Past Weekness

Updating LMYE's 'My Weekness' series with a recent-ish October week of these ears' listening enthusiasms...

"coming back to music making & exploring other worlds" 

Finally picking up on this quite gorgeous, lulling Leonardo Rosado piece '180828 nocturnal 0.1' "after a long hiatus"...

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"creaking, ancient structures, buzzing rainforests & gargling subaquatic worlds" 

Finding much riches in 'foraging collagist' Chris Ruffoni's St. Olave’s Granite Labyrinth... 



From The Slope of Our Directions (Them There).

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Spending time with Music For Sleep's gripping Migration...

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Hanging head & ears in shame at missing Our Grey Lives' extraordinary Cacophonies until now...  




"an all-new – generally abstract, at times abject, occasionally euphoric – sonic landscape, lacking the ‘face’ but bearing traces of the source" 

"considering every song-channel as an instrument of a larger whole the essence of the original album is distilled, through a maze of analogue & digital effects paths; smoke & mirrors nuclear fallout from the planned demolition, by detonation, of an erased antecedent" 

PS unearthed in MISC. DJs - THE STORY SO FAR mixtape: "Selected bangers – ambient & not so – from our first five releases, squished together by technology for home-listening/raving/educational kix. 100% miscellaneous" 

Starting the day with the romantic blurscape of Benoit Pioulard's Slow spark, soft spoke - now in an extended edition...

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"percolating patterns of fiberglass synthetics & fluorescent melody, assembled into minimalist bio-domes of refracted light & hanging gardens": H. Takahashi's ravishing Escape

from Escapism (Not Not Fun)

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Magnificent new Pascal Savy for AUDIO. VISUALS. ATMOSPHERE - stately, poised, haunting..

From Colour Fields tape:

"...hypnagogic frames balancing wind, wave & star. Symmetric pearl timbres..."

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Some thrilling, fragile moments among the 'reinterpretations' of Antonymes' The Licence To Interpret Dreams.

Returning particularly often to Talvihorros' stabbing, swelling take on The Gospel Pass, Ian Hawgood's celestial Endlessly expansion & p jørgensen's hushing of Landscape Beyond An Open Window......

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Radiant, instructive Hotel Neon mix for the 'this exquisite pain' series...

"dense, heavy, analog textures & decay"

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

Gilded bitch

p jørgensen's third Low Point is - please brace for the obligatory intro clunk - a new high point. Like recent work from Cory Allen (covered here earlier this year), it captures an artist in rapid, thrillingly ambitious transition from their original largely digital, controlled sound into a broader electro-acoustic palette foregrounding 'real' instruments/textures & improvisation.

LP's characterisation of the piece as melancholy & intricate is pretty unarguable. The ravishing Capetillo cover captures its refracting beauty perfectly - a kind of rippling deep stasis that leaves these ears frantic to hear where the long arc of Peter's development goes next...



Artist/label blurbs: "this album has been a long time coming, as i initially started composing the opening and closing tracks back in late 2010 while touring the uk. 

this vinyl release features beautiful contributions from christoph berg on strings, jeppe skjold on reeds & anders provis on drums & cymbals. cover photography by acclaimed photographer christina capetillo. linernotes & coverdesign by architect & director morten meldgaard. mastered for vinyl by taylor deupree."

"Gold Beach was painstakingly recorded, processed and assembled over the course of the last four years.

Unlike Jørgensen's previous works, electro-acoustic compositions subject to heavy computer processing, the most notable departure on Gold Beach is the prominent use of unprocessed acoustic instruments, including double bass, violin, clarinet and saxophone.

The framework to Gold Beach was created by Jørgensen and his group of musicians carrying out a series of both structured and improvised sessions, which were then subject to additional recording, editing and further composition. Whilst some sessions stand more or less untouched from their first takes, others were subject to heavy editing, though the feeling of instant composition is maintained throughout."

Full stream:

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

Austere embrace

2012 brought many more great releases than 30, obviously. But after some increasingly expansive Festive 50s LMYE has embraced the austerity of the times. This year each co-author was confined to a more modest 15 picks, with no more than one going to any artist or any label & no smuggled expansion by throwing in multiple releases from the same name. 

Although these constraints could - & did - still accommodate two choices from the same stable across the co-authorial divide (policed by a strict Chinese wall, naturally...), they ended up regrettably harsh on some outstanding music - like Below Sea Level,  Portraits, Secret Photographs or Superstorms. All might well have bludgeoned their way into these ears' top 15 if the rules hadn't restricted 12k, Important & Experimedia to a single release each. The same goes for LINE, Low Point & Touch's output, incidentally. 

Similarly, even allocating his ravishing David Sylvian remix album Wandermude (out next month, but downloadable now...) to next year's list, a case could credibly have been made for including several Stephan Mathieu pieces. With the possible exceptions of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and (as The Liminal point out, ditto Marc Masters) Oren Ambarchi, it's challenging to think of an artist who had a more impressive year - though each of Kane Ikin's releases also resonated powerfully with us. 

Still, accepting that all such lists are a bit arbitrary, our goal was to distribute recognition as widely as possible. We'll anyway be back soon(-ish) with a more capacious supplementary list to try to capture everything else that stood out over the year.  

For now, though, & subject to the restrictions rehearsed above, these are 30 releases that particularly mattered to us in 2012. Each co-author is identified with their 15 picks, though note that both of us nominated Already Gone, I'll Make You Quiet, Novaya Zemlya & Radioland [Panoramica] originally...

36 - Lithea (3Six; al)
Alex Cobb - Passage to Morning (Students of Decay; al)
Charlemagne Palestine & Janek Schaefer - Day Of The Demons (Desire Path; jl)
Damian Valles - Nonparallel [In 4 Movements] (Experimedia; jl)
Drape - An Idea And Its Map (Infraction; al)
Duane Pitre - Feel Free (Important; jl)
En - Already Gone (Students of Decay; jl)
En/Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Split (Constellation Tatsu; al)
Erstlaub - Marconi’s Shipwreck (Broken20; al)
Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings (Time Released Sound; al)

Gabriel Saloman - Adhere (Miasmah; jl)
Gareth Hardwick/p jørgensen - S/T (Low Point; jl)
Gimu - All The Intricacies Of An Imaginary Disease (T.O.C; al)
Heathered Pearls - Loyal (Ghostly; al)
Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (Komu; al)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Visiting This World (EN/Of; jl)
Kane Ikin - Sublunar (12k; al)
Kyle Bobby Dunn - Bring Me The Head of Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point; al)
Lee Gamble - Diversions 1994-1996 (PAN; jl)
Mike Shiflet - The Choir, The Army (Under The Spire; jl)

Pausal - Forms (Barge; al)
Radere - I'll Make You Quiet (Futuresequence; al)
Robert Hampson - Repercussions (Editions Mego; jl)
Silent Harbour - Silent Harbour (Echocord; al)
Steinbruchel & Cory Allen - Seam (Quiet Design; jl)
Stephan Mathieu & Caro Mikaleff - Radioland [Panoramica] (LINE; jl)
Steve Peters & Steve Roden - Not A Leaf Remains As It Was (12k; jl)
Tetras - Pareidolia (Flingco Sound System; jl)
Thomas Köner - Novaya Zemlya (Touch; al)
Various Artists - 30 Years And Counting (Touch; jl)

Fescal - Alchemical Wanderings

Gabriel Saloman - 03

Ian Hawgood - The Shattered Light (album preview)

robert hampson - repercussions (album preview)

Moitié et Moitié - kyle bobby dunn

mike shiflet - the choir, the army (album preview)

Pausal - Fruiting Bodies / Liberty Capped

lee gamble - diversions 1994-1996 (album preview)



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

On the wall

 
Several artists hitting new peaks of maturity & even, though some might hesitate over the term, profundity touch down in Bristol on Saturday. If you're remotely within reach of St John the Baptist, don't miss this second Sound Architects show.

Denmark's great p jørgensen, who  starts his UK tour the night before with a doubtless essential live set on Resonance FM, will feature alongside Simon Scott, Andrew Hargreaves' Tape Loop Orchestra & Christoph Berg's Field Rotation (all courtesy of the south-west's invaluable Fluid Radio). 

p j's new Four Pieces for Moreschi is so dazzling & so deep that LMYE's normally capacious reserves of hyperbole can scarcely do it justice. Part of an outstanding split with Low Point's Gareth Hardwick (whose Sixteenth February Twenty Twelve also merits the blurb's claims of "quiet drama and almost endless fascination"), it takes him into strikingly concrète territory via a suite of four "decidedly different pieces of processed musical interludes and field recordings". 

Even with the PR-atron cranked to maximum, Low Point is spot on about the piece: "Jørgensen’s work here is comprised of four very distinct parts of a larger whole. Beginning with dense, almost engine-like sheets of sound, Four Pieces could almost be some kind of sentient machine that organically grows as it progresses over time. Glassy and bell-like textures move into breathy and atmospheric zones, finally giving in to gentle and subdued melodies – a mere whisper of what came before and all the while maintaining a textural fragility which keeps the listener holding ones breath in anticipation of what is to come."

Like the split, Scott's Below Sea Level (on 12k) is one of the year's key releases (coverage here). TLO's forthcoming In a Lonely Place (due soon on Facture) may well be another, while FR's forthcoming self-released compilation of remixes of his Zeitreise should also be compelling...

_Sealevel.1 by Simon Scott

Tape Loop Orchestra - I Died When She Left Me

 

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

Clatsop County

Track of the day: not exactly a new feature, but an alternative way of highlighting great musicians' work through a quick engagement with a single diverting track. Today's debut entry combines two very fine artists who should have had more airtime on LMYE to date - p jørgensen & Chris Herbert.

Herbert's subtle, enveloping remix of pj's Astoria would eventually feature, as the volcanic Fissures ("all these little jagged rivulets and glassy edges with a persistent ooze underneath", as he puts it), on Soundtrack_Remix for Under the Spire. This version floating alongside the release (one of 50 albums that particularly mattered to LMYE in 2010) was a very nearly complete work in progress, though rather shorter than the eventual 12:12. To these ears, its warm, faintly metallic hum swells into a delicate, memorable bloom of tones & shakes.

Many more treats on the pair's SoundClouds (here & here), of course - including an equally fine Herbert remix of Gareth Hardwick & some previews of the outstanding S_R. You'll also want to stop by Herbert's YouTube channel (not least for this new upload).

Oh, & there's also this LMYE hack of extracts from pj's debut...

p jørgensen - astoria (Chris Herbert remix, excerpt)

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