Checkpoint Charlie

From the blurred, skittering brilliance of his 1997 collaboration with Jim O'Rourke & Nicholas Collins to his enlightening, radical remixes of both the relatively obvious (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Squarepusher, Takako Minekawa) & somewhat less so (Jimanica, Pizzicato 5) & on to current live-only workouts, these ears are once again revelling in the fecund hinterland & endless textural trickery of Markus Popp's Oval - triggered this time by his 11-track 'countdown' of web-only bonuses ahead of last Friday's release of retrospective flush-out (& multi-media extravaganza) OvalDNA... 


Liner notes (essay more like...). 





Popp, O'Rourke, Collins - Büromusic (cut)


"Short excerpt from a seriously cool live collaboration thing I did in 1997 with Jim O'Rourke (Guitar, Electronics) and Nicolas Collins (Trombone-driven Electronics). All three of us were located in a different office in the (then) newly built "business center" around Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, remixing each other's soundfiles which were transported back and forth between the three offices on CD-Rs (!) - by bike messenger, no less. Those were the days... "


Ryuichi Sakamoto - Discord (Remixed By Oval)


Oval - Workaround


"One of the first tracks I did after completing "94Diskont."

Oval - Stueck (alternate version)


"Alternate version (read: less unnecessary distortion) of a track I contributed in 2000 to the "Elysian Fields" exhibition/CD-compilation and was supposed to serve as a quasi-soundtrack for films by Antek Walczak and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster exhibited at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France. This fairly rare compilation features Sonic Youth, Tortoise, The Sea & Cake, David Grubbs, Tom Verlaine, Jim O'Rourke etc and was released with the 400-page "Elysian Fields" catalog designed by Dutch group "Experimental Jet Set."



Jimanica - Over The Cherry (Oval Remix)





Oval - Driva (live in Vancouver 10-2011)


"Unreleased track from my current live set."

OvalDNA EU release countdown


Oval - OvalDNA Preview


Oval - OvalDNA Bonus Tracks Preview


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

Turn to stone

Footnote to yesterday's track of the day from Fennesz: a preview of Seven Stars' "certain lightness" - from the luscious but ultimately somewhat unsatisfying Liminal & title track (for all its jazzy brushwork) to the more wholesome Shift & July (the former a deep, gripping drone, the latter a beautifully resolved arc out of knotty abstraction) - for the non-Spotty...

Blurb: "Seven Stars was recorded in Vienna in January 2011. I recorded and mixed the album within 3 weeks. Liminal and July were existing pieces which i have reworked. (I wrote an early version of Liminal in a hotel room in Bali in 2010). There is also a version of Liminal that I have been playing live for some time. My friend Steven Hess, with whom I have worked before, happened to be in Vienna at the time of the sessions, so I invited him to join me in the studio. Christoph Amann recorded the drums using a selection of his great microphones including his amazing new Josephson.

I wanted to make a record that has a certain lightness about it and at the same time explore new territory using drums on one track. This might be something I will continue with in the future."

Note also confirmation that Fennesz's third collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Flumina, is due out this summer on Touch.

fennesz - seven stars (album preview) [via experimedia]

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

For Nihon

Admirable curation by Keith Kenniff (Helios, Goldmund) of an album to benefit Japanese relief efforts. This instant compilation on his Unseen label, featuring a raft of ambient/neo-classicists (Biosphere, Taylor Deupree, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sawako, Ryan Teague...), will already be out next week - with a physical release to follow.

Hear two lovely, unadorned contributions by Clem Leek & Kenniff as Goldmund below, plus a stand-out remix of Goldmund's 25 Thousand Miles (from Corduroy Road) by another participant, Rafael Anton Irissari. To these ears the subtly textured soundscape Irissari summons around the older, but similarly sober & restrained, piece - a very human patchwork of rustles & scrapes distilled from the original's accompaniment - makes it especially moving.

Clem Leek > A Light, To Guide You

Goldmund > Nihon

Note that Kevin Stephens (Saffron Slumber) is also curating a netlabel release for Japan...

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Fleeing further

As promised, more of the irresistible Music for Our Future giveaway compilation - from Lusine's intricate pinging poptronica to Willits & Sakamoto's stately, shuddering unfurling via staging points as diverse as King Midas Sound's sonorous future-dub, White Rainbow's accreting analogue haze & Untold's clicky warps...

Further coverage (by MfOF contributor Peter Kirn, as it happens). Photo by Lusine (Jeff McIlwain).

Lusine > Gravity (from A Certain Distance, Ghostly)

Hudson Mohawke > Fuse (from Butter, Warp)

White Rainbow > Raw Shanks a Million

King Midas Sound > Outta Space (Slow Version) (original on Waiting For You, Hyperdub)

Low Limit > Turf Day

Willits & Sakamoto > Toward Water [re-up] (from Ocean Fire, 12k)

Untold > Luna

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