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.

Smoke and honey

For once, everybody is right. Bring Me The Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn is the best title of the year...


KBD's second for Low Point, the sombre, beautiful Bring Me ("music of my head and in my head") may well also be one of the records of the year. Below hear the languid unfurlings of its first seven pieces (several previously around in SoundCloud versions documented here last year), plus a bonus. 


The Future Elements interview (source of quote above). 























Bonus: "Heartbreaking oldie from 2006 or so. Slated for the new record but couldn't quite make it through, appropriately I suppose."





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

Des res

LMYE's New Label of the Year hardly released a thing in 2011. Not much of a basis for recognition, you may think. But however minimal its output what did come out of Desire Path was exquisite - & if there's a better record in 2012 than its next release (which almost made it out this year anyway, so gets co-opted for these purposes - along with its debut release from late last year...) these ears will be very, very surprised (& thrilled, obviously)...

A label "focused on creating distinct pathways" that seeks to enable listeners (for whom it prescribes a strictly vinyl regimen) to "escap[e] to a place they may otherwise never find", DP emphasises location & journey in its output - not in the literal sense of field recordings, but rather in the recapitulation & inspiration of memory of place. This year this led us down the path to Benoit Pioulard's blurry 'lake within a haze', Thelma, & Kyle Bobby Dunn's lovely lacustrine counterpart, Chester - as well as his inviting Canyon Meadows.



I've probably got entirely the wrong end of the environmental stick. But the next of these resonant spaces, which clearly also chime with the 'sonic topographies' Solo Andata summon on Ritual, seems to be the monumental Aude of Janek Schaefer & the genuinely legendary Charlemagne Palestine.

A first taste of this unexpected pair's extraordinary collaboration, Raga de l'apres-midi pour Aude, surfaced earlier this year in a fine DP mix for Type's Typecast series - stream & download the 'cast & hear the hallucinatory, keening Schaefer/Palestine raga below.

Can ears pray? Too metaphysical for New Year's Eve, perhaps. But these ears certainly offer up a profound hope that DP manages to build on its masterful initial quartet in the year & years ahead...

Janek Schaefer & Charlemagne Palestine - Raga de l’apres midi pour Aude (edit)

Desire Path - Away Outside

Tracklist:

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Dropping Sandwiches in Chester Lake (Start-3:45) DEMO - Taken from then-forthcoming album (later issued as Ways of Meaning) on Desire Path Recordings

Antonymes – A Fragile Acceptance (3:45-10:10) Hidden Shoal

Skjolbrot – Rue Victor Masse to Gare d’Austerlitz (10:10-14:35) Self-Released

Janek Schaefer & Charlemagne Palestine – Raga de l’apres midi pour Aude EDIT (14:35-22:35) DEMO Taken from forthcoming album on Desire Path Recordings

Solo Andata – Carving (22:35-31:10) from Ritual on Desire Path Recordings

Black Swan – Movement 1 (31:10-37:27) Experimedia

Jannick Schou – 21.25 (37:27-40:51) Dead Pilot Records

Field Rotation – Acoustic Tale 3 (40:51-45:10) Fluid Audio

Ithaca Trio – For Ailing Health (45:10-End) Self-Released

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Canyon Meadows

Statuit - kyle bobby dunn
"Somber piece for an indoor swimming pool setting on a really grey day. Afterwards, going home and watching french films and an animation you forgot the name of." 

Benoît Honoré Pioulard - Calder

Solo Andata - Myrmecia

Solo Andata - Ritual

 

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

Avian circlers

Slow off the mark, as ever, but finally registered the new Benoit Pioulard EP, Plays Thelma (on Desire Path), via the lulling, blurrily ruminative Calder (today's Track of the Day, for what that's worth). 


Blurb: "Thelma is best described as a place existing in between—a lake within a haze. Against its concave mirror, the sonic territory of Benoît Honoré Pioulard—documented across three acclaimed LPs by Chicago’s Kranky label—assumes the qualities of this place and all its ephemera, warm breezes, burbling shimmers and avian circlers. During his excursions to Thelma, Pioulard rested beneath the willow and wandered in the meadow, listening, absorbing, and recording. Glimpses are contained herein, where the solace and beauty of this mysterious place resonate in travelers who care to listen.


"The release is launched at tomorrow night's 'special evening of melancholy' in Toronto. M. Pioulard (aka Thomas Meluch) will play alongside the hefty combined talents of Kyle Bobby Dunn, A Winged Victory for the Sullen & Ken Camden - a gig of the year contender if these ears were somewhat nearer Ontario...  

Benoît Honoré Pioulard - Calder

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

Humboldt fogger

A Kyle Bobby Dunn six-pack? Don't mind if I do. A sextet of intensely tasty, recently revealed treats from the post-classical composer's archives & pre-release work. Together, these new-ish "epic & dronelogical" workouts help frame the mournful beauty & muted fanfares of this year's fine Ways of Meaning (Desire Path), the latest refinement of Dunn's utterly uncommon sound.

"new songs to bore you all to tears hopefully"? Tears may come into it, as the artist's comments on Innisfail (Rivers of my Fathers) & Le Passage de Crétins Oublié suggest; boredom, hardly. 

Legends of Paul Jackson


"Another languid theme of legacy for the long lost languages of Paul Jackson, Aron Fredrik, and Bobby Heroin. Recorded at the latest configuration of Bunce Cake."


Kotylak


Complétia Terrace


"Sounds of Banff, Alberta by using a single, very shitty electric guitar. Recorded in 2010."

The Calm Idiots of Yesterday


"Unreleased work, recorded in early 2011 at Bunce Cake Brooklyn."


Innisfail (Rivers of my Fathers)


"Sequenced work for guitar, horns and a whole lotta woe. Composed in the latter days of 2010 and completed one crisp autumn evening at Bunce Cake."


Le Passage de Crétins Oublié


"Fuzzy, unmedicated piece for guitar and an uncontrollable urge for tears."




Canyon Meadows


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