Clearing the undergrowth

Sometimes, & this is said with joy rather than sourness, of course, the sheer volume of compelling, special music around is almost overwhelming - the current LMYE backlog of tracks demanding immediate posting features Addled, Taylor Deupree/Kenneth Kirschner, Digitonal, Dntel, Line, Marconi Union, Seth Troxler, The Village Orchestra, Susumu Yokota & Zephyr Skate Team (& that doesn't include our Barcelona arm's plans...). 

Trying to keep up with everything worth your time can feel like that old cartoon. Molehills pop up repeatedly & are smashed down in an inevitably losing effort to maintain a flawless lawn...

Take Bracken. The lovely, idiosyncratic post-Hood lineage of The Boats/The Sea, Remote Viewer & things Moteer have been explored a bit here already. But Bracken's perhaps equally rich splinter had gone unregistered, until now. 

So: an LMYE hack of the clang & shimmer that starts a compote of Bracken remixes & versions (no doubt very obvious & recognisable to those who know - please advise) &  the warped pop of Heathens (from We Know About the Need, on anticon).  

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists have chosen to share freely with their audience.

"decontextualized, reified, corporatized, liberalized, neutralized, asexualized, re-genderized..."

An evocative, defiant poem of texture & constraint: DJ Sprinkles [aka Terre Thaemlitz] - Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone) [from Midtown 120 Blues on Mule Musiq]

Midtown 120 Intro

Bonus: Hush Now (DJ Sprinkles' Broken Record Mix) [from A Silence Broken]

Gentle envelope

Fjord & seascape backdrops probably do little to discourage those 'glacial' cliches. But to these ears The Sight Below (MySpace/LastFM) is lushly warm, not frigidly cold.

A snapshot of his gentle, enveloping pop-drone:

Life's Fading Light (from Glider)



Twice Failed, With Her Kiss (I'd Pass the Sky) & No Place For Us (from No Place For Us)

Bonus: Live on KEXP (also iTunes giveaway: GhostlyCast#18)



Art by Mike Cina.

Tectonic cathedral

Reasons to be, well, 'cheerful' may not be quite right - but new Tim Hecker is always welcome: after the monumental Fantasma Parastasie with Aidan Baker (one of LMYE's 31 Albums of 2008), the no less immense, organ-driven Sea of Pulses [or lower-res here]. 

From An Imaginary Country - due on kranky in March, apparently. Or February, possibly...

The lighter - even pretty - Shosts in Silver also out on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2009 next month, in any case. Hear it here. 

Living stones

Trailing, as often before, on others' coat-tails (assuming in this case that mapsadaisical sports a tailed coat, but you know what I mean...), I stumbled back across Lithops lately. There's a lot to stumble on: that impeccable Mouse on Mars & Von Sudenfed lineage! That wry Teutonic humour! That art-world cred!

 

Anyway, delight in the whirring avant-pop of Handed (from Ye Viols, Thrill Jockey) - originally premiered at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin to accompany an exhibition by Rosa Barba and David Maljkovic, we're told. Who knew?

Well, we could have consulted the handy Jann St Werner project archive...

From which, an LMYE hack of a nicely noisy & warped extract from the man's Noisemashinetapes Archive (download them all here): Textmessage.