Hover, early Hildur Gudnadottir goodness in the form of the Mount A re-release & further enhancing its Touch Radio series with 12 new instalments - including this Phill Niblock.

Sohrab > Live in Tehran [extract] (from Live in Tehran, TouchRadio)

Philip Jeck & BJ Nilsen > Suffolk Symphony Rehearsal [Radio 4 edit] (from Suffolk Symphony Rehearsal)

Touch 2010 playlist (Spotify).

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

Cloud reformation

To cosmic indifference, naturally - but still fretting over last week's semi-auto post of SoundCloud sifting & this notion of curation as a model. That's despite my continued pining for the great Good Vibrato, the purest of all curatorial blogs (in our territory, at least) & much lamented even though long gone...

Too easy? Too impersonal? Not expository enough? Not exploratory enough?

Anyway, here's a far better soundtrack to this navel-gazing than it deserves - some highlights of recent days, typically blissy, fuzzy or limpid (or some permutation of these), but headed by a mesmerising, inspirational live performance by the great Philip Jeck (starts about 22 minutes into the gLASSsHRiMP show streamed below, though you shouldn't neglect the rest of it either).

Also featuring Relmic Statute, Shinobu Nemoto, He Can Jog, In Serpents and Seas, Ithaca Trio and Tone Color...

gLASSsHRiMP > 7 Dec 2010

relmic statute > Live3

Shinobu Nemoto - Trip 1

tor[r]entjet & He Can Jog

In Serpents and Seas > A Sleeping Explorer (In Flight with the Moonbird) [demo]

Ithaca Trio > Archaeologists and Double Bass

Tone Color > Piano-delay

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

Soft sift

New music by the great Philip Jeck is so precious that the giveaway of a previously unreleased remix from Suite: Live in Liverpool has me scurrying to share it onwards. Gloopily then glitteringly ethereal, vast & thrillingly bass-y, the remix is one of two from the suite that together form a coda to Jeck's new An ark for the Listener ("a meditation on verse 33 of 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem about the drowning on December 7th 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. All tracks were made using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal.")

Previous coverage (also here - post includes a glassy, tinkling rehearsal version of part of Ark, which might be related to its fourth track Dark Rehearsal. Or not...stream below, anyway).

Philip Jeck > all that's allowed [remix] (from An ark for the listener, Touch)

Philip Jeck - Ark Overture [re-up]

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

Jeckyll hiding

The unusually glassy, tinkling sound of the great Philip Jeck rehearsing for a new piece, An Ark for the Listener, inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Wreck Of The Deutschland.

"An aspiration in answer to an inspiration,
out of music shaped by all the sea has claimed,
as is the inevitable shipwreck of our existence.
Salvaged out of vinyl, by way of ear, hand and electricity."

"And I have asked to be... out of the swing of the sea."


Philip Jeck - Ark Overture

This rehearsal version also features in a free 13-track download, The Bubbly Blue & Green - compiled by Arctic Circle ahead of their 4-day festival of "eclectic 'water music' influenced by shipwrecks, rivers, waves & lighthouses" later this month: also features LMYE favourites Hildur Gudnadottir, Hauschka, ISAN and recently-blogged Simon Scott, plus a wonderfully blurred, wispy Janek Schaefer piece & ISAN on typically wry, subtle form...

Janek Schaefer > Alone at last (from Alone at last, Sirr - last.fm stream)

ISAN > Lop Helston Conceit (unreleased)


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