Twenty is plenty

Presenting 20 releases that lightened & brightened a year in profound need of both...

To state the obvious: these weren't the year's only great releases. Nor do we suggest they were the 'best'. But they stood out to us as especially meaningful or evocative or thrilling - or some combination of these...

It's notable how many of them capture live performance in a year when this was largely impossible, except through streaming. 

Notable too is how many are self-releases. Labels aren't on the way out, to be sure. But Bandcamp has enabled a direct connection with audiences that seems to really work for artists (not least in sharing performance, of course).

As ever, the overall list is a compilation of our two separate lists. Each was limited to one pick per artist/label. 

Again as ever, this constraint (to range as widely as possible within our listening) meant having to exclude outstanding releases such as Lawrence English's 'deepening' Lassitude (among a raft of brilliance, to the earlier point about labels, in Room40's 20th anniversary year...). 

Among other painful losses to the hairshirt were France Jobin's flawless Death is perfection, everything else is relative & the remainder of her Editions Mego labelmate KMRU's outpouring (besides multiple albums, the EPs, mixes & even a piece for The Arsenal are all must-hear)...

 

Ultimately, this list forms only one part of a broader picture of the year's music. This also includes projects that went beyond the bounds of conventional releases, compilations & some alternative picks. 

For now, though, LMYE's Festive Twenty for 2020:

Chris Abrahams :: Appearance (Room40)

Shoeb Ahmad :: im/modesty (Flaming Pines)

William Basinski :: Lamentations (Temporary Residence)

r beny :: Seafoam & Dust (Dauw)

 

 

Flaming Pines · im/modesty (excerpt)- Shoeb Ahmad & Australian Art Orchestra - out November 16

 

 

Black Glass Ensemble & Friends :: Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor (omnempathy)

Sarah Davachi :: Figures In Open Air (Late Music)

drøne :: the stilling (Pomperipossa)

Carlo Giustini :: Gli Spiriti Della Marca (Vaagner)

 

 

 

Chris Herbert :: Kranky NTS Radio (self-release)

Hotel Neon :: Moments (Sound In Silence)

KMRU :: Peel (Editions Mego)

Lamasz :: Nature Morte (Past Inside the Present)

 

 

 

Alva Noto :: Xerrox Vol. 4 (Noton)

øjeRum :: Selected Percussive Works 1998 - 2001 (Opal Tapes)

Jim O'Rourke :: So You Want to Write A Fugue (Steamroom)

Benoît Pioulard :: A Few Moments In (Disques d'Honoré)

 

 

 

Maja S. K. Ratke :: Corona lockdown concert for Tusk Festival 2020 (self-release)

William Selman :: The Life of Lines (Critique of Everyday Life)

Hirotaka Shirotsubaki :: Slowdance, Lowtide (self-release)

thme :: that’s what it will be like (Whitelabrecs)

 

 

 

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

Arse about face

Once more into the hair shirt, dear friends...

Having already named the four projects falling outside normal 'release' boundaries that complete our list, we press on somewhat arse about face to present LMYE's Festive 33-1/3 in full. 

Clunky though it clearly is, our approach remains the same: two sets of 2018 releases (15 each) that meant especially much to us over the year, selected independently with both sets limited to no more than one pick per artist/label. 

Once overlaps have been horse-traded into a final 30, the list is supplemented with our additional quartet.

In all of this, our goal is always to spread recognition as far as possible: over & above LMYE's desire to embrace - rather than limit  - the multiplicity of sounds & artists we love, this is an attempt to acknowledge & respond to year-end lists' inevitable partiality. 

It's never comfortable to reflect on how different ours might look on another day or in another mood, given every year's surfeit of compelling music..

Moreover, some labels' outstanding output forces unpalatable choices. Notable releases like Jana Winderen's Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone, Triac's Departure & M. Geddes Gengras's Light Pipe (all ineligible because of labelmate selections) are clearly still core parts of the year's best...

Note that a number of fine labels regrettably unrepresented here, such as ACR, Polar Seas & Schwebung, will feature in a follow-up piece on the year's key compilations.

As always, for a more inclusive picture of our listening please explore the monthly Lend Me Your Radio series on SoundCloud, al's Mixcloud & jl's Bandcamp (collection & wish list)...

ASC :: Trans-Neptunian Objects 2 (Auxiliary)

Monty Adkins :: Empire (LINE) 

William Basinski & Lawrence English :: Selva Oscura (Temporary Residence)

Tomasz Bednarczyk :: Illustrations For Those Who (Room40) 

Lea Bertucci :: Metal Aether (NNA)

Philipp Bückle :: Paintings (Moving Furniture)

Casino Versus Japan :: Suicide By Sun (self-release)

CMD094 :: Kagami Tears (No Problema) 

The Caretaker :: Everywhere at the end of time (self-release) 

Kate Carr :: the thing itself and not the myth (Glistening Examples)

Dominic Coppola :: Serenity Channel (Strange Rules) 

Sarah Davachi :: Let Night Come On Bells End The Day (Recital Program)

Etelin :: Hui Terra (Soda Gong)

Forest Management :: 21st Century Man (self-release)

Gray Acres :: Gray Acres (Sound In Silence)

Rafael Anton Irisarri :: El Ferrocarril Desvaneciente (Umor Rex) 

France Jobin & Richard Chartier :: DUO (mAtter)

Laura Luna Castillo :: Laminares (Genot Centre)

Mordançage :: Mordançage (Fluid Audio) 

øjeRum :: Selected Organ Works (Vaknar)

Orphax :: Summer's End (Low Point)

Jim O'Rourke :: Steamroom [#38-42] (self-release)

Pausal :: Volume Flow (Hibernate) 

Francis Plagne & Crys Cole :: Two Words (Black Truffle)

Poemme :: Moments in Golden Light (Constellation Tatsu)  

Positive Centre :: Forever Optimum (Horo)

r beny :: eistla (self-release) 

Mike Shiflet :: Tetracosa (self-release) 

Geneva Skeen :: A Parallel Array Of Horses (Room40) 

Tapes and Topographies :: Opiates (Simulacra) 

Ultrafog :: How Those Fires Burned That Are No Longer (Motion Ward)

Various :: All (Longform Editions)

Various :: Live at Human Resources (Touch) 

Ian Wellman :: Susan's Last Breath Became the Chill in the Air and the Fog Over the City's Night Sky (Dragon's Eye) 

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.

Amiable intricacy

Amiably intricate, treble-y clusters rattle unassumingly into unexpected splash & slash - Fridge > Astrozero (from Early Output 1996-1998, Temporary Residence) 

Bonus carnival, from Reichian loveliness to scratchy angularity: Cutup Piano & Xylophone (from Happiness, Temporary Residence); Kinoshita (from EPH Reissue, Temporary Residence); The Sun & Eyelids (both from The Sun, Temporary Residence).

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

Eluvium - An Accidental Memory In the Case of Death

Scratching the surface

So far I've only scratched the surface of Tarentel, Temporary Residence label-mates to The Drift (see yesterday's post for their excellent & hefty [19MB...] Invisible Cities). The two also share founder Danny Grody.

Anyway, the first track from Tarentel's 2005 Home Ruckus LP, #1, is a great piece of atmospheric bass clarinet melancholy & squawk.


Home Ruckus is a series of releases. The second came out last year.

Check out studio & live goodies from one of their apparently two home pages (the other has good interviews, reviews & discography for the completists among us :-).

Also, their page on the Temporary Residence site (scroll down til you see the name, then follow the link).

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Drifting by

An outstanding recent pair (also here) of Four Tet & Sybarite remixes led me to The Drift's dubby, spacey & (to some ears) jazzy post-rock. Here's the 2005 original of Invisible Cities, the very fine 13-minute track subsequently given the Sybarite treatment...



Cities is the second track on Noumena, the only full-blown Drift album (on Temporary Residence, like all Drift output, seemingly).

The remixes are on a compilation thing, Ceiling Sky (linked above), that also includes both tracks from the earlier Streets/Nozomi 12", plus some offcuts/bonus things from Noumena (including a piece with that title, which would've been too obvious to include on the album, evidently...).

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