SFKP

'for the beautiful, innocent people of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Israel, Yemen and all else caught in the crossfire of other conflicts & crises around our dying planet'

Hard to dispute Jez's point here...

All proceeds to Mercy Without Limits.

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

Free from fear

This blog inevitably shares the online bias towards shiny newness, but with the conflict in Yemen still killing & maiming children please find some cash for Dronarium & hibernate's exemplary Salaam for Yemen (released last December) if you haven't already...

A raft of artists from the LMYE pantheon contributed to this fine, genuinely charitable ("100% of profits raised from this album will be donated to War Child") compilation. Its 26 tracks include compelling work from Giulio Aldinucci, Anjou, Anthene, Phillipp Bückle, Ekoplekz, Hotel Neon, ISAN, Aaron Martin, Mind over MIDI, Moss Covered Technology, offthesky, øjeRum, Olan Mill & Pausal.

"to grow up free from fear & violence, to develop to their full potential & contribute to a peaceful future"

 

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

Task-trained

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, whispered Make My Bed in Crystal Waters also stand out, along with subtle pieces by Halftribe & Stefan Wesolowski. 

NB: Pausal's Avifaunal (also on Dronarivm) featured in our recent Festive 33-1/3 - some 30 releases that stood out for LMYE in 2017. 

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

Academy of the Holy Names

Femenine in thrilling, enthralling performance (at the LCMF's 'In Search of Julius Eastman' event - brief clip here) was one of these ears' musical highlights of recent years. So sign me up for a joyful, Reichian new Eastman release - especially one that benefits the exemplary work of the Transgender Law Center...

Moreover, Joy Boy is by the same early incarnation of the S.E.M. Ensemble as on Frozen Reeds' unearthing of Femenine. It could hardly not be, since one immediately preceded the other at the same concert (Wednesday, November 6, 1974 at Composers Forum on the Campus of the Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York). 

Double hat-tip to Frozen Reeds' Ian - both for the release ("sitting on this one for a long time now. One-sided 10" or whatever just didn't feel right - this really does") & for amping up Bandcamp's inspiring effort for TLC tomorrow. 

Time to hand over those Euros...











Finally, Adolfo Doring's fascinating Without a Net on Eastman. 

NB: Sleeve photo courtesy of University at Buffalo Music Library, The State University of New York. 

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

Trumpton clock

Three deep responses from Billy Gomberg, Eleh & Anne Guthrie to last week's Trumpageddon.  

Eleh's is "offered as a point of focus; a means of finding temporary solace from social & political turmoil", while the fraufraulein pair similarly "found solace in creating a musical diary of sorts in this immediate moment of grief."

The soothing, swelling 11.9.16 forms part of a forthcoming LP-only series, Home Age. The darker, more restless fraufraulein pieces - Gomberg's sonorously clanking, Guthrie's more anxious & scattered despite its lovely horn - are the core of 7C, a fundraiser for EarthJustice, NAACP & NARAL. 

Self-released today, it also includes a duo improvisation & a long field recording from marches & protests in New York. "The work is raw and immediate, not a polished album that we have refined over months, but we feel that it is important to start contributing to dialogues & organizations, & communicating with those who listen about where we are in this process. Right now, we are at the beginning."

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

Bells At Boudha

Two exemplary, contrasting releases in support of Nepal: Hibernate's Dayalu / for Nepal & Aaron Dilloway's Sounds of Nepal Volumes 1 - 3. Beneficiaries are the British Red Cross & the America Nepal Medical Foundation, respectively. 

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

Lend Me Your Headphone

Even in an era of mega-compilations, Headphone Commute's ...and darkness came is a giant. Not just for its epic scale, though at 87 tracks its self-description as "colossal" is an un-hyperbolic statement of fact, but for its ambition: "to benefit all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, which has devastated portions of the Caribbean, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States in late October 2012."

Specifically, HC will donate "100% of all the proceeds generated from the sale of this album." Beneficiaries are The Humane Society & the US arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres. 

The compilation costs $10 - 11.5 cents a track, value hounds. Though you can also opt to pay more.

Is it any good? The question of quality may seem in poor taste when the cause is exemplary or irrelevant when the price is so modest. But the contributors anyway include an alluring raft of LMYE alumni, including Lawrence English, Ezekiel Honig (solo & with Mark Templeton), Erik K Skodvin, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Simon Scott (solo & in a quartet with Corey Fuller & Marcus Fischer, who also features solo), Kane Ikin, Kreng, Machinefabriek, Celer, loscil, Scanner, Black Swan & Radere - some with exclusives to satisfy trainspotting impulses... 

Probably very pompous, but: commended

























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