More Weekness

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

Missed this ravishing :zoviet*france: piece, It's Been a While, in August - struggling to make room for anything else now...



"Created from original recordings made on location under a bridge in Wester Ross, & in a hawthorn glade in north Northumberland"

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Lulling, somnolent...Forest Management's heavy-eyed The Dreamer: from Remain - inaugural release on FM's enticing new CDr label, Afterhours

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Revelling in the 'Ambient Bedroom Noise' of Ceramic Flowers' C - 1995 01...



From forthcoming per aspera ad astra (Vienna Press)

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Pure & deep... 

Gareth Davis & Rutger Zuydervelt on wandelweiser: 




https://www.wandelweiser.de/_sounds/ewr1810zuydervelt.mp3 
(20-minute 'snippet' from sileen II)

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"The structure brims with materials that create a collage of associations & contrasts" 

Tremendous, wide-eared Provocations set by Chaperone "selected to interact with Rashid Johnson's work at ICAVCU (https://icavcu.org/exhibitions/rashid-johnson/)"

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Exhibit A: Sleep Well



From Little Notes (forthcoming on Fluid Audio)...

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"an aquatic atmosphere, perhaps suggesting an ironic take on ‘orientalism’ - down to the river’s delta" 

Untitled by Nicola Ratti & Giuseppe Ielasi's Bellows

 
[inaugurates ooh-sounds' 'decouple ][ series' https://ooh-sounds.bandcamp.com/album/georgia-bellows-decouple-series 

"metaphor for a world of surfaces"]

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Predictably hot under the collar about KrysaliSound's remaster/reissue of øjeRum's The Forest Is Sleeping Within The Trees



"a sort of spiritual research...a deep combination of human desolation, devotion & fragility" 

[2015 original on Scissor Tail Editions]

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"possessing time blurring & cranium clearing qualities that would wet the weepers" 

Withdrawn by Sean McCann



(h/t Brian Housman)

[from Fountains expanded reissue]

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

Wonky & balanced

"playfulness, aggregation of detail & detritus into constructs that are somehow both wonky & balanced...naivety, experimentation, spontaneity"

Students of Decay/Taiga Remains' Alex Cobb takes new Etelin guise. Water The Ferns may or may not be from the forthcoming Hui Terra...



[Oct 4 update: it is, & so is Hour Here Hour There:



Other recent Etelin output: 160d Delicate & IS1 in Beyond / Below 7, plus Bird Element on January's Opal Tapes comp The Harvest Of A Quiet Eye





"right now I find myself drawn to things that endeavor to strip away artifice": in this affecting recent interview, Cobb touches on paternity, sobriety, "monochromatic ambient", curation, the death of blogging, Taiga Remains & new label Soda Gong. 

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

Two friends from Cleveland

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.

Des res

LMYE's New Label of the Year hardly released a thing in 2011. Not much of a basis for recognition, you may think. But however minimal its output what did come out of Desire Path was exquisite - & if there's a better record in 2012 than its next release (which almost made it out this year anyway, so gets co-opted for these purposes - along with its debut release from late last year...) these ears will be very, very surprised (& thrilled, obviously)...

A label "focused on creating distinct pathways" that seeks to enable listeners (for whom it prescribes a strictly vinyl regimen) to "escap[e] to a place they may otherwise never find", DP emphasises location & journey in its output - not in the literal sense of field recordings, but rather in the recapitulation & inspiration of memory of place. This year this led us down the path to Benoit Pioulard's blurry 'lake within a haze', Thelma, & Kyle Bobby Dunn's lovely lacustrine counterpart, Chester - as well as his inviting Canyon Meadows.



I've probably got entirely the wrong end of the environmental stick. But the next of these resonant spaces, which clearly also chime with the 'sonic topographies' Solo Andata summon on Ritual, seems to be the monumental Aude of Janek Schaefer & the genuinely legendary Charlemagne Palestine.

A first taste of this unexpected pair's extraordinary collaboration, Raga de l'apres-midi pour Aude, surfaced earlier this year in a fine DP mix for Type's Typecast series - stream & download the 'cast & hear the hallucinatory, keening Schaefer/Palestine raga below.

Can ears pray? Too metaphysical for New Year's Eve, perhaps. But these ears certainly offer up a profound hope that DP manages to build on its masterful initial quartet in the year & years ahead...

Janek Schaefer & Charlemagne Palestine - Raga de l’apres midi pour Aude (edit)

Desire Path - Away Outside

Tracklist:

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Dropping Sandwiches in Chester Lake (Start-3:45) DEMO - Taken from then-forthcoming album (later issued as Ways of Meaning) on Desire Path Recordings

Antonymes – A Fragile Acceptance (3:45-10:10) Hidden Shoal

Skjolbrot – Rue Victor Masse to Gare d’Austerlitz (10:10-14:35) Self-Released

Janek Schaefer & Charlemagne Palestine – Raga de l’apres midi pour Aude EDIT (14:35-22:35) DEMO Taken from forthcoming album on Desire Path Recordings

Solo Andata – Carving (22:35-31:10) from Ritual on Desire Path Recordings

Black Swan – Movement 1 (31:10-37:27) Experimedia

Jannick Schou – 21.25 (37:27-40:51) Dead Pilot Records

Field Rotation – Acoustic Tale 3 (40:51-45:10) Fluid Audio

Ithaca Trio – For Ailing Health (45:10-End) Self-Released

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Canyon Meadows

Statuit - kyle bobby dunn
"Somber piece for an indoor swimming pool setting on a really grey day. Afterwards, going home and watching french films and an animation you forgot the name of." 

Benoît Honoré Pioulard - Calder

Solo Andata - Myrmecia

Solo Andata - Ritual

 

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

End Summerless

End Summerless by Albient on Mixcloud

A mix to accompany impressions of a summer now apparently ending, with a strange sense of somehow never having started; not worth talking about perhaps, but listening's the thing. Conspiring with fellow-travellers in ambient-drone and atmospheric electronica, your humble LMYE contrib al (alias albient for mixage and audio wall-scrawl), compiles a document of days, waxing lyrical into the bargain: “To soundtrack this summer of wan light and spotty sun, dusky airs and minimal graces, called for an ambience more stunned than blissed, more wooze than chill. To fill the aestival lacuna, an ending to these unseasoned months was sought in sounds silky and sulky alike dredged from a May-September trawl and spun into an hour-long tone tract. This is music for staying home to, for taking you under, for huddling down against the rains and riots, against the longueurs and lootings, summoning up a season in the act of listening.”


End Summerless by albient

Some of those featured:


02 Wind Has Risen Sample by Koen Daigaku


father - the return of father (album preview) by experimedia


Christian Fennesz_follow blind_2011 by TBA21


Photophobic by talkingmakesnosense


Lawrence English - The Peregrine - The Hunting Life (radio promo edit) (experimedia) by pdis_inpartmaint


Maps and Diagrams - The Voices of Time by handstitched*


A Strange Sweet Woe by Students of Decay


ten and tracer - friendless now (album preview) by experimedia


Celer / Menggayakan sample by analogpath


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


d_rradio - Forecast by heat death records

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

Dalliance #3

Dalliance #3 by Albient on Mixcloud

Dalliance #3 is the third in a mix series under the loose stewardship of LMYE, designed for dalliers with a more oblique alliance to dance forms. Compiled by MaxMister 'al', the Dalliance mission continues a tenebrous trajectory across dance-derived genre perimeters, poking about at the interstices between techno, ambient, dub, bass, and IDM. Some of those in alliance in Dalliance #3 are 'clouded and 'tubed below. Lend a third ear!



Ilya // Monad VIII [Stroboscopic Artefacts] by Dadub

Industry Part 1 clip by Shifted - UK

Symbolism In Transition by modernlove

8. Perc - Snow Chain by Perc

PRG018 - Terence Fixmer and Claudio PRC - Planetary Phase by Prologue



OVR - Post-Traumatic Son (Marcel Dettmann Construction 1) by Underground Revolution





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

"years that have yet to happen"

The sheer sensuality of Le Berger's textures, which the project's shepherd (sorry) summons despite "primitive means and scarce source material", & their languid, looped unfurling hardly prepare you for an elaborate metaphysical conceit.

But in a new interview, Sam Landry reveals the Tron-invoking concept behind his luxuriant recent Expeditions on the Grayscale & riffs on a host of other topics - tradition, genre, collaboration, other musical outlets & a rare physical release ahead ("something very cinematic, theatrical drone if you will").

Also featuring: Sam's 'generative' aScapist sideline, including a stripped-down edit of 2A - the self-described "aerial feel" of Clouds.

Oh, & a fine mix (Stephan Mathieu + Taylor Deupree - Largo > Terry Riley - Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band > Le Berger - Gnascor Encore & Core à Corps > Terry Riley - Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band > Roger Eno & Peter Hammill - Wise Men > Shakti - Mind Ecology > Chihei Hatakeyama - Voices II > Loscil - Nautilus)...

What's the concept behind Expeditions?

Let me start this one with a bit of a disclaimer: all this is done rather unassumingly and candidly, the last thing I would want is for the concepts surrounding an album to supersede the music. I personally think there's much more to imagination than meets the eye, but if you don't like the conceptual mumbo jumbo, ditch it.

It is a fair bet that most readers have seen Tron. (or you know, the new Tron...) Well, the Grayscale is similar to that - a world outside the world answering to its own rules and parameters, yet we have access to it.

It is a meeting or gathering place for creative minds. It is where duality vanishes, not because it is transcended or engulfed in unity, but because polarity ceases to exist. Everything in shades of gray to approximate your location on the gazeous - liquid spectrum. Always a blend of sea and air, no solid land.

It thrives on the very creativity of the minds involved, is nourished by it. The only pre-requisite to enter this arena is to shed your ego, even if just for a short while. You can wander long and wide, none of which will be recorded or traceable. But once you come into contact with the mind of another a coordinate is created and the events that take place can now be shared with the myriads of other worlds. As if the frontier between our world and the Grayscale became thinner upon that meeting.

The last few of those meetings to have been recorded are the following:

Don't go away J (#c2c2c2) - Surfing (oh so succinctly) with a tragic French poet.
Pam Pam some'n wild (#a0a0a0) - Sailing (with such balance) with a post-modern composer and a noiselifer.
Dust it begun (#dbdbdb) - Floating (oh so aimlessly) with the very creator of the Grayscale.
Bern deep'n'bub (#5c5c5c) - Sinking (oh so steadily) with an acclaimed film composer.

The coordinates are indeed in HTML color codes (a few asked...)
The name of the pieces give a (vague) indication as to who took part in the meeting.
And the timing of the pieces is a play upon unity and trinity, as well as the fact that I turn 33 on 11-11-11.

Et, comme on dit, voilà!

Le Berger - Dust it begun (#dbdbdb) [re-up]

Is there usually a concept behind your music?

Depending, for "Sounds of..." or "The Holiday Drones" there was no particular idea linking the pieces together. There can be a general theme (insomnia and charity respectively) and specific pieces can bring about a particular imagery for me which is usually quite self explanatory within the title. Think 0007 [Thanks to Bobby the Navigator] which is about seafaring or After The Bombings which deals with devastation. But I would not refer to those as conceptual works per se.

If we're speaking about other releases, then most definitely.

How do concepts help you make music?

They rarely do!

I don't set out to work around any particular preconceived notions or concepts. It's usually either amidst the work in process or after I have a few things that fit together that a pattern seems to emerge. There is a lot of trials and errors in my work, so sometimes before I choose to keep or discard certain things I can listen to a piece or a group of pieces for days on end. This way I can get into a state of immersion somewhat, and also gain a new perspective on the piece(s) away from the work. It's how I assess if that first enthusiastic impression I had while working with it really translates upon listening. That's usually when the music starts being evocative for me and images start to spark, and then it snowballs!

And then this type of material, compared to others like blues, folk, pop, etc., gravely lacks in narrative and then even compared to other instrumental genres it still has very few (if at all) events occurring in the length of a piece. Some artists chose to embrace this and go the abstract route (bless them). I simply opted a more impressionist way.

Do you see yourself as working in any kind of tradition?

"I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member."- Groucho Marx

With that said, I don't have the vanity to think "here I am breaking grounds that no one ever threaded". I enjoy being a part of this long line of breeders we call humanity and can't deny being influenced by some of them. It's just this thing where it's hard to have the detachment to know where you belong as a creator in the midst of it all. Time will tell?

I think one of the marvelous liberties we have today is to mingle with so much content coming from different eras and currents, then how it incorporates into the work is often times more or less conscious in my opinion.

How has your music changed since you began?

Essentially, not at all! Guess I just know a little bit more what I'm doing, not sure if it's a curse or a blessing...

Do you consider your music 'drone'? If so, why drone? Is drone something you just recognize when you hear it or does it have specific ingredients?
Let me put it this way: I had no clue I was doing 'drone' music until people told me.

The making of music is the making of music. Labels and genres and nomenclatures and currents and so on are only sticker we apply on top of it to help discern which is which. In that sense, sure it's drone, it's whatever anyone wants to call it if it helps associating it with other creators that do something similar.

Though it's quite fascinating how much plurality and eccentricities can be found in something labeled thus.

Do you use anything besides a laptop to make your music?

I use a desktop actually. ;)

Best thing anyone's said/written about your music? Worst?

"i see my children playing...and i see my children watching their children playing...i feel the span of years that have yet to happen..."- Tom, a fellow dronist (aka Lattice) about 0003 [No thanks to you]

Worst probably was something like "ugh, annoying" or such. Not very exciting I'm afraid. Fingers crossed!

What's your goal with aScapist?

I never perceived the aScapist sideline as something 'to pursue'. Think of it like Eno's generative bits, not that I'm comparing talents here, not by a long shot. It's just something that I do with a similar intent or process, I put a few things together and set a few parameters in place to make them interact and then I let things go and happen in sequence. To put it simply, it's a creative process that is probably more interesting for the person involved in it than anyone else.

I share the end result of those 'experiments in generative music' in the hopes that some people might enjoy them, but since I'm not actually paying attention to the end result or trying to make it pleasant or beautiful, it becomes something that doesn't quite belong to me. Sort of 'happenstance' music that is a collateral damage of trials and essays if you will.

Besides aScapist, do you make any other non-Le Berger music?

I sure do. A lot of acoustic guitar, piano on hiatus for now (lacking a piano!), modular synths, etc. But a lot of these things, to be arranged, recorded and delivered or released properly require means that are not at my disposal at the moment. And some of those things I actually cannot wait to record and put out there, it's sometimes miles away from Le Berger type of material. Make it funky now!

Do you make music with anyone else or always solo? Anyone you'd like to collaborate with? Or remix?

I used to play in different outfits when I was younger, jam bands, jazz funk, prog rock, etc. and I still play with friends on rather seldom occasions but this is not something I'm actively pursuing at the moment. I do have a band-like project on the backburner but until it solidifies I'd rather not jinx it by blathering about it.

There are LOTS of artists out there who are awe inspiring nowadays, and a few I can already imagine collaborating with because we're like-minded and on friendly terms, plus I respect the work they do. But if you're looking for a scoop, nothing in the works at the present time.

No remixes.

Who else do you listen to (for pleasure, for inspiration, for a change)? What are some of this year's crucial releases for you? What are some releases you couldn't/wouldn't be without?

I listen to a lot of elses! (12 000 albums to choose from or so). So I'll just answer the last question, quelques incontournables: Loscil -Submers | Return to Forever - Light as a Feather | Guy Clark - Old #1 | The Herbaliser - Very mercenary | Gentle Giant - Octopus

I very much could go on, if you buy me a beer!

What's next for you after the physical release (& what can you say about that)?

Well, for the Le Berger project I have about 3 hrs worth of stuff on the shelves. Not all ready and done with, but close. So you can expect a somewhat steady flow of releases, both digitally and short runs of physical CD-Rs when I think the material calls for it.

For the next physical release there's actually been a change of plan. All for the better I think, what I initially wanted to get printed a netlabel has shown interest for, so it might find a home somewhere before the end of the year. Fear not, I have a few other tricks up my sleeve... so I chose another EP to print instead.

You can expect something very cinematic, theatrical drone if you will. It came about when I was doing these essays with blues as source material for drones. Something like a honky tonk piano in a decaying cathedral painting four different canvases on a main theme. Definitely not cheer up music, but incredibly evocative.

Le Berger - CLOUDS (a track from a track)

Le_Berger - In D(eed)

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