Prolonged weekness

Highlights of these ears' listening from the past seven days...

Not sure these ears need the full 20 'ambient' tributes to Phil, but applauding Steve Flato for "exists in the vague place between Music For Airports and Music From The Disney Motion Picture 'Tarzan'"... 

...& always ready for gossamer Nicholas Burrage (formerly Szczepanik) loveliness

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Further on NB, finally spending time with the unhurried richness of marbles.' vol. 1

"appropriation of mariah carey's '#1 to infinity'"

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Headphones on, as guided, & quietly blissing out to Music For Sleep's A Careful Endlessly...



"Listening at low volume is highly recommended"

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Celer is still releasing & these ears are still listening... 

...captivated by the gorgeous new I Wish You Could (Constellation Tatsu) - as natural & restful as breath



[part of Fall Batch w/Stephan Haluska, Rhucle & Ecovillage

 https://ctatsu.bandcamp.com/merch/fall-batch-2018]

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Touching dedication to Brian Young too...

Also, applauding the line Cassettes...no longer just for dads & hipsters

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Revisiting Bethan Kellough's glorious, grand Vision on Touch's unexpected new sub-label Sundry Items!



From Aven (2016)

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Sundry Items also features Rafael Toral's Violence of Discovery & Calm of Acceptance




"crafted with extreme precision & care"

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Resubmerging into Loscil's classic Submers - these ears aren't vinyl fetishists, but kranky's rerelease prompts first descent in a while into its depths...



"sourceless echoes, steely surfaces & ominous melodic & rhythmic undertows"

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Gladly revisiting The Swifter (Andrea Belfi / BJ Nilsen / Simon James Phillips)'s magnificent Wall Sailor (Sonic Pieces)...




"like watching birds being set free from a cage to relish a newly won space for spreading their wings"

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Not everyone approves of it, evidently - but still finding rewards in Max Loderbauer & Ricardo Villalobos's Re: ECM more than seven years in... 

"to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other"

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Not sure I can get away with the word 'splendid', but this new Purlieu podcast for New New World Radio's 'Beauty Sleep' is...great

Featuring Jobanshi, Mt Accord, Knivtid & more... 

"Celebrating one year of sonic healing"

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

with God Herself

Still clunky, still well intentioned: the formula for our annual Festive 33-1/3 is, once again, no more than one pick per artist/label by each of us. 

We then augment the resulting list (two sets of 15 releases selected independently, meshed & supplemented when doubles necessitate a bit of horse-trading...). The addition comes from four further projects that fall outside the normal 'release' boundaries - bigger &/or more ambitious (in multiple media, for example), or unexpected collaborations.

The rationale remains 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. How different ours & others' might look on another day or in another mood, given the vast amount of great music every year brings...

As previously, the striking quality of some labels' output forces unpalatable choices. Outstanding releases like Lawrence English's Cruel Optimism, Kassel Jaeger & Jim O'Rourke's Wakes On Cerulean, Robert Crouch's Sublunar or Marc Kate's As If We Were Never Here didn't make the cut here only because something else on their particularly strong imprints (Room40, Editions Mego, Touch & Dragon's Eye, respectively) meant even more to one of us. But in any broader sense they are clearly core parts of the year's best...

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

Olli Aarni :: Nielu (Florabelle)
Olivier Alary :: Pieces for Sine Wave Oscillators (Line)
Anjou :: Epithymía (Kranky)
Aquarelle :: Leave Corners (Debacle)
ASC :: Trans-Neptunian Objects (Auxiliary)
 



Andrea Belfi / Taylor Deupree & Marcus Fischer / Masaya Ozaki & Kaito Nakahori - Alveare / Lowlands / Mythologies (Iikki)
Benoît Pioulard :: Lignin Poise (Beacon Sound)
Celer :: Plays Liberace (Celer)
Dominic Coppola :: Golden Blonde Air (Boudoir)
Dramavinile :: 7 (Unknown Tone)
 




drøne :: A Perfect Blind (Pomperipossa)
Endurance :: Echoic Architecture (Polar Seas) / Molecular Shrine (ACR)
Forest Management :: The Elevated Quiet (Constellation Tatsu)
David Fyans :: Subscriber Series (Erstlaub)
 




IJO :: Melancholika Vol. 2 (ACR)
The Inward Circles :: And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies (Corbel Stone Press)
Hannu Karjalainen :: A Handful Of Dust Is A Desert (Karaoke Kalk)
Steven Kemner :: Gradation Movements (Fluid Audio)
Moon Zero :: Relationships Between Inner and Outer Space (Denovali)
 




Jake Muir :: Acclimation (Dragon’s Eye)
The Necks :: Unfold (Ideologic Organ)
Ogive :: Folds (Room40)
Orphax :: Somniātōrēs (Orphax)
Pausal :: Avifaunal (Dronarivm)
 



poemme :: Soft Ice (Polar Seas)
the prairie lines :: eyes down slowdown (Whitelabrecs)
Steve Roach :: Nostalgia for the Future (Timeroom)
Claire M. Singer :: Fairge (Touch) 
Sontag Shogun & Moskitoo :: The Things We Let Fall Apart / The Thunderswan (Home Normal)



 
Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet :: Hafvet (Low Point)
The Transcendence Orchestra :: Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals (Editions Mego)
Various Artists/Jon Wozencroft :: Movements (Touch)
Velleitie :: Scheming the Afterimage with God Herself (Sounds Against Humanity)




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

Thirty-three & two-thirds

Once more into the hair shirt, dear friends: staying with our sincere though inevitably clunky attempt to spread recognition as widely as possible without devaluing it too much, LMYE’s co-authors each independently pick 15 releases that particularly mattered to them during the year – but under two constraints: no more than one selection per artist & one per label. 

Duplication across our 2015 line-ups was limited. Only William Basinski & Richard Chartier's Divertissement (Important), Celer's How could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life (on his own Two Acorns) & Triac's Days for Chartier's Line featured on both initial drafts. 

This year we again expand the resulting master list to a 'Festive 33-1/3'. This blatant wriggling inside the hair shirt is meant to also celebrate a quartet that each amount to rather more than a single release: the welter of intense 'ritual' sounds in D.Fyans' own name since his last appearance as Erstlaub; Dauw & Eilean's often thrilling pairing & repairing of artists across their Dialog Tapes (also here); Headphone Commute's admirable, anonymous 'Undisclosed' series; & the bucolic conclusion of Duane Pitre's "unplanned trilogy" in Bayou Electric. 

Mandatory health warning: as always, plenty of other artists & labels than those featured here made great music this year. We regret not being able to include more of it...






Oren Ambarchi & Jim O’Rourke – Behold (eMego) [jl]
William Basinski & Richard Chartier - Divertissement (Important) [al/jl]
Christopher Bissonnette – Pitch Paper & Foil (kranky) [jl]
Celer - How could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life (Two Acorns) [al/jl]
Alex Cobb – Chantepleure (Students of Decay) [jl]
Donnacha Costello - Stay Perfectly Still (self-released) [al]
Robert Donne, Stephen Vitiello & The OO-Ray – Nuvole (Geographic North) [jl]



Eating Flowers - God Was A White-Tailed Deer (Reckno) [al]
D.Fyans – Various (self-released) [jl]
Tobias Hellkvist – Pause (Dragon’s Eye) [jl]
High aura’d & Mike Shiflet – Awake (Type) [jl]
The Inward Circles – Belated Movements for an Unsanctioned Exhumation August 1st 1984 (Corbel Stone Press) [jl]
Philip Jeck – Cardinal (Touch) [jl]
Johan Johansson with Hildur Gudnadottir & Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – The End of Summer [Sonic Pieces] [jl]



Ken Karter - Monad XXI (Stroboscopic Artefacts) [al]
Le Berger – Music for Guitar & Patience (Home Normal) [jl]
Moon Zero - Moon Zero (Denovali) [al]
Offthesky & Pleq - A Thousand Fields (Infraction) [al]
Yui Onodera - Sinkai (Arctic Tone) [al]
Pact Infernal - The Descent [Chapter 1] (Lucy Remixes) (Samurai Horo) [al]



 


Periskop - Immerse (Kabalion) [al]
Benoit Pioulard - Stanza I & II (Baro) [al]
Duane Pitre – Bayou Electric (Important) [jl]
Akira Rabelais – the little glass (self-released) [jl]
Ryuichi Sakamoto/Illuha/Taylor Deupree – Perpetual (12k) [jl]
Gabriel Saloman – Movement Building Vol. 2 (Shelter Press) [jl]
Simon Scott – Insomni (Ash International) [jl]



Shuttle358 - Can You Prove I Was Born (12k) [al]
Sons of Melancholia - Silencer (diametric.) [al]
Sustainer – Radiolas (Room40) [jl]
Triac - Days (Line) [al/jl]
Various Artists – Dialog Tapes (Dauw/Eilean) [jl]
Various Artists – Undisclosed (Headphone Commute) [jl]
Chris Weeks - The Cloud (self-released) [al]







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 Another Radio

Another month, another belated, inevitably partial sample of the period's riches...

Highlights include a strikingly poised, shimmering Christopher Bissonnette piece (from a forthcoming kranky release); a ravishingly bucolic, meditative version of LMYE's old flame Le Berger, for Home Normal; the glowing, gathering warmth of Maxwell August Croy & James Devane's returning En (on the ever more essential Students of Decay); a quite lovely Lee Ranaldo workout for Important; a valuable "atypical & personal" Chris Herbert set of "phasing & stippled atmospherics" for Sydney's Ears Have Ears; & a refracting first taste of the as-yet unreleased Tsjinlûd (a Frisian collective that includes Jan & Romke Kleefstra & Anne Chris Bakker, who appears under her own name too...). 

Also notable, TVO & Andrew Sharpley's provocative, caricaturing 'Feast Of Fools' - leering at the "dancing bears" of the "dead-eyed" Labour leadership losers, with exemplary agility (released at the moment of the Corbyn coronation). 

Further contributions from the Broken20/Moving Furniture axis are a powerful Digisizer dirge from Orphax & yet more rumbling longform beauty from D. Fyans (aka Erstlaub). 

September's 'radio' also features compelling new work by Chambers (Michael Red & Gabriel Saloman), Will Bolton, Scott Cortez, Emptyset, From The Mouth Of The Sun (Aaron Martin & Dag Rosenqvist, who also appears in his own, post-Jasper TX right...), L A N D, The OO-Ray, Andrew Pekler, PERILS (Kyle Bobby Dunn & Benoit Pioulard), Ruhe, Ryuichi Sakamoto & Taylor Deupree, Small Things on Sundays, Undisclosed & Voyou. 

The full 3-hour SoundCloud playlist, plus a few supplementary streams & videos, is at the bottom here. 

Disclaimer: no doubt September brought reams of deeply worthwhile releases besides this lot. Apologies that these ears haven't got to them yet. 

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

Fifty-fifty ball

The new year already, but these ears are still clinging to 2011...desperately & rather absurdly trying to hear everything & anything released in the old year that might bear on our Festive 50 + 50.


Anyway, time to commit: this expanded iteration of past year-end list-making once again tries to get round the one-eyed arbitrariness of shoe-horning all the vitality of a year's listening, the tangents, blind alleys & inevitable shifts, into a handful of its 'best' releases. This time out we're picking an extra 50 exceptional releases/artists alongside the 50 that stood out most for us. 

With the flood of tape & digital releases, as well as the growing tendency to collaborate, facilitating greater output from many LMYE staples, we've also shifted focus somewhat - from individual releases to artists. So we'll end up after tomorrow's further half-century with a hundred great music-makers of 2011, & a rather higher number of their releases... 


As last year, our joint picks are not an elite within the 50. Rather, they are simply the common ground between two co-authors whose separate choices give some flavour of our generally slightly different emphases. 

Black Swan - The Quiet Divide


emuul - drawing of the line (album preview)


Festive 50
Black Swan :: In 8 Movements/The Quiet Divide (Experimedia) / Kyle Bobby Dunn :: Ways of Meaning (Desire Path) / Emuul :: The Drawing Of The Line (Digitalis) / Lawrence English :: Acute Inbetweens (w/Stephen Vitiello; Cronica)/The Peregrine (Experimedia) / Father :: Return of Father (Root Strata) / Chihei Hatakeyama :: Mirror (Room40) / Tim Hecker :: Dropped Pianos/Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky) / Stephan Mathieu :: A Static Place (12k)/Remain (Line)/To Describe George Washington Bridge (Dekorder) / Pillowdiver :: Elliott, Lou & Bill (Twisted Tree Line) / Benoît Honoré Pioulard :: Plays Thelma (Desire Path) / Janek Schaefer :: Double Exposure ( Cronica)/Phoenix & Phaedra Holding Patterns (Spekk) / Steinbrüchel :: Narrow (Room40) / Nicholas Szczepanik :: Ante Algo Azul (self-released)/Please Stop Loving Me (Streamline)/ talkingmakesnosense :: Coruscates (Rural Colours) / David Wenngren & Christopher Bissonnette :: The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude (Home Normal)
(joint)


janek schaefer - phoenix & phaedra holding patterns (album preview)


Please Stop Loving Me (Excerpt) - Nicholas Szczepanik

Frank Bretschneider :: Komet (Shitkatapult) / Conforce :: Dystopian Elements (Delsin) / Ben Fleury-Steiner :: Places that Find You (Low Point) / Function :: Ember (Sandwell District) / The Garden :: In Sea-land (Install) / Inward Content :: Inward Content (Meanwhile) / Kangding Ray :: Or (Raster Noton) / Laurel Halo :: Hour Logic (Hippos in Tanks) / Lucy :: Wordplay for Working Bees (Stroboscopic Artefacts) / Maps and Diagrams :: Get Lost (Time Released Sound)/The Town Beneath the Sea (Nomadic Kids Republic) / Sean McCann :: The Capital/The Sky Is Filled With Incredible Wishes (Aguirre)/Prelusion (Recital) / Yves de Mey :: Counting Triggers (Sandwell District) / Regis :: In a Syrian Tongue (Sandwell District) / Sandwell District :: Feed Forward (Sandwell District) / Spheruleus :: Voyage (Hibernate) / Vatican Shadow :: Washington Buries Al Qaeda Leader At Sea/Yemeni Commandos (Hospital Productions) / Willamette :: Always in Postscript (Own)/Echo Park (Infraction)
(al)

ben fleury-steiner - Memory


willamette - echo park (album preview)

Bee Mask :: Canzoni Dal Labatorio Del Silenzio Cosmico/Elegy for Beach Friday  (Spectrum Spools) / Black to Comm :: Coldplay, Elvis & John Cage (En/Or) / Billy Gomberg :: Give Or Give In (Digitalis)/Only The Sun For Our (Students of Decay)/Quiet Barrier (Rest + Noise) / i8u :: Surface Tension (Murmur) / Jan & Romke Kleefstra :: Sieleslyk/Tongerswel (Gareth Davis/Jan Kleefstra/Romke Kleefstra; Rural Colours/Home Normal)/Deislieper (Kleefstra-Pruiksma-Kleefstra; Hibernate) / Le Berger :: Everything is everything else/Expeditions on the Grayscale (one tiny, two medium and a grand one) (self-released) / Jon Mueller :: Alphabet of Movements (Type) / The Necks :: Mindset (ReR) / Pimmon :: Lay Down Real Slow (Stunned)/The Oansome Orbit (Room40) / Preslav Literary School :: Alamut (Corvo)/La Reflexion du Tir (Full of Nothing) / Quiet Evenings :: Gold Coast (Rotifer/Hooker Vision)/Intrepid Trips (Hooker Vision)/Spirit Smoke (Kimberly Dawn)/Transcending Spheres (Preservation) (plus any amount of QE strands Motion Sickness of Time Travel & Nova Scotian Arms, but especially Crystal Anniversary (Aguirre) / Alexander Rishaug :: Shadow Of Events (Dekorder) / Richard Skelton :: *SKURA - A Collection (Sustain-Release) / Colin Stetson :: New History Warfare Vol.2: Judges/Those Who Didn't Run (Constellation)/ New History Warfare Vol.1 12" (Aagoo) / Svarte Greiner :: SGAR (w/Alexander Rishaug; self-released)/Twin (Type) / Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer :: Re: ECM (ECM) / CM von Hausswolff :: 800,000 Seconds In Harar (Touch) / Xela :: Exorcism (self-released)
(JL)

NB: Deaf Center's Owl Splinters (Type), the Piiptsjilling/Kleefstra contributions to Peter Broderick and Machinefabriek's Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplat) & Greg Haines w/ Mariska Baars & Sytze Pruiksma/Piiptsjilling/Heather Broderick & Nils Frahm's Seelocht (Into The Great Wide Open) &, to stretch incorporation rather further, Machinefabriek & Gareth Davis's Ghost Lanes (Dekorder) are honorary parts of the JL list through Greiner & Kleefstra too... 


Those who didn't run - Colin Stetson


Water 72.86 (extract) - i8u


Villabauer player (ECM)

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

Avian circlers

Slow off the mark, as ever, but finally registered the new Benoit Pioulard EP, Plays Thelma (on Desire Path), via the lulling, blurrily ruminative Calder (today's Track of the Day, for what that's worth). 


Blurb: "Thelma is best described as a place existing in between—a lake within a haze. Against its concave mirror, the sonic territory of Benoît Honoré Pioulard—documented across three acclaimed LPs by Chicago’s Kranky label—assumes the qualities of this place and all its ephemera, warm breezes, burbling shimmers and avian circlers. During his excursions to Thelma, Pioulard rested beneath the willow and wandered in the meadow, listening, absorbing, and recording. Glimpses are contained herein, where the solace and beauty of this mysterious place resonate in travelers who care to listen.


"The release is launched at tomorrow night's 'special evening of melancholy' in Toronto. M. Pioulard (aka Thomas Meluch) will play alongside the hefty combined talents of Kyle Bobby Dunn, A Winged Victory for the Sullen & Ken Camden - a gig of the year contender if these ears were somewhat nearer Ontario...  

Benoît Honoré Pioulard - Calder

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

Every 15 seconds

Footnotes coming out of our ears, or something like that...anyway, a batch of compelling new material that usefully augments some of LMYE's posts this week. 


Firstly, two more of Tim Hecker's diverting piano 'sketches' for the immense Ravedeath, 1972 - more muted & reflective than Sketch 5 (covered here), but still highly affecting. 


Tim Hecker - Sketch 2


Tim Hecker - Sketch 3

Plus a few stand-outs from the latest Oval salvo - 10 more (did I see 15 claimed somewhere?) slivers of snappy Popp from the bonus to the forthcoming OvalDNA (earlier coverage, & before that).


Oval - III (preview)


Oval - Inwendig (preview)


Oval - Glass UFO (preview)


 Oval - OvalDNA (Bonus Tracks Preview) 


Also further knotty, insistent treats from the Machinefabriek/Jan & Romke Kleefstra orbit (earlier). 

 Machinefabriek - 15/15 (fragment)


 Machinefabriek - Brokstukken (album preview)


Machinefabriek & Gareth Davies - Mackerel Sky


kleefstra/pruiksma/kleefstra - Twasidich wurde


Kleefstra / Pruiksma / Kleefstra - Stadich lit ik dy kalder wurde 

Finally, more of the celestial Yann Novak (earlier). 


Yann Novak - Presence (excerpts)


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