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.
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 Photographsor 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-Ledesmaand (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...
Even in an era of mega-compilations, Headphone Commute's ...and darkness came is a giant. Not just for its epic scale, though at 87 tracks its self-description as "colossal" is an un-hyperbolic statement of fact, but for its ambition: "to benefit all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, which has devastated portions of the Caribbean, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States in late October 2012." Specifically, HC will donate "100% of all the proceeds generated from the sale of this album."Beneficiaries are The Humane Society & the US arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres. The compilation costs $10 - 11.5 cents a track, value hounds. Though you can also opt to pay more. Is it any good? The question of quality may seem in poor taste when the cause is exemplary or irrelevant when the price is so modest. But the contributors anywayinclude an alluring raft of LMYE alumni, including Lawrence English, Ezekiel Honig (solo & with Mark Templeton), Erik K Skodvin, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Simon Scott (solo & in a quartet with Corey Fuller & Marcus Fischer, who also features solo), Kane Ikin, Kreng, Machinefabriek, Celer, loscil, Scanner, Black Swan & Radere - some with exclusives to satisfy trainspotting impulses... Probably very pompous, but: commended
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Hibernate supremo, Jonathan Lees, up yon in Yorkshire, pronounces it ‘one of the most breathtakingly moving albums ever released’ on his junior label, Rural Colours. Hyperbole aside, Afar, Farewell’s five helpings of sustaining guitar string-melt with nice fuzz around the edges go down very nicely, notably failing LMYE’s Enovian ignorability test, resolutely refusing to fade into the background, various textures and timbres – chief among which MWtS’s ‘experimental violin’ - colluding with Jason Corder’s chords to keep ears not only well-lent, but royally tweaked and twirled. Get it here or there.
Cutely appraised, incidentally, by the nicely downhome wasistdas up in Hebden Bridge (home of Hibernate – serendipity or some relation?), whose previously handwritten reviews are now video-mediated here.
And more recently dropping from offthesky came The Lowern Decay on Wist Rec, or digital, again featuring the delicate fizz and scrim of processing with more nature-loving guitar tones peeking through. Ooh.
Not to neglect the other half, MWtS has previous: Elements 1, a compilation from Mumbai-based collective, The Future Elements, and Qoheleth, a collection of live improvisation performed and recorded in September 2012 ‘meant to capture bare expression, live composition, and spiritual reflection through sound,’ available for free download.
More plenitude from Futuresequence - a fourth gargantuan freepilation (ahem) from the increasingly active magazine-cum-label (now up to six commercial releases). Like its predecessors,SEQUENCE4is a somewhat overwhelming, sprawling 42-track smorgasbord (yes, fellow trainspotter, 2 did indeed have a sequence-upsetting extra serving: but anyway...).
With a slight bias to Canadian contributors - less a late acknowledgement of Canada Day, more a reflection of LMYE's 'taste' - here's what these ears & eyes grabbed on to on a first pass: intensely building Aquarelle, fuzzily bucolic Black Elk, divertingly clonky Le Berger, finely restrained Radere, aptly lyrical Nobuto Suda& darkly hovering Damian Valles (whose Nonparallel on Experimedia is even better & demands its own post...), plus videos of the finely filmic Loscil& Wolf Maps' warm washes.
But with another four such octets on offer (Raven's chewy Sleeping Dogs Lie is in another post in preparation here, to take just one example...), plus change,this baggy monster clearly merits a deeper dig.
Feeling the immensity of Radere’s I’ll Make You Quiet, evoking the emotional ambiguity of existential re/dis-location - the wonder and overwhelm-ment of a towering newness while dwelling on the melancholy of a temps perdu. Perhaps...
Kudos to Futuresequence, known mainly among the ambient and experimental community music for their online magazine and mixes, which has come into its own as a label in 2012. Starting with SEQUENCE, a steepling series of (mostly free) download (triple-CD length) comps, numbering 1, 2, 3, featuring a host of the great and the good (and a few of the fairly decent and merely passable) of contemporary ambient, drone, and leftfield electronic - a litany of names too numerous to enumerate/nominate, it has lately moved to single-artist releases, this from Radere being their first. Programme notes: on moving from Philadelphia to Colorado, he was apparently struck by the intimidating grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, this sense of awe (as in ‘Aww, gee’?) resonating over the vast expanse of I’ll Make You Quiet.
Your writer’s first close encounter with Radere was via the monumental, “Good Evening, Ghosts,” a track I liked so much I bought the company (actually, just joshin’, I just stuck it in an albient mix (posted here)
