11th hour

"oh la la, this year got off to a rough start. Being rushed into the hospital ER & undergoing life-saving surgery at the 11th hour was not exactly my idea of kicking off 2014."

Nor most people's. So, to acknowledge the global support this grim event inspired, Oval (Markus Popp) invites you to tap the restlessly inventive riches - twangingly brittle to gauzily flooding - of his Bandcamp collection: all except the recent Voa set at 'name your price' until 12pm CET tonight - though he unsurprisingly invites donations, given the "astronomical" medical bill in prospect...

A few alluring highlights: 
















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

White horse

We can argue about whether the Bill Callahan songbook is worthy of it, but there can't be much dispute about the fastidious connoisseurship that already characterises Stephan Mathieu's new vinyl/FLAC-only label, Schwebung (down to details like its customised ringtone & the meaning of its lovely, apt name - "the beats producted by the simultaneous vibration of two sounds, especially in unisons & octaves when nearly, but not quite in tune"). This is true of his work more generally, of course - from the extraordinary care & precision of his live phonoharp placements, as Fluid Radio & The Liminal noted, to that shaping classics like Transcriptions (with Taylor Deupree) or A Static Place (the latter a mainstay of LMYE's Festive 50 + 50 of 2011's exceptional releases)...


A platform for Mathieu's "simultaneously vibrating" collaborations, as well as solo work, Schwebung starts life with an avant-pop encounter with Sylvain Chauveau & Adam Wiltzie. Callahan's "ballades" do little for these ears, but the treatments Mathieu & Chauveau (who has plenty of form in recontextualising pop - exhibits A & B) conjure are quite ravishing, if the the first two instalments from the again beautifully & aptly named Palimpsest, Chosen One & Prince Alone In The Studio, are anything to go by - their stately, swelling shimmers in somewhat other-worldly, even disorienting, contrast to the songs. 


So even if Palimpsest seems like something of an outlier it is ultimately a sister to this year's revisit to Radioland (the scintillating Panoramica live workout with Caro Mikaleff on Line) or the pair's glorious-sounding & looking Constellation or even an absorbing smaller-scale piece like Re-composition from bouzouki from late last year. & so too will be Schwebung's next release (the reference to it seems to have disappeared, but it's with a Japanese artist...) since Mathieu is plainly incapable of making anything not hugely alluring. 

Chosen One (exc.)


Prince Alone In The Studio (Demo)

stephan mathieu + caro mikalef - radioland (panoramica) (album preview)


Untitled Consort Music (fragment; starts around 1:24 in...) - from Radio Web Macba 'Composing with Process' series


Stephan Mathieu - Re-composition from bouzouki [excerpt]


9 loops _ étude _ by caro mikalef

Mini films Design Detox _ two + download link from cabina


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

Syrupy dream

Talking of Line, as we were, ahead of Richard Chartier's revived William Basinski collaboration comes a showdown with Robert Curgenven. Built Through feels like a further instalment of the earlier Oltre's austere, challenging beauty, but though also on Line that was solo Curgenven (with a little help from Joerg Maria Zeger, his partner in TSU). 


In contrast, all but one of BT's four pieces of industrial hum & whisp are based on previous Chartier work between 2000 & 2005 - then duly processed (through a 16-foot pipe organ in invariance strata's case & "a matrix of pieces for nine turntables, linear dubplates and ventilator" in acquisition eviction's...). Only displacement takes Curgenven material (Australian field recordings) as its point of departure - on through "an improvisation for binaural microphones, wine glasses, two turntables and linear series dubplate". 


Blurb: " The acoustic architecture of Robert Curgenven and Richard Chartier forms a delineation of space built through dismantling the constitution of internal and external. Beyond dividing space, creating a façade or habitable zone, the perceptibility of the surface is turned back in on itself and with it a shift in the ideological and social context of the space. A seamless integration of digital and analogue, a suffusion which creates a mutual modulation, transforming purpose chosen materials—dense, undulating foundations through to stratified filaments and needle-point framework—defining the approach, the entry, the walk-through, the departure." So there... 


Both collaborators have valuable solo offerings out too. Honorary Cornishman Curgenven splits a Winds Measure 12" with Will Montgomery. His share is the richly crackling "impossible topology" of Looking for Narratives on Small Islands  - an extract of which loomed out of futuresequence's first mega-compilation last summer. 


Meanwhile, at the opposite end of his admirably broad spectrum Chartier's pinkcourtesyphone alter ego ("the sonic essence of some nicely dressed 1960s housewife wistfully peering out her window while reclining on some lovely couch or divan, with, of course, a slowly sipped cocktail and perhaps half of a Valium") surfaces with a playful, deviantly post-pop debut "formed from places, plastics, and particulars during 1997, 2004, and 2011". 


Foley Folly Folio is also a debut for the sub-label Line Segments. This "will highlight some, perhaps, very non-LINE-like works. Works that stray from the norm... more maximal, maybe... louder, maybe... noisier maybe... beat-oriented, maybe. So many possibilities... a chance to showcase some things LINE loves."


Other voices populate the indisputably more maximal (though none too beat-oriented) FFF, particularly wishful wistful wanton's woman-child. Chartier's tongue features too - wedged firmly in his mouth, terming the release "lugubrious" & himself "considered by some to be quite fancy" & characterising the possibly punning pcp as "dark but not arch, with a slight hint of humor".  

robert curgenven + richard chartier - built through (album preview)


Robert Curgenven + Richard Chartier - acquisition eviction (extract)




Pinkcourtesyphone - wistful wishful wanton


pinkcourtesyphone - foley folly folio (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.

Glory bee

Typical. You wait years for an album of apiologically-oriented experimental ambient & suddenly, despite or conceivably because of Colony Collapse Disorder, two bumble through on near-matching flight paths - both outstanding & each enhancing already strong years their classic labels (see LMYE's 2009 pantheon) are once again racking up. With the blissy buzz of Koen Holtkamp's Gravity/Bees (Thrill Jockey; coverage) still reverberating, Brian McBride's ravishing, mournful The Effective Disconnect surfaces via the still firing - consider this year's output leading up to this 150th release - kranky.

TED is from the soundtrack to the important documentary The Vanishing of the Bees (trailer below). You can still hear the serenity & hopefulness McBride aimed for originally. But the piece's fascination is in how these are entwined with & sometimes overcome by lament - appropriately, given the alarming subject. Although not one of the album's darkest moments, Supposed Essay below bears out this ambivalence.

Previous coverage (also here, here & here: BM & SoTL). Discogs (BM).

McBride: "When George and Maryam approached me to compose for their film they suggested I concentrate on four different themes: the gloriousness of the bees, the endurance and hardships of traditional beekeepers, pesticides and the holistic nature of non-industrial agriculture. I was especially intrigued with the idea of combining some of their mournful aspirations with something more serene. Composing began in May of 2009. I had decided to start fresh not using anything that I had already recorded. Preparing the music for the film, I knew that I needed to provide more built-in changes in the structure of the pieces to give George and Maryam more flexibility. As I worked, I purposely distanced myself from the more continuous architecture employed in my previous recordings in favor of several mini-suites. In the thinking about the music, I hoped that the pieces would do justice to the “gloriousness of the bees” theme, striving for a more overt hopeful quality. But old traditions die hard and the hopeful side of the music was eventually more subsumed by the lamentable.

I should also mention that if you have seen the film, this record will not contain all the music used and scored for this film.

I am incredibly honored to be a part of this project even if the final compositions turned out to be more appropriate for a different and more forlorn film. I know you have a lot to think about in this world but if you care about food or the world around us, you deserve to at least consider the arguments within this honest and real piece of film-making."

Brian McBride > Supposed Essay on the Piano [B major piano Adagietto] (from The Effective Disconnect, forthcoming on kranky)

Bonus: it's none too difficult to hear McBride's fine solo debut When the Detail lost its Freedom (samples here, here & here) or his decade-plus of drowsy, lulling Stars of the Lid brilliance (try this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this & this to be going on with...).

But you may not have come across his other work. To these ears, this mournful piano piece from a group that also contributes to WTDLIF is the best of it:

The Pilot Ships > The Lazy Swimmer (from The Limits of Painting and Poetry, BlueSanct)

Finally, something from McBride's new avant-pop Bell Gardens - less to LMYE's taste, but completism & willfulness dictate including it anyway...

Bell Gardens - Through The Rain (Audio Parade Mix)

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

Antipodean retouch

Apologies: re-up for aggregation...

Gig of the year in a city with a conspicuous, even woeful lack of live action isn't the biggest claim, granted. Still, the improbable news that the great Room40's 10th anniversary tour will be swinging close by the drastically less well endowed of LMYE's two home towns - & at a venue as sympathetic as Arnolfini - couldn't be more cheering. Hope to see you there on November 6...

The outstanding line-up comprises Grouper, label head Lawrence English, Rafael Anton Irisarri (who's also Ghostly's The Sight Below, of course - more to follow on his other guise soon) & Andrea Belfi. As the streams & videos below indicate, they operate across Room40's characteristically rich, undogmatic array of tones - by turns mournful & playful, crepuscular & sunlit, veiled & exposed.

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI - Blue Tomorrows

Minamo + Lawrence English - The Path

GROUPER - Hold

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

Antipodean touchdown

Gig of the year in a city with a conspicuous, even woeful lack of live action isn't the biggest claim, granted. Still, the improbable news that the great Room40's 10th anniversary tour will be swinging close by the drastically less well endowed of LMYE's two home towns - & at a venue as sympathetic as Arnolfini - couldn't be more cheering. Hope to see you there on November 6...

The outstanding line-up comprises Grouper, label head Lawrence English, Rafael Anton Irisarri (who's also Ghostly's The Sight Below, of course - more to follow on his other guise soon) & Andrea Belfi. As the streams & videos below indicate, they operate across Room40's characteristically rich, undogmatic array of tones - by turns mournful & playful, crepuscular & sunlit, veiled & exposed.

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI - Blue Tomorrows

Minamo + Lawrence English - The Path

GROUPER - Hold

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

"drugged out rodents"

Granted, an Aidan Baker or thisquietarmy version (or for that drone-metal matter Mandelbrot - launching new HPLL album on Thursday night, by the way...) might have been preferable for a bit more edge. But this Banjo or Freakout remix of the Allez-Allez spin-off Walls - in which BoF is also a partner (please keep up!) - still generates enough blissy reverbed traction to remind us how fine Burnt Sienna & the Pantha du Prince/Field remixes were & stoke our clamour for the new album (stream)...

Previous coverage (also here, here, here & here).

Quietus interview.

Walls > Hang Four [Banjo or Freakout remix] (from forthcoming Hang Ten EP / original on Walls, both Kompakt)



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