Witches brew

Note to self: hear more Witxes, soon. Maxime Vavasseur's "roaming, roving & raving" variety of fine drone Lyonnaise needs a hefty post of its own, but in the meantime spare 60 seconds for the warm flood of his One minute for the stars - a delicately shaped stand-out from a diverting eponymous compilation on SEM.

One minute for the stars by witxes

Gallic inscrutability means no blurb for OMFTS. But the consistent running times & similarly formatted predecessor tell the story clearly enough: a challenge to an arresting line-up (Kenneth Kirschner, Robert Lippok, Philippe Petit, offthesky...) for a self-contained/externally constrained piece that runs for a minute exactly & somehow responds to the theme of stars.

Not everything in the resulting 36 minutes is essential. But the core is a trove of disciplined, brisk treasures. Some nuggets below, followed by a couple more from the sunny original...

One minute for the stars by katecarr

One Minute For The Stars (unmastered version) by Hidekazu Wakabayashi

One Minute For The Stars by Man Watching the Stars

One Minute For The Sun by sebastien druot

One Minute For The Sun by Man Watching the Stars

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

End of an ear

Duty & provincial exile dictate LMYE missing both an enticing trip on the Otobahn tomorrow night, regrettably, but also an exceptional event further north. Still, if we can't be at Stirling's Le Weekend, we can at least reconstitute some part of the eclectic, electric feast (Bill Wells & Stefan Schneider, Tarwater, Murcof & Francesco Tristano, Ben Frost, Faust & more) it unleashes tonight...

"All things must pass. The thirteenth Le Weekend will be an occasion of high drama and mighty celebrations. For thirteen years the festival has brought a mind boggling array of musical mayhem to Stirling and this year its last breath will be drawn on Sunday night. But like most beasts of bewildering spirit it is hoped that what Le Weekend started all these years ago will transmogrify into something new in the years ahead. Like the music that the festival has championed the idea of stasis, of not moving, is alien to the festival’s ethos, so to bring the festival to a conclusion now and on a high point seems the right thing to do.

Considering the significance of the year we have pushed the boat out to try and capture the essence of Le Weekend..."

Bill Wells & Stefan Schneider > pntps 112 (via Arctic Circle Radio)

Murcof > Death Of A Forest (via theleaflabel)

Murcof > Mo (via rxtx)

Francesco Tristano > remixe Nicolas Herald The Melody (via DJ HERALD)

Eric Johnston feat Francesco Tristano > Near Harvest (extract) (via teclectic)

Ben Frost > Live from The Ancienne Belgique, Bruxelles Belgium 08.11.2009 [re-up]

Bonus:

Hauschka & Stefan Schneider > Common Exposure (via Arctic Circle Radio)

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

Unfestive conclusion

So, a bathetic ending to the pathetic fallacy of LMYE's by now distinctly unFestive 50: a companion to our 20 labels of 2009 & top 10 sources of music discovery* in the form of our 20 artists of the year. Plus, given the discomfort of picking out an arbitrarily small group when LMYE exists to highlight all the less obvious music we love, an inevitable hedge: 10 more 'emerging' artists whose excellence we twigged during the year (often years too late, but anyway...).

Note that, apart from their inspired music, this list celebrates artists who typically cranked up their impact through other initiatives & efforts - running a cutting-edge label (Deupree, Sprinkles), creating compelling music on a new platform like the iPhone (Scanner), delivering genius mixes/remixes (English, KMS, Klimek, Sprinkles), collaborating far & wide (Baker, TRR), using 'free' creatively (Klimek, LJK, Monolake, Willits) - &/or sometimes just by the power of their example (The Necks' decade-plus of collective improvisation, Basinski's pioneering, Celer's fecundity, Erstlaub & Skelton's single-mindedness...).

*not including blogs like this one that mainly deal in commercial releases

Post features an exclusive LMYE hack of extracts of DJ Sprinkles' new Masturjakor. More tracks, hacks & profiles/rationales of the top 20 to follow in, er, due course. No, really...

Aidan Baker > previously on LMYE

William Basinski > previously on LMYE

Celer

Taylor Deupree >>

Dec8 MMwHloop
eclipsebow

DJ Sprinkles > previously on LMYE >> Masturjakor [Sprinklettes] (from Masturjakor, Mule Musiq)

DJ Sprinkles aka Terre Thaemlitz Live @ Decadent Deluxe, Fukuoka, Japan - 02-05-2007

Lawrence English

Erstlaub > previously on LMYE

King Midas Sound > previously on LMYE

Klimek > previously on LMYE >>

HARZ demo #1
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK ghetto ambient mix

LJ Kruzer > previously on LMYE >>

LJ Kruzer - Tam by unchartedaudio
LJ Kruzer - Tam814 by unchartedaudio

Monolake > previously on LMYE

Mountains > previously on LMYE

The Necks > previously on LMYE

Akira Rabelais > previously on LMYE

Scanner > previously on LMYE

Richard Skelton > previously on LMYE >>

Richard Skelton ~ Landings

Mark Templeton

To Rococo Rot > previously on LMYE >> Working Against Time (from Speculation, forthcoming on Domino)

Moritz von Oswald > previously on LMYE

Christopher Willits > previously on LMYE

'Emerging':

Allez-Allez > previously on LMYE

Olafur Arnolds > previously on LMYE

Floating Points

Jasper TX

P Jørgensen > previously on LMYE

Mokira > previously on LMYE

Simon Scott > previously on LMYE

Seaworthy > previously on LMYE

spatial > previously on LMYE

The Village Orchestra/TVO > previously on LMYE

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

Neither being nor non-being

Put on the spot about the dancefloor preferences of the great post-structuralists, most of us'd probably plump for Michel Foucault over Jacques Derrida when it comes to an inclination for minimal techno. Nonetheless, Hauntologists is, in its mysterious way, an impeccably Derridean conceit - barely there (a group whose only 'presence' is a Twitter account, more or less uniquely), two-sided ('produced in Duesseldorf & Berlin') & named for one of Jacques' portmanteaus...

Quite sincerely, I've no idea how much - if anything - to read into these Derridean trappings. Perhaps it's enough to simply say Hauntologists is To Rococo Rotter/Mapstationist/September Collectivist Stefan Schneider collaborating with Monolake co-conspirator Jay Ahern on minimal techno.

But East Germany is one of several huge spectres haunting modern Germany, of course. & there's a host haunting today's techno too...

In Hauntologists' case, there's also the 'other' of Schneider's extensive body of work (a long-standing LMYE enthusiasm - see here & here, among others). But I hear fairly little of those groups' idiosyncracies here.

Instead, we're mostly in austere, intensely reduced post-Basic Channel territory, with an unexpected, quite refreshing tendency towards - yes, really! - acid...

Hauntologists > B1 (from EP 1, Hardwax) > A1/EP 2 Samples [LMYE hack] (from EP 2, Hardwax) > Live (Part 1)

Hear other EP tracks in full at last.fm, by the way...

Sincere thanks to Jay for his help.

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

Feeding time

Poptronica near-perfection (shame about the toy synth, but otherwise exquisite bassy melodic interplay, with a great scratchy noise half-way through...): Barbara Morgenstern & Robert Lippok - Wake Me Up For Meals (from Tesri on Monika).

Lippok also has a remix of Christopher Willits' Yellow Spring (from Surf Boundaries on Ghostly): think this is it...

Finally, also on Ghostly, Kiln's Fyrepond (from Dusker).

Teutonic deprivation

Having had to miss out on the tasty Teutonic treat of Hauschka & Mapstation a couple of weeks back, here's some offcuts from this duo's very considered decompositions. The stately shimmer of Red Pencil, which I'm guessing involved both of them, is particularly satisfying.  

Hauschka - Red Pencil (from sessions for Substantial, Karaoke Kalk) [hauschka.de giveaway]

Hauschka - Lipstick Race (from sessions for Room to Expand, Fat Cat) [hauschka.de giveaway]

Mapstation - Tapes [mapstation.de giveaway]

Earlier Mapstation post here, & other bits on Kuchen/September Collective/To Rococo Rot/Paul Wirkus across LMYE...

Something for September (re-up)

If three German lap-toppers improvising together sounds like your idea of an inner circle of Dante's Inferno, think again. There may be chin-stroking, there may be over-earnest philosophising in the background & there may be a very dodgy title. But September Collective's All the Birds Were Anarchists on mosz is a delight - pretty but not cute, alive with ideas & noises, rich in mood & clicky, shuffling texture.

Try the lovely Das Meer.

Good review by eMusic here, by the way...

NB: re-up from LMYE's pre-Hype era, now seasoned under our 'nothing under 1 year old' posting policy & equipped with new links.

To Rococo Rot: Telema

Shadowplay - Mapstation live

Spin-off/sister

Usually, I like Tarwater a lot less than their spin-off/sister To Rococo Rot. Their music is often pretty interesting, as might be expected, but the lugubrious, Teutonic-speak vocals really don't do much for me.

A Tarwater instrumental would solve that problem, though. & while they seem pretty rare, one is the wonderfully atmospheric, spidery, twanging Yeah! (which has some chanting by way of a chorus, but none of the post-Nico vocalising).

It comes from the 2005 album The Needle Was Travelling (buy here) on morr music.