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.

Neither being nor non-being

Put on the spot about the dancefloor preferences of the great post-structuralists, most of us'd probably plump for Michel Foucault over Jacques Derrida when it comes to an inclination for minimal techno. Nonetheless, Hauntologists is, in its mysterious way, an impeccably Derridean conceit - barely there (a group whose only 'presence' is a Twitter account, more or less uniquely), two-sided ('produced in Duesseldorf & Berlin') & named for one of Jacques' portmanteaus...

Quite sincerely, I've no idea how much - if anything - to read into these Derridean trappings. Perhaps it's enough to simply say Hauntologists is To Rococo Rotter/Mapstationist/September Collectivist Stefan Schneider collaborating with Monolake co-conspirator Jay Ahern on minimal techno.

But East Germany is one of several huge spectres haunting modern Germany, of course. & there's a host haunting today's techno too...

In Hauntologists' case, there's also the 'other' of Schneider's extensive body of work (a long-standing LMYE enthusiasm - see here & here, among others). But I hear fairly little of those groups' idiosyncracies here.

Instead, we're mostly in austere, intensely reduced post-Basic Channel territory, with an unexpected, quite refreshing tendency towards - yes, really! - acid...

Hauntologists > B1 (from EP 1, Hardwax) > A1/EP 2 Samples [LMYE hack] (from EP 2, Hardwax) > Live (Part 1)

Hear other EP tracks in full at last.fm, by the way...

Sincere thanks to Jay for his help.

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

Teutonic deprivation

Having had to miss out on the tasty Teutonic treat of Hauschka & Mapstation a couple of weeks back, here's some offcuts from this duo's very considered decompositions. The stately shimmer of Red Pencil, which I'm guessing involved both of them, is particularly satisfying.  

Hauschka - Red Pencil (from sessions for Substantial, Karaoke Kalk) [hauschka.de giveaway]

Hauschka - Lipstick Race (from sessions for Room to Expand, Fat Cat) [hauschka.de giveaway]

Mapstation - Tapes [mapstation.de giveaway]

Earlier Mapstation post here, & other bits on Kuchen/September Collective/To Rococo Rot/Paul Wirkus across LMYE...

Something for September (re-up)

If three German lap-toppers improvising together sounds like your idea of an inner circle of Dante's Inferno, think again. There may be chin-stroking, there may be over-earnest philosophising in the background & there may be a very dodgy title. But September Collective's All the Birds Were Anarchists on mosz is a delight - pretty but not cute, alive with ideas & noises, rich in mood & clicky, shuffling texture.

Try the lovely Das Meer.

Good review by eMusic here, by the way...

NB: re-up from LMYE's pre-Hype era, now seasoned under our 'nothing under 1 year old' posting policy & equipped with new links.

Shadowplay - Mapstation live