rdio & Spotify playlists for yesterday's Furtive 30 - a couple of 2-hour selections from many of the 30 releases that particularly mattered to LMYE in 2012. The two feature 36 - Alex Cobb - Charlemagne Palestine & Janek Schaefer - Damian Valles - Duane Pitre - En - Gabriel Saloman - Heathered Pearls - Ian Hawgood - Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Kane Ikin - Kyle Bobby Dunn - Lee Gamble - Mike Shiflet - Pausal - p jørgensen-Robert Hampson - Stephan Mathieu & Caro Mikaleff - Steve Peters & Steve Roden - Tetras - Thomas Köner. NB: to distribute the recognitions as broadly as possible, both co-authors' 15 picks were limited to one release per artist &/or label. Artists/labels could - & did - appear twice across the 30, though, as the constituent lists were compiled independently...
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 Photographsor 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-Ledesmaand (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...
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 anywayinclude 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.
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...
Hibernate supremo, Jonathan Lees, up yon in Yorkshire, pronounces it ‘one of the most breathtakingly moving albums ever released’ on his junior label, Rural Colours. Hyperbole aside, Afar, Farewell’s five helpings of sustaining guitar string-melt with nice fuzz around the edges go down very nicely, notably failing LMYE’s Enovian ignorability test, resolutely refusing to fade into the background, various textures and timbres – chief among which MWtS’s ‘experimental violin’ - colluding with Jason Corder’s chords to keep ears not only well-lent, but royally tweaked and twirled. Get it here or there.
Cutely appraised, incidentally, by the nicely downhome wasistdas up in Hebden Bridge (home of Hibernate – serendipity or some relation?), whose previously handwritten reviews are now video-mediated here.
And more recently dropping from offthesky came The Lowern Decay on Wist Rec, or digital, again featuring the delicate fizz and scrim of processing with more nature-loving guitar tones peeking through. Ooh.
Not to neglect the other half, MWtS has previous: Elements 1, a compilation from Mumbai-based collective, The Future Elements, and Qoheleth, a collection of live improvisation performed and recorded in September 2012 ‘meant to capture bare expression, live composition, and spiritual reflection through sound,’ available for free download.
