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.

Thirty-three & a third

You may know the drill by now: in a sincere though inevitably clunkily artificial attempt to spread recognition as widely as possible without devaluing it too much, LMYE’s co-authors each independently pick 15 releases that particularly mattered to them during the year – but under two faintly hair-shirted constraints: no more than one selection per artist & one per label. 

Duplication across our 2014 line-ups was very limited. Only Lawrence English’s Wilderness of Mirrors (a highlight of another stand-out year for his Room40 imprint, our 2012 Label of the Year), Fennesz’s Bécs (eMego), Stephan Mathieu’s Sacred Ground (Schwebung) and Janek Schaefer’s Lay-By Lullaby (12k) featured on both initial drafts. 

This year we expand the resulting master list to a Festive 33-1/3. In particular, we throw in two epic collections that were too significant to exclude, even if they weren’t strictly speaking new music: Chris Dooks’ The Motherlode & The Otherlode (Broken20) & Kenneth Kirschner’s Imperfect Forms (Tokafi). 

In addition, a wry part-vote for Le Berger’s Interwoven Sonic Tapestry – formally released at a minute to midnight (EST, presumably) today “to ensure avoidance of any 2014 and / or 2015 'top' lists” – rounds out our initial 2014 roll-call. 

Mandatory health warning: plenty of other artists & other labels than those featured here made great music this year. As previously, we’ll acknowledge the broader universe of releases that resonated with us in a follow-up post…

Anjou – Anjou (Kranky) [jl]
Thomas Ankersmit – Figueroa Terrace (Touch) [jl]
Andrea Belfi – Natura Morta (Miasmah) [jl]
Nicolas Bernier – frequences (a / fragments) (LINE) [jl]
Alex Cobb – Marigold & Cable (Shelter Press) [jl]
Robert Curgenven – SIRÈNE (Recorded Fields) [jl]
Dalhous - Will To Be Well (Blackest Ever Black) [al]
Deaf Center – Recount (Sonic Pieces) [jl]
Loren Dent - Anthropology Vols. 2 & 3 (Infraction) [al]
Chris Dooks – The Motherlode & The Otherlode (Broken20) [jl]

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Kyle Bobby Dunn & the Infinite Sadness (Students of Decay) [al]
Lawrence English - Wilderness of Mirrors (Room40) [al/jl]
Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello – Fable (Dragon’s Eye) [jl]
Fennesz - Bécs (eMego) [al/jl]
Chris Herbert – Constants (Room40) [jl]
The Inward Circles - Nimrod is Lost in Orion & Osyris in the Doggestarre (Corbel Stone Press) [jl]
P Jørgensen – Gold Beach (Low Point) [jl]
Kangding Ray - Solens Arc (Raster-Noton) [al]
Sima Kim - Debris (Soft Corridor)
Kenneth Kirschner – Imperfect Forms (Tokafi) [jl]

Le Berger – Interwoven Sonic Tapestry (in the key of) (self-released) [jl]
Stephan Mathieu – Sacred Ground (Schwebung) [jl/al]
Neel - Phobos (Spectrum Spools) [al]
Duane Pitre & Cory Allen – The Seeker & The Healer (Students of Decay) [jl]
Abdulla Rashim - Unanimity (Northern Electronics) [al]
M. Sage - A Singular Continent (Patient Sounds) [al]
Pascal Savy - Adrift (Eilean Records) [al]
Janek Schaefer – Lay-By Lullaby (12k) [jl/al]
Shifted - Arrangements in Monochrome (Part 1 & 2) (Avian) [al]
Nicholas Szczepanik - Not Knowing (Desire Path) [al]






TCF - 415C47197F78E811FEEB7862288306EC4137FD4EC3DED8B (Liberation Technologies) [al]
Tegh - Night Scenes (Inner Ocean) [al]
Mike Weis – Don’t Know, Just Walk (Type) [jl]
Cody Yantis / Nathan McLaughlin / Josh Mason / Joe Houpert – Line Drawings (Desire Path/FET Press) [jl]



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

Our tidal flats

It's not just the national cricket team working up a head of steam down under as the year closes. Lately Australia's Room40, LMYE's label of 2011 (joint with Experimedia, trainspotters!), has unleashed a gleaming raft of essential 'editions' that add lustre not only to an already benchmark catalogue but to 2013's output more generally...

This new batch underlines the label's characteristic anti-generic open-earedness. From Eugene Carchesio's manic glitching to Heinz Riegler's therapeutic lullabies, via major statements from Simon James Philips (the gloriously, grandly pealing Chair) & Rafael Anton Irisarri (the crepuscular, clankingly pensive Unintentional Sea), this disparate outpouring somehow reaffirms the uniqueness of Room40's voice. 

Moreover, the label still has the great Chris Herbert's Constants to come (some earlier blather). A delectable, delicate freebie EP, Wintex-Cimex 83, only stokes the appetite for the return of an all too rare releaser - now due in February...

& that's not even to mention head honcho Lawrence English's magnificent collaboration with Liz Harris (Grouper), Slow Walkers - though that's a somewhat less recent vintage (even more so in the video below)... 

Simon James Phillips - Poul

moth to taper by simon james phillips  


Simon James Phillips - Set Ikon Set Remit

Rafael Anton Irisarri - Lesser than the sum of its parts


Rafael Anton Irisarri - Daybreak Comes Soon

rafael anton irisarri - the unintentional sea (excerpts)

Chris Herbert - Soft Quasars

 
Eugene Carchesio - Day 3

Eugene Carchesio - Day 12

Heinz Riegler - SLEEP HEALTH (Side A Excerpt)


Wake - Slow Walkers




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

Between 11 & 4

Another week, another Australian heavyweight... If Ben Frost knocks a release out next week, I'll have to dust off the old London buses quip. 

Even without that unexpected treat, however (new Frost, not old quip), the arrival of Lawrence English's Lonely Women's Club is a long-awaited highlight of LMYE's year that fully merits its place in our anticipatory Best of 2013 from the start of the year. Surfacing on the knotty, shifty heels of Chris Abrahams's Memory Night (from English's Room40, while LWC is on Important), it is as single-minded in its "gently toasted" excavation of noctural tone as MN is magpie-like in its shuffling of soundscapes...   

"The room around it is filled with a dusty ash; smoke in haze like proportions. Eyes are blood shot, sunken below the rim of a glass. The organ's speakers cough vibrations into the room, smoke plumes spinning and spiralling into dissipation. No one speaks though the room is crowded, there is nothing to say and no one cares to hear it. Is there ever a time for last drinks? At the Lonely Women's Club it's an undecided question."

Cigarette Burn (excerpt) by Lawrence English


Lawrence English's Lonely Women's Club [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.

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.