From dodgy YouSendIt MP3s to painless embeds, from IDM & dubstep to ambient drone, LMYE is digging out our now-fading tee today to celebrate over a decade on the Hype Machine... No doubt we could acknowledge this landmark with greater pomp. But what better way, really, than to highlight one of these ears' current passions? These are captured throughout the month - every month - in our 'Lend Me Your Radio' & other playlists on SoundCloud. June's list continues to evolve, but pre-eminent this month is the excellent Reserve Matinee...
From the unfurling textures of the legendary DJ Olive's 'Listening to Fir' to Forest Management's delicious, never long enough 'Showers' via Nadia's magical 'Intercept' & Esper Werm's chancey 'Gunk', RM's new batch (the first of two for this summer, apparently...) is a high-water mark for a label only launched this year...
& from earlier this year:
Finally, hear the label's forthcoming 'outpu' by havetogo (it says) at the end of this rich, recent-ish mix for Beyond / Below by Forest Management...
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Four cheers for Dronarivm's Illuminations II compilation (released today) - as sprawlingly gargantuan as its predecessor a year ago, but this time benefiting a disability charity: 4 Paws for Ability, which 'enriches the lives of children with disabilities by training and placing quality, task-trained service dogs'.
As before, the collection is fat with contributions from artists in LMYE's pantheon. This geyser of generosity - & creativity - includes Giulio Aldinucci, Anne Chris Bakker, Hakobune, Chihei Hatakeyama, Jacaszek, Loscil, Machinefabriek, Maps and Diagrams, Aaron Martin, New Rome (Tomasz Bednarczyk), Olan Mill & Pausal. Highlights are headed by the great Machinefabriek's richly detailed Home Choir & Aldinucci's insistent, shimmering Sereno. Loscil's stately Azimuth, Olan Mill's swelling Gray Panics, Pausal's bucolic Quillow, & Bakker's beguiling, whisperedMake My Bed in Crystal Waters also stand out, along with subtle pieces by Halftribe & Stefan Wesolowski.
As if a Julius Eastman find were not enough, another reason to celebrate Bandcamp's inspiring $700k fundraiser for Transgender Law Center back in August: the flood of outstanding new (not so new now, admittedly...) music from artists in the LMYE pantheon - some of it explicitly part of the initiative, some more understatedly pushed out on the day, but all worth your time. The moment has long passed for qualifying purchases, of course (though no doubt TLC would appreciate anything you want to donate directly). But the generosity & creativity on display that day are still resonant.
Highlights: the first new sounds from Alex Cobb & Mike Shiflet in a while (the former all rich, enveloping warmth, the latter an intense, splintering immersion); Ryan Potts' Aquarelle resurfacing after an even longer absence with the glorious, strikingly 'composed' Leave Corners; a glowing, gradually unfurling long-form piece by anthene (one of the artists these ears have spent most time with this year); the subdued/subsuming debut of Gailes (the duo ofRafael Anton Irisarri & Benoit Pioulard/Thomas Meluch); a joyfully lugubrious "waiting area soundtrack until the next full length Pinkcourtesyphone album this Fall" from Richard Chartier; & a forgotten Grouper delicacy (mastered by Irisarri, incidentally) that "amidst chaotic and painful political times, while working on another project, reemerged & made more sense."
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Ineptitude or high-mindedness? Either way (both, really), LMYE's Festive 33-1/3 - a selection of the releases that meant most to us in 2016 - again emerges on the last day of the year... The song remains the same too: a clunky but sincere attempt to acknowledge how much more great music was released over the year, even just in our narrow corner of endeavour, than an inevitably partial list like this can begin to embrace. To spread the love as far as possible the two of us select 15 releases each, but no more than one per label or artist. After a bit of jostling & horse-trading over duplicates (though barely any this year, when we've evidently been further apart in our listening than previously...), we supplement the 30 with four projects that fall outside the normal 'release' boundaries - bigger &/or more ambitious (in multiple media, for example), or not strictly new - to derive our 33-1/3.
This year's list has been unusually challenging since a number of key labels were in overdrive. Grand projects have multiplied too. So our self-constraining methodology became even more masochistic. How, to take an especially painful example, to choose between Bethan Kellough's Aven & Claire M. Singer's Solas? Two exceptional releases that each expanded notions of sound palettes & what could be done with them, but both on Touch (about whom more shortly...). & that's to exclude Yann Novak's Ornamentation, Simon Scott's Floodlines, Anna von Hauswolff'sKallan (Prototype)& Fennesz's Mahler Remix, despite all four clearly demanding recognitition as part of the year's 'best'. Ditto conflicts between multiple pieces of outstanding work on Dragon's Eye, Editions Mego, Line, Room40, Sonic Pieces & Students of Decay - to highlight the concerns of only one pair of LMYE ears. Note to self: a follow-up without the hair shirt may be needed to honour all these exclusions.
At the very least, for a less partial picture of our listening priorities please check out the monthly Lend Me Your Radio series on SoundCloud, al's Mixcloud & jl's Bandcamp (collection & wish list).
2016 Festive 33-1/3: Jeremy Bible - Music for Black Holes (Aole) [jl] Dirty Hope/Graham Dunning/David Fyans/Mark Lyken/Orphax/TVO/Arne Weinberg - li series (Broken20) [jl] Stephan Mathieu - Radiance series (Schwebung) [jl] Abul Mogard - Works (Ecstatic) [al]
1991 - No More Dreams (No More Dreams) [al] Chris Abrahams - Climb (Vegetable) [jl] anthéne - Black Carbon (Assembly Field) [jl] Beautumn - Bordeaux (Infraction) [al] Benoît Pioulard - Thine / Radial (self-released) [al] Bruised Skies - Guide (Blank Editions) [al] Celestino - Beyond Enemy (A Guide To Saints) [al] Dominic Coppola - Ladylike EP (Overview Ltd.) [al]
drøne - reversing into the future (Pomperipossa) [jl] Drottning Omma - Iris av is (offworldcolonies ltd.) [al] Christian Fennesz & Jim O'Rourke - It's Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry (Editions Mego) [jl] Francesco Giannico & Giulio Aldinucci - Agoraphonia (Dronarivm) [jl] Billy Gomberg - Slight at that Contact (Students of Decay) [jl] Tobias Hellkvist - Vesterhavet (self-released) [jl] Chris Herbert - Katushki (Low Point) [jl]
Braeyden Jae - Fog Mirror (Whited Sepulchre) [al] KETEV - I Know No Weekend (Portals Editions) [al] Bethan Kellough - Aven (Touch) [jl] L’eoscombu Couti - Five Cambridge Utilities (Constellation Tatsu) [al] Sophia Loizou - Singulacra (Kathexis) [al] Sana Obruent - Prince of the Air (Blackjack Illuminist) [al] Marsen Jules - Shadows in Time (Oktaf) [jl] Moss Covered Technology - Speicherbank (Eilean) [al]
New Rome - Nowhere (Room40) [al] Nils Quak - Ad Interim (Phinery) [jl] Alex Smalley - JAN SBR 15 (Rural Colours) [jl] The Swifter - Wall Sailor (Sonic Pieces) [jl] Triac - Here (Line) [jl] Willamette - Diminished Composition (Scissor Tail) [al] Uwe Zahn/Porya Hatami/Darren McClure - Veerian (Eilean) [jl]
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
It's hardly a surprise from the home of Cosi, Ielasi,Orsi & Ratti, of course. But so much ravishing music emerged there in 2016 that if we were indifferent enough to the category's absurdity Italy would surely be LMYE's Country of the Year... As our Festive 33-1/3 - out tomorrow, allegedly - will show, some of the 2016 releases that mattered most to these ears are by Italian artists. A number of those that fell victim to our hair-shirted methodology (only one release per label/artist) are too. This, ahem, renaissance embraces a host of styles - from post-rock to ultra-minimalism. Given that, is there anything distinctively Italian threading them together beyond nationality? Perhaps. Many of the artists below manifest notable care & restraint over their sounds - a commitment to selection & balance that seems rooted in the country's broader culture. Che figata!
Bonus:
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
In less than two years Danny Clay & Greg Gorlenhave already produced so much staggeringly good work together - both on Gorlen's Cascading Fragments & Sifting through Shards, as well as for Mmm Sound & for Canti Magnetici & its related Kirlian Recordings - that these ears are shamed to have only come across these plaintive, dappled delicacies very recently... From the plangent, keening Brittle & Marigolds (their most recent output - an edition of 80 tapes on CM & a digital self-release on StS) to last year's lovely, stately Conch, the pair conjure something ravishing out of their palette of "junk, found tapes, & home made cassette loops", as Gorlen puts it. You could mention faint warping, a gaseous, blurry mood, the occasional felted piano refrain, a far-off grumbling guitar. But none of this begins to capture how affecting, how frail & human this music is.
NB: images from Canti Magnetici&Mmm Sound. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Yet another party that these ears are late to, granted - but Jeremy Young's The Chants Beneath 'project' ("There is no album, or record, and no distribution, this collection exists only here") is so rich & so replete with members of the LMYE pantheon that recognition is due all the same. The idea: "create 125 unique artist edition double-sided loop pieces towards developing sustainable audience engagement with the sonic arts, housing all the loops online in a freely streamable living archive and commissioning over 120 sound artists to create new work using each singular piece." Fair enough, not least when the artists in question include (alphabetically, not in archival running order...) Astral Social Club, Jimmy Billingham, John Chantler, Chris Herbert, Giuseppi Ielasi, Julia Kent, Machinefabriek, Josh Mason, Daniel Menche, My Cat Is An Alien, Orphax, Stefano Pilia, pinkcourtesyphone, Nils Quak, Janek Schaefer, Mike Shiflet, thisquietarmy & Simon Whetham. The result: a glorious, defiantly non-commercial "living archive of cassette tape loops" based on 125 pairs of 7-second loops from Young's ravishing original chants beneath the bed of the furnace brook("a descriptive reflection of movement and stillness").
Highlights are headed by Orphax's insistent, beautifully balanced 'remix'. Less than five minutes, it seems to embody the idea of a loop as something without beginning or end that could play on, satisfyingly, forever... MCIAA's celestial/skittering/naif/bass smear brew also jumps out, along with compatriot Stefano Pilia's on-the-brink-of-collapsing workout, Janek Schaefer's equallyintense Golden Gates, a hovering, gauzy take by Chris Herbert& Julia Kent's glowing gloop-meets-bow Round, Reversed. Other compelling contributions include the unfurling, tendril-like Together at Wimshurst by Drew Barnett, Nils Quak's soothing, contemplative The Crying of Lot 32& pcp's subtle, shaped Tape Chanting As We Speak.
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
If the official 'retired Serbian steelworker turned self-taught electronic musician' line around Abul Mogardis in any way true, his is an extraordinary trajectory. But even if - as seems likely - it's just a confection to make 'his' music stand out from others', what really differentiates this work (a handful of tapes, remixes & a recent-ish compilation on Ecstatic) is its poise & - sorry - grandeur.
It's been a year since the last original (ahem...) Mogard release, Circular Forms. These ears are primed for more of these affecting, swelling textures - their emotional heft belied by the banality of their self-description as "made using Farfisa organ, synthesisers and computer software".
These ears have made few more welcome new acquaintances this year than Alex Alarcon's Sustainer.No real surprise, though, considering the pedigree of his ravishing Radiolas - released on Lawrence English's Room40, mastered by Stephan Mathieu. Frosted with shortwave fuzz & punctuated by morse-like bleeps, these eight pieces constitute a hymn of & to communicating across the darkness - a set of aural messages in a bottle, pushed into the void out of hope & longing. & now there's Taps too - a lovely, glowing exercise in a kind of muffled domestic Gamelan via Tessellate. Blurbs: "There is a history of music stemming from time spent recovering from injury. On such example is Brian Eno’s story of creating ambient music, following a prolonged period being couch bound with a broken leg. Sustainer’s Radiolas, shares a similar tale of horizontal inspirations. Whilst recovering from a serious health condition, Alex Alarcón aka Sustainer, began working with a very limited palette of equipment at arms reach. This mix of small recorders, pedals and other electronics become a processing chain through which he started to feed shortwave radio recordings. Having worked with radio recordings previously it didn’t take long for these recordings to take on a very personal and cathartic aesthetic. “Years ago i used to record things with another shortwave receiver at my parents house,” Alex explains, “because it was near the sea and you could catch easily stations from north of Africa. Sometimes I was even able to reach marine stations from boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea. It was an incredibly inspirational feeling tapping into these streams of sound." [Taps] "During the recording process, Alex searched for every resonant object in his home and found that metal, ceramic and crystal items were of particular use. These were struck with rubber-textile mallets and fed into a loop pedal via contact mics. Once these sounds and tones were collected, they were then carefully polished into fluid timbres, using various techniques. He strived to create a record made entirely from the sounds of his environment, using his home as an instrument. He wanted to create textures that reflected the peace of home which could only be achieved there, since outdoor field recordings can be so noisy at times."
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
