Aide-memoire

A hopeful refry of LMYE's ultimately unsatisfying earlier attempts (also this) at 'curatorial' posting: an aide-memoire compilation of 10 mostly new releases (plus one for luck) that I've yet to hear but want & mean to, by artists I - &, in some cases, we - rate or am interested in hearing - fixed here against the relentless onward rush of time & tasks, preserved for chewing over later...

Featuring Jannick Schou / Biosphere / Sean McCann / Kreng / Noveller / Nicola Ratti / Rafael Toral / Ben Vida & Keith Fullerton Whitman / Xela / The North Sea / Holy Other

NB: all streams taken from Experimedia's exemplary album previews...

jannick schou - act of shimmering

biosphere - n-plants

sean mccann - chances are staying

kreng - grimoire

noveller - glacial glow

nicola ratti - 220 tones

rafael toral - space elements vol. iii

ben vida + keith fullerton whitman - aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii)

xela - my memories of gallifrey

the north sea - last great november

holy other - with u

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

Bus trip

A new Necks epic? On Markus Detmer's great Staubgold? Don't mind if I do...

Just under 30 minutes of untypically guitar-laced build form the centrepiece of the forthcoming Strade Trasparenti soundtrack. Snappy by Necks standards, the piece still summons real heft along the way - much supported by its raspy, filigree-ing augmentation (not quite as much of a broadening of the palette as the recent Silverwater, but still a notable expansion of the classic trio).

A little extract - & short streams from the rest of the album - below.

Blurb: "The film "Strade Trasparenti (Transparent Roads)" delivers the physical sensations of a bus trip - it's so realistic it becomes oniric at times - and portrays Brazil's human variety in a series of encounters. The landscapes seen through the windows, the restaurants on the road, the testimonies of common and awfully endearing people are so touching, because they don't correspond to the stereotypes we have about this country. The soundtrack was composed by prestigious musicians from different countries especially for the film.

"Strade Trasparenti (Transparent Roads) is part of a tetralogy of films that are set in Brazil and share the same ethic and aesthetic principles. This film is not a trip in Brazil. It's rather a trip into the depths of Brazilian land and people. It is about Brazil, but not only. Brazil is a mirror used to reflect visions and arguments that could be universally valid.

Strade Trasparenti (Transparent Roads) is a cinevoyage, a ritual of initiation to the journey, to the discovery of the unknown, the indecipherable and the irreducible. It's to go beyond the logic of one's own national, cultural, perceptive borders. (Augusto Contento, Director)"

In other news: two live sets from this time last year here & here (via Root Strata's fine frequent drool) & on Moshcam below, & the better late than never arrival of four Necks classics on eMusic...

The Necks > Transparent Roads [extract] (from Strade Trasparenti OST, Staubgold)

Band photos by Holimage.

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

"pop and hell"

Not sure the lovely Dietmar Dath collaboration Im erwachten Garten (full Spotify stream) has yielded up all it has to offer yet. But a new Kammerflimmer Kollektief album - Wilding (Staubgold) - is already upon us: "file under: psychedelic/intuitive/mongrel music".

Still trying to track down the Lee Perry cover it appears to contain (Spotty original). But two originals - Move Right In & Time is the Fire in Which We Burn - are streaming chez Kammerflimmer & a third - Spookin' the Horse - is up via SoundCloud.

Initial impression is of a somewhat lighter, rather twangier sound. But the trademark dense, slow voice/sax/bass/percussion matrix is intact - & still a thing of wonder. Time is the Fire has a welcome propulsiveness too. Must hear more!

Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Spookin' The Horse

Hear pretty well all of KK up to Wilding via this playlist (yes, Spotty again...).



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

Treasure trove too

Second half of earlier post on TU M's Soundtrack for Images - the subtle ambient-dronesters' strikingly rich archive of kindred-ish spirits & LMYE favourites from Mitchell Akiyama to Christopher Willits.

Harald 'Sack' Ziegler > Tanzhaus (dance house)

Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid > Fractal Transmission

Frank Bretschneider > pik

Taylor Deupree > Spanner

Sawako > a.sa > x x x

Shuttle358 > Untitled

Christopher Willits > Baroque machine

F.S.Blumm > Anorak Aquarium

Radian > Sterlet

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

Treasure trove

With their TU M'P3 project Soundtrack for Images subtle ambient-dronesters TU M' (featured here recently) assembled a strikingly rich archive of kindred-ish spirits & LMYE favourites from Mitchell Akiyama to Christopher Willits. Having already supplied some of last week's look at Akira Rabelais, this treasure trove is ransacked for a couple of posts - though in truth many more interesting artists participated over the project's lifespan (2002-05, seemingly) than are represented here. Note to self: dig into sections I-J & K-L!

I've loosely divided my plundering of the archive into electronica & ambient-drone halves. Some, like Keith Fullerton Whitman's rich, dense gallium or Harald 'Sack' Ziegler's painfully truncated Tanzhaus (why isn't this 20 times the length?!), fit into both, conceivably; others (Radian, F.S. Blumm...) don't quite go with either.

No matter. What does matter, though, is the inspired music - often faintly abstract, heavy on texture, & brisk by the territory's standards - that this post & its soon-to-follow sister present.

Keith Fullerton Whitman > gallium

Kenneth Kirschner > April 21, 2003

Oren Ambarchi > Lynx [edit]

Stephen Vitiello with Pauline Oliveros > Minutes After Frogs

Ekkehard Ehlers > The Babes in the Wood (version)

Greg Davis > A parent cloud

Rosy Parlane > Orto

Mitchell Akiyama > And sun into dust

Black To Comm > As Bambi grew older the little white spots on his back disappeared

Stephen Vitiello > Track 18, mix 3, mp3 genre=blues?

anderegg > clock repair

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

Supplementary benefits

Follow-ups/expansions of a couple of recent posts (this one & this) in ambient-ish post-jazz/post-rock territory...

You'll wish Kammerflimmer's effortless coda "There's a weight..." would go on forever. Infuriatingly, though with impressive self-confidence, it's over in moments. Their version of Robert Wyatt's Venti Latir is satisfyingly insistent, intensifying into a clonking, squawking climax - & then climbing down again a bit sheepishly.

A trio of extracts from some obscurer Rameses III instrumentals, welded into an LMYE 'hack', kicks off with the frazzled, sun-coming-up riffage of Ashes. It pauses for a moment's breath with the gentle, reflective Tidal Draw, before culminating in the twangy warmth & washes of September Morning Rain.

Kammerflimmer Kollektief > "There's a weight on you, but you can't feel it" (from Cicadidae, Staubgold/Temporary Residence) > Venti Latir (from Incommunicado, Temporary Residence)

Rameses III > Extracts [LMYE hack] (from Ashes on Matanuska, Music Fellowship; The Tidal Draw on Gold Leaf Branches [VA], Digitalis Industries; September Morning Rain on Kanoja, Myos Hanoja [VA], 267 lattajjaa)

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

Keep your shirt on

Reuber is a master of a kind of post-krautrock & ruhig blut (on Staubgold) his masterpiece. Across its 50 minutes-plus this epic EP vaults a very German gamut - from exquisitely reflective, spacious ambience to an initially almost stately clanktronica that mounts in its own sweet time to splintering frenzy, & back again. 

With sincere thanks to Timo, a permissioned LMYE hack: from ruhig blut b. 

Albums: Anna/Kintopp/Suedpol

Also check out the inspired Live Sessions on his MySpace currently - again, channelling a deep immersion in the experimental/kosmische heritage...

Reuber is also half of the excellent Klangwart, by the way...

Class of 2008, part 2

It was a struggle to be particularly contemporary in 2008: my fault, of course, not the year's - much of what I listened to was released in the previous 50 or so years (often finally catching up, years late...). But responding to ah's very welcome Christmas post, here's a sister list of 15 more of the year's stand-out albums from an LMYE vantage point:


Aidan Baker/Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie (Alien8)
Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego - The Sinking of the Titanic (Touch)
Carl Craig/Moritz von Oswald - Recomposed (Deutsche Grammaphon)
Four Tet - Ringer (Domino)
Fuck Buttons - Street Horrsing (ATP)
Headhunter - Nomad (Tempa)
Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band (Anticipate)
Philip Jeck - Sand (Touch)
Pedal - Pedal (Staubgold)
Solo Andata/seaworthy/Taylor Deupree - Live in Melbourne (12K)
Sunken Foal - Fallen Arches (Planet Mu)
Various - Dub Step All Stars Vol. 6 (Tempa)
Various - Ghostly Swim (Ghostly)
Various - Lagos Shake: A Tony Allen Chop-Up (Honest Jon's)
Christopher Willits/Ryuichi Sakamoto - Ocean Fire (12K)



& a deeply unfashionable extra that charmed these ears anyway:

Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep in the North Sea (Babel/Vortex)

I suspect Lawrence English, Jacaszek, Klangwart, Mapstation/Paul Wirkus, Juana Molina & Shed would all be pushing for a place in our Group of 30 too if I'd heard more than a track or two from them...

May also have to have a go at this year's Grouper, given how highly ears that I rate rate it.

Few kosher giveaways to hand to accompany all this. But here's one, beefed up with a blast from the past & a couple of extracts from one of my best backwards-looking discoveries of the year:

Scanner - I Cannot Forget

Tortoise - Seneca (from Standards, Thrill Jockey)

Keith Fullerton Whitman - Multiples extract & another (Kranky)

Klangwart: Stadtlandfluss

Shadowplay - Mapstation live

Clicks, washes, squawks, riffs & twangs

I love Kammerflimmer's assurance, their confidence that what jazzy drum 'n' bass really needs is their highly idiosyncratic mixture of clicks, washes, squawks, riffs & twangs over the top of it.

They're right, of course. For proof, take a listen to Lichterloh from 2005's brilliant Absencen (buy here)...