Austere rerace

As promised, a trainspotter's delight to complete the unveiling of & revelling in our 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, as noted, there's still a label profile/interview to come as we explore the outer limits of improbable lateness...).  

This final batch of pieces from (& previews of) IL80 releases features Celer / Leonardo Rosado / Motion Sickness of Time Travel / Mike Shiflet & Joe Panzner / Mind Over Mirrors / Nicholas Szczepanik / Portraits / Shackleton / Steinbruechel / The Swifter / Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin / TVO / Two People in a Room / Windy & Carl / Yann Novak & Robert Crouch. 

celer - truth abandons (album preview)

Variation in White #1 by Leonardo Rosado

nicholas szczepanik - we make life sad (album preview)

La Luna del Este by Nicholas Szczepanik

Portraits - D

Motion Sickness Of Time Travel - Traces (edit)

tim hecker & daniel lopatin - instrumental tourist (album preview)

mind over mirrors - small portion (album preview)

Tgamaghis (clip) by TVO

Mike Shiflet/Joe Panzner - Split (preview)

Sinus 5 by steinbruchel [re-up]

Fata Morgana (excerpt) by Yann Novak & Robert Crouch [re-up]

the swifter - the swifter (album preview)

shackleton - music for the quiet hour/the drawbar organ eps (album preview)

Two People In A Room - Horses In My Head

windy & carl - remember [re-up]

Oh, & in case you missed it yesterday, here's the 7-hour Improbably Late 80 playlist:



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

Eureka reduct

Having unveiled our 2012 picks characteristically late in the day, here's an anticipatory 'Best of' for the new year to jump the gun on next December's list frenzy - & even provide some kind of benchmark for our eventual contribution. The list is unencumbered by the restrictions - no more than one pick per artist/label - imposed on the recent Furtive 30...

This initial selection of some 20 coming highlights ranges from Stephan Mathieu's ravishing David Sylvian remix album, Wandermuede, which is already out as a download & has an imminent formal release,  as does his Un Coeur Simple, to more speculative ones. They also include long-awaited pieces such as Aurora Liminalis from William Basinski & Richard Chartier on LINE - the pair's first since their Untitled series was expanded in 2008 (having begun in 2004). 

This 'pined-for' category also features Chris Herbert's Constants (label unannounced), which will end an absence even longer on some measures - since Mezzotint in 2006. Nor has there been a full release from Mark Templeton to savour since 2009. 

Several works in progress will add further lustre to 2013 if/when they surface. These include a new solo album from Steinbruechel & an epic remix/re-interpretation/e-book project for Kenneth Kirschner (involving Steinbruechel, incidentally...) 

Also factored in: prospective debuts from two drone collaborations, Andere (Anduin & Radere) & A pond waiting for you to leap (Le Berger & Pascal Savy). The latter may still be some way off (though, happily, Sam Le Berger threatens "much more music" this year in any case).

NB: obviously enough, this year will bring many more great releases than those highlighted here. Many outstanding artists & labels are unrepresented here. Please let us know what else these ears should be anticipating... 

Andere - s/t (label unknown)

A pond begging you to leap - title unknown (label unknown)
Chris Abrahams - title unknown (Room 40)
Chris Herbert - Constants (label unannounced)

Cory Allen - The Great Order (Quiet Design)
David Sylvian/Stephen Mathieu - Wandermuede (samadhisound)
Duane Pitre - Bridges (Important) 
Kenneth Kirschner - remix album/e-book (Tokafi)
Lawrence English - Lonely Women's Club (Important)

Mark Templeton - Jealous Heart (Under The Spire)
Mountains - Centralia (Thrill Jockey)
Philip Jeck - title unknown (Touch; also Rosy Parlane/Sohrab 7"s)
Steinbruechel - title unknown (label unknown)
Stephan Mathieu - Un Coeur Simple (Baskaru)
Tashi Wada & Stephan Mathieu - Revenant (Schwebung)
Taylor Deupree & Ryuichi Sakamoto/Taylor Deupree & Stephen Vitiello - titles unknown (12k)
William Basinski - Nocturnes (2062)/Aurora Liminalis (with Richard Chartier, LINE) 
Yann Novak - Blue.Hour (Farmacia901)/Undefined (with Richard Chartier, Farmacia901)

Mark Templeton - Buffalo Coulee

Mountains - Living Lens

Cory Allen - The Great Order (Movement II) [re-up]

Stephan Mathieu - Félicité

william basinski & richard chartier - aurora liminalis (excerpt 2)

Yann Novak - Blue.Hour (Excerpt)


Yann Novak - Blue.Hour

Nunki (unmastered final) by chris herbert

A pond begging you to leap - Celeste's Fall [re-up]


Slips Into The Ether (Excerpt) by Andere.


Lawrence English's Lonely Women's Club

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

Austere embrace

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 Photographs or 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-Ledesma and (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...

36 - Lithea (3Six; al)
Alex Cobb - Passage to Morning (Students of Decay; al)
Charlemagne Palestine & Janek Schaefer - Day Of The Demons (Desire Path; jl)
Damian Valles - Nonparallel [In 4 Movements] (Experimedia; jl)
Drape - An Idea And Its Map (Infraction; al)
Duane Pitre - Feel Free (Important; jl)
En - Already Gone (Students of Decay; jl)
En/Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Split (Constellation Tatsu; al)
Erstlaub - Marconi’s Shipwreck (Broken20; al)
Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings (Time Released Sound; al)

Gabriel Saloman - Adhere (Miasmah; jl)
Gareth Hardwick/p jørgensen - S/T (Low Point; jl)
Gimu - All The Intricacies Of An Imaginary Disease (T.O.C; al)
Heathered Pearls - Loyal (Ghostly; al)
Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (Komu; al)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Visiting This World (EN/Of; jl)
Kane Ikin - Sublunar (12k; al)
Kyle Bobby Dunn - Bring Me The Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point; al)
Lee Gamble - Diversions 1994-1996 (PAN; jl)
Mike Shiflet - The Choir, The Army (Under The Spire; jl)

Pausal - Forms (Barge; al)
Radere - I'll Make You Quiet (Futuresequence; al)
Robert Hampson - Repercussions (Editions Mego; jl)
Silent Harbour - Silent Harbour (Echocord; al)
Steinbruchel & Cory Allen - Seam (Quiet Design; jl)
Stephan Mathieu & Caro Mikaleff - Radioland [Panoramica] (LINE; jl)
Steve Peters & Steve Roden - Not A Leaf Remains As It Was (12k; jl)
Tetras - Pareidolia (Flingco Sound System; jl)
Thomas Köner - Novaya Zemlya (Touch; al)
Various Artists - 30 Years And Counting (Touch; jl)

Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings

Gabriel Saloman - 03

Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (album preview)

robert hampson - repercussions (album preview)

Moitié et Moitié - kyle bobby dunn

mike shiflet - the choir, the army (album preview)

Pausal - Fruiting Bodies / Liberty Capped

lee gamble - diversions 1994-1996 (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.

Millions of gods

Two gilded Touch-related treats from a pair of mitteleuropaische artists so distinctive & irreducible their surnames are all the marker needed. Fennesz's new AUN - the beginning & end of all things soundtrack (Ash International) yields the lullingly reflective Hikari, while the glowing tones of Sinus 5 append to Steinbruechel's Tapeworm cassette Sinus. 



Blurbs: "‘AUN – the beginning and the end of all things’ follows the strings of thoughts the late Claude Lévi-Strauss revealed in his anthropological essays throughout the 20th century, as well as those of Japan’s unique Shintoism who’s millions of gods inhibit and preserve nature. The film focuses on the dichotomy man/nature and envisions a future world where life will be nothing but sensual. It contains references to Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, Italian anthropologist Fosco Maraini and the Japanese writer Yoko Tawada."


"A simple synthetic-based, sine wave generating freeware program was used as sound source for creating single pulses and long static tones in several different tonal pitches. No additional sound design or other analogue or digital processing was used during the creation of the sounds. The single sound elements were layered and sequenced into different movements of varying shapes and colours focusing on the pure essence and aesthetics of sound. Each track interweaves longer, stretched, tonal segments and rhythmic patterns into sine-curved compositions.


The four Sinus tracks were sequenced at one hundred and twenty beats per minute in nineteen ninety nine by Steinbrüchel. They were previously released as a personal CD-R edition of 10 copies. "

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

Countless congruity

Re-up for aggregation...


Two alluring, affecting new-ish collaborations - with Steinbruechel (Seam) & Marcus Fischer (Two / Twenty-Two) - add further lustre to Cory Allen's lovely body of work. While both exhibit what Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet) nicely terms "gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient" (in his predictably insightful reflections around Two / Twenty-Two: see below), Seam is distinctive for its happy marriage of intensely detailed, almost gritty microsound with a huge bass rumble. Two / Twenty-Two, in contrast, deploys a larger, messier palette (twangs & groans, even...) to shape a more urgent, more 'narrative' sound - especially in the second part, Seventy-Seven. 


A fair few Allen streams here. Several albums on Spotify too...


Blurb: "Fourteen months and countless folders of audio files later, Steinbrüchel and Cory Allen offer their first collaborative album entitled «Seam». An intensive and process driven work period resulted in an album that integrates the two artist's individual soundworlds. Each sound was processed and multiplied by both artists, forming a sound archive of individual threads. The compositions were then sewn and stitched together using the collection of the archive. Connecting each composition is an inbetween thread which weaves the album's tracks together.


The «- -- - --» audio process was extended into the design and production of the physical packaging. The cover design is based on a system which reflects the track order and the artists' contributions to the creation of the compositions."


steinbrüchel + cory allen - seam 06


steinbruchel + cory allen - seam 02














Way beyond blurb (Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet): "The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing. 

Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family. 

Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart. 

Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly. Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22."

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

Countless congruities

Two alluring, affecting new-ish collaborations - with Steinbruechel (Seam) & Marcus Fischer (Two / Twenty-Two) - add further lustre to Cory Allen's lovely body of work. While both exhibit what Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet) nicely terms "gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient" (in his predictably insightful reflections around Two / Twenty-Two: see below), Seam is distinctive for its happy marriage of intensely detailed, almost gritty microsound with a huge bass rumble. Two / Twenty-Two, in contrast, deploys a larger, messier palette (twangs & groans, even...) to shape a more urgent, more 'narrative' sound - especially in the second part, Seventy-Seven. 


A fair few Allen streams here. Several albums on Spotify too...


Blurb: "Fourteen months and countless folders of audio files later, Steinbrüchel and Cory Allen offer their first collaborative album entitled «Seam». An intensive and process driven work period resulted in an album that integrates the two artist's individual soundworlds. Each sound was processed and multiplied by both artists, forming a sound archive of individual threads. The compositions were then sewn and stitched together using the collection of the archive. Connecting each composition is an inbetween thread which weaves the album's tracks together.


The «- -- - --» audio process was extended into the design and production of the physical packaging. The cover design is based on a system which reflects the track order and the artists' contributions to the creation of the compositions."


steinbrüchel + cory allen - seam 06


steinbruchel + cory allen - seam 02














Way beyond blurb (Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet): "The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing. 

Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family. 

Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart. 

Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly. Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22."

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

50 + 50 Compiled

ElevenElevations II by Albient on Mixcloud

At the risk of overplaying the 50s riff, here's notice of another 50 - this being the sum of tracks selected from LMYE's Festive 50 + 50 (lookee here and here) and spun into three assemblages for LMYEers' listening (pl)leisure. Here's the first, ElevenElevations I.

ElevenElevations I by albient

The second, ElevenElevations II, is at the top of this post. The third, ElevenElevations III (see what I did there?), is over on mixcloud or just click below (n.b. it's not so much the Evil Twin as the Beaty Triplet).

ElevenElevations III by Albient on Mixcloud

Have a good trip-tych!

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