Austere retrace

Casting off the hairshirt in which we clad our Furtive 30 key 2012 releases before Christmas (no more than one pick from any artist or label per co-author...), here's a further raft of 80 new sounds that last year would have been much the poorer without. They include a group of exceptional pieces - most notably, Below Sea Level, Coda (For WK),  For/Not For John Cage, Lichtung, Portraits, Recurrence, Secret Photographs, Superstorms & Valence - that only failed to make the original 30 because of its self-imposed constraints. Which begs a question over those constraints, but still...

Even though he claims two slots as it is (one with Steve Roden), other Machinefabriek pieces might well also have been classed in this group - his collaborations with Chris Dooks & Michel Banabila, listed below too, for example. Perhaps the thought reflects these ears growing further into his sound world, but 2012 seems to have been one of the Rotterdammer's finest. 

No other artist is represented as frequently in our two lists this year (even if you lump the fecund Quiet Evenings family together...) - though Stephan Mathieu comes close, inevitably. Fine installations & other commissioned pieces, such as The Breaking Water for the Rotterdam Film Festival, supplemented a raft of memorable Machinefabriek releases. 

Anyway, while this additional list risks irrelevance by only shambling out well into the new year, it still seems important to acknowledge the array of talent & achievement beyond our Furtive 30. So we round out our Hot 110 (ahem) with this appreciative roll-call - plus the obvious but necessary health warning that 2012 featured even more great records than we've found space to acknowledge: 


Alex Durlak/Damian Valles - Guitar and Drums (Komino)
Andrea Belfi - Wege (Room40)
Attilio Novellino - Through Glass (Valeot)
Anne Chris Bakker - Weerzien (Somehow)
Banabila & Machinefabriek - s/t (self-released)
Between - s/t (12k)
BJ Nilsen - Draught #1 (Touch)
Celer - Truth Abandons (Prairie Fire)
Chihei Hatakeyama & Asuna - Scale Compositions (Home Normal)

Banabila & Machinefabriek (album preview)

Chris Dooks & Machinefabriek - The Eskdalemuir Harmonium (Komino)
Dino Sabatini - Shaman’s Paths (Prologue)
Eli Keszler/Keith Fullerton Whitman - Split (NNA Tapes)
Ekkehard Ehlers - Adikia (Staubgold)
Eugene Carchesio - Circle Music (Room40)
Evan Caminiti - Dreamless Sleep (Thrill Jockey)
Ex-Easter Island Head - Mallet Guitar Two/Music for Moai Hava (Low Point)
Felicia Atkinson - A River (Space Slave Edition)
Fieldhead - a correction (Gizeh)
France Jobin - Valence (LINE)

Evan Caminiti f/ Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Rideaux de Nuit

Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti - Gramercy (Miasmah)
Giuseppe Ielasi - Untitled, 2011 (Entr'acte)
Grant Evans - Jewels from the House of Worms (A Guide to Saints)/Solos for Muted Transparent (Tranquility Tapes)
Gregg Kowalsky w/Josef van Wissem - Movements in Marble & Stone (Amish)
Helm - Impossible Symmetry (PAN)
High Aura'd - Sanguine Futures (Bathetic)
Hildur Gudnadottir - Leyfdu Ljosinu (Touch)
Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier - An Age of Wonder (Shelter Press)
Joe Evans - Affected Piano (runningonair/Somehow)

helm - impossible symmetry (album preview)

Kangding Ray - The Pentaki Slopes (Raster Noton)
Kane Ikin & David Wenngren - Strangers (Kesh)
Kleefstra Bakker Kleefstra - Griis (Low Point)
Koen Holtkamp - Liquid Light Forms (Barge)
Kyle Bobby Dunn - In Miserum Stercus (Komino)
Lawrence English - For/Not For John Cage (LINE)
Lee Noble/Ensemble Economique - Motion Forever (Hands in the Dark)
Leonardo Rosado - A Long White Sleep (Laverna)
Machinefabriek - Colour Tones (Fang Bomb)/Secret Photographs (Important)
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Traces (A Guide to Saints)

Plateau ( a single source of truth ) by Kangding Ray

Mike Shiflet/Joe Panzner - s/t (Rubber City Noise)
Mind Over Mirrors - Small Portion (Digitalis)
Nicholas Szczepanik - La Luna del Este/We Make Life Sad (self-released)
Oren Ambarchi - Audience Of One (Touch)
Pete Swanson & Rene Hell - Waiting for the Ladies (Shelter Press)
Pillowdiver - Cassette Recordings (Analogpath)/Frozen Soundtracks (Nomadic Kids Republic)
Pinkcourtesyphone - Elegant & Detached (Room40)
Portraits - Portraits (Important)

pinkcourtesyphone - elegant & detached (album preview)

Primitive Motion - Two Ellipses (A Guide to Saints)
Pye Corner Audio - The Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 [Second Edition] (Type)
Quiet Evenings - Patience Folding Waters (Hooker Vision)
Richard Chartier - Recurrence (LINE)
Richard Skelton - Limnology/Verse of Birds (Corbel Stone Press)
Rick Tarquinio - Waves (Resting Bell)
Seaworthy - Bellows & Breath (Preservation)
Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour/The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart!)
Simon Scott - Below Sea Level (12k)

Limnology - Richard Skelton (Preview)

Steinbruechel - Sinus (The Tapeworm)
Stephan Mathieu - Coda (For WK) (Minority/12k)/Palimpsest (w/Sylvain Chauveau; Schwebung)/Strings (w/David Maranha; Cronica)
Steve Roden & Machinefabriek - Lichtung (Eat, Sleep, Repeat)
Superstorms - Superstorms (Experimedia)
Taylor Deupree - Faint (12k)
Terrence Dixon - From the Far Future Part 2 (Tresor)
The Swifter - The Swifter (The Wormhole)
Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin - Instrumental Tourist (Software)

Part 2 by Superstorms

TVO - Red Night (Broken20)
Two People in a Room - Endless Bummer (Rural Colours)
Unrecognizable Now - Two Rooms (Kesh)
Villages - Theories of Ageing (Bathetic)
Voices from the Lake - Voices from the Lake (Prologue)
Windy & Carl - We Will Always Be (kranky)
Yann Novak - 3 Surfaces (Reductive)/Fata Morgana (w/Robert Crouch; Murmur)/Paradise & Winchester (Unfathomless)

Villages - The Narrows/Growth Rings



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.

Sweet concord

Lately all roads lead to, er, Roden. In just a few months as many as three essential Steve Roden releases have surfaced. The solo Proximities (a retroactive staple of our 2011 Festive 50 + 50) (Line) & collaborations with Machinefabriek (Lichtung, Eat Sleep Repeat) & Steve Peters (Not A Leaf Remains As It Was, 12k) are each highly considered yet captivatingly fluid - & while quite different (Proximities spangling, Lichtung crunching, Leaf quavering) all exhibit an affecting contemplative beauty. 

Oh, & in case this sudden burst of fecundity isn't enough for you there's a Champion Version 10" film soundtrack along shortly (or already gone, perhaps, since it's some ultra-limited lathe-cut thing...).  


Also, among a global itinerary Roden is part of the ICA's Soundworks starting next month.  

Blurbs: "Proximities was recorded in 2010 during my time as the artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. I began by recording a performance of a series of tones played on an old battery powered Paia Oz, that were determined by the letters A-G as found in a text by minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. I recorded the tone sequence several times during sunrise, amidst 50 of Judd’s stainless steel sculptures in an old army barracks that has been converted into a museum. The performances were recorded with an H4 digital recorder, my iPhone and also a cheap Sony micro-cassette recorder.
During several of the performances these small devices were emitting the sounds of previous performances from their tiny speakers. At times I also hummed. All of the processing in the recordings was generated by the extremely resonant physical space. The occasional popping sound, which can be heard at the end, are the sounds of Judd’s sculpture expanding while the sunrise changed the temperature within the space."


"‘Lichtung’ is a collaborative project centered around an audio-visual installation. Sound artists Steve Roden and Rutger Zuydervelt (a.k.a. Machinefabriek) composed the audio, while the video element was provided by the German visual artist Sabine Bürger.The installations exhibition was part of a series organized by Galerie Vayhinger revolving around the German concept of ‘heimat’ - the area in which someone was born or had their early formative experiences. Considering the artists’ far-flung locations it was decided that the gallery’s locale should provide them with a ‘temporary heimat’. The Mindelsee lake situated just a few hundred yards away from the gallery became the natural focus of the installation. During their stay, Sabine and Rutger recorded the video and audio footage that became the foundation which Steve Roden responded to with material inspired by his surroundings in the US. It resulted in an immersive four-channel audio-visual presentation, in a gallery space also showing additional visual works by each of the artists, and the floor covered with dried leaves."

"In 1995 Steve Peters and Steve Roden toured as a trio with singer Anna Homler; sometimes they would vocalize behind her, and they liked the way their voices blended together. They then spent about 15 years saying that “someday” they should record a voice-based project together. Aside from the physical distance between them, the problem was always: What would we sing? Neither wanted to write or sing lyrics.

Inspiration came in the form of a book of Japanese jisei – poems allegedly written by monks on their death bed – printed in both English translation and Romanized Japanese. Phonetically pronouncing the Japanese reminded Peters of the technique Roden has used of systematically chopping up the syllables in English texts to transform them into sound poems. Since neither of them speaks Japanese, it seemed like a good place to begin.

The two of them applied for a residency at Jack Straw, a non-profit recording facility in Seattle that gives grants of studio time. They had no exact plans other than they intended to avoid electronic instruments, or directly referencing the poems’ literal meaning, or imitating any Japanese musical idioms or “Zen” stereotypes. Culling some of the poems that made references to sound and noting them on 3x5 cards, Peters and Roden sorted the cards into four groups according to the seasons of the year that the poems represented, divided the cards between them, and taped them to their music stands. They then sang random fragments from the various cards - a word here, a line there, maybe backwards, maybe the English translation. They made no effort to keep the poems intact or retain any of their meaning, instead treating the material simply as phonemes to put in their mouths.All of the music was improvised in the studio, built up one track at a time. They worked intuitively, with no structural guidelines beyond using the texts."


More at TouchRadio (the deeply absorbing 9-Sided Room) & UbuWeb; also a Spotify playlist. 

steve roden - proximities (album preview)





steve peters + steve roden - not a leaf remains as it was (album preview)


Steve Peters + Steve Roden - Fade Away Within


Steve Roden & Machinefabriek - Lichtung (album preview)







Leaves - Steve Roden/Machinefabriek

Drawings from Roden's of frozen music and liquid architecture series. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.