Minimum length 16 meters

If you're within any kind of manageable radius of Bristol, I assume we'll be seeing each other Saturday week. The chance to witness the vast scale & arcing resonances of Ellen Fullman's 'Long String Instrument' - in seemingly its UK debut - isn't one to spurn lightly. 

For once, describing the event as "singular" & "transcendent" seems more a reasoned statement of fact than hype froth. LMYE's hat doffed & redoffed (read the 'tech rider'...) to Arnolfini for making it happen as part of the Bristol New Music festival.

Blurb: "A transcendental new music experience that finds singular US composer/inventor Ellen Fullman building and performing on her remarkable self-designed Long String Instrument, in collaboration with German experimental guitarist Konrad Sprenger. A UK premiere.

The Long String Instrument is an installation of dozens of tuned wires fifty feet or more in length, suspended across a space. In performance, Fullman slowly processes across the instrument, 'bowing' the strings with rosin-coated fingers to produce warm, immersive and overtone-rich drones that use the acoustic properties of the space as the body of the instrument itself. The Long String Instrument will be purpose-built on the panoramic top floor of the Arnolfini building, with Fullman joined by long-term collaborator Konrad Sprenger on computer-controlled multichannel electric guitar."

Below some alluring 'collateral', including a hand-crafted (sort of) Fullman playlist...















NB: top photo by John Fago, lower by Judy Dater. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Hair skirt

Weeks into the new year but still, er, partying like it's 2013 (fretting ludicrously over inclusions even now, more like...), we finally get round to highlighting 50 more releases that particularly mattered to us last year.

Listed below, they provide a companion to & expansion of last month's Festive 30 - & together form this year's Improbably Late 80 (successor to last year's here & there). 

Though you'd probably appreciate never hearing more of it again, please note that these releases were selected after shedding the 'no more than one pick per artist or label' hairshirt in which each co-author was clad when determining our initial group. Like them, these 50 have their own playlist - tracks below are from the 18 releases unavailable for that list.

Disclaimer: inevitably, 2013 brought many more great pieces of music than the 80 we've managed to highlight. But these were the ones that really resonated with us during the year...



36 :: Shadow Play (3Six)
Aquarelle :: August Undone (Students of Decay)
Anne Chris Bakker :: Tussenlicht (Somehow)
B/B/S :: Brick Mask (Miasmah)
Ben Fleury-Steiner :: Clearings (Rural Colours) 
Bengalfuel :: Keewadin (self-released)
Celer :: Climbing Formation (Entropy)/Radish (Commune)
Chris Abrahams :: Memory Night (Room40) 
Chris Watson :: In St Cuthbert’s Time (Touch)





Cindytalk :: A Life is Everywhere (eMego)
CMKK :: Gau (Monotype)
Dadub :: Untitled EP (Stroboscopic Artefacts) 
Dalglish :: Niaw ot Vile (PAN) 
Daniel Menche :: Marriage of Metals (eMego)
David Sylvian & Stephen Mathieu :: Wandermuede (samadhisound) 
Duane Pitre :: Bridges (Important)  
Erstlaub :: Twenty Paces Outward in a Spiral (Broken20)
Fabio Orsi & Pimmon :: Procrastination (Home Normal) 
Faures :: Continental Drift (Home Normal)





Gabriel Saloman :: Soldier’s Requiem (Miasmah)
Ithaca Trio :: Music for Piano & Patience (Home Normal)
Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier :: Dark Morse (Shelter Press)
John Davis :: Ask the Dust (Students of Decay)
Kangding Ray :: Tempered Inmid EP (Raster Noton)
Keith Berry :: Towards the Blue Peninsula (Infraction)
Koboku Senju :: Joining the queue to become one of those ordinary ghosts (MIE Music)
Kwaidan :: Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright (Bathetic)
Machinefabriek :: Attention, the Doors are Closing! (self-released)/Vergezichten (Alien Transistor)





Mark Templeton :: Jealous Heart (Under The Spire)
Miko Vainio & Joachim Nordwall :: Monstrance (Touch) 
Mountains - Centralia (Thrill Jockey) 
Nils Quak :: Infinite Folds (self-released)/Und Unsere Häuser Sind Särge (SicSic)
Phill Niblock :: Touch Five (Touch)
Pillowdiver :: Bloody Oath (Dronarivm)
Quiet Evenings :: Impressions (Aguirre)
Rachad Becker :: Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. 1 (PAN)
Rafael Anton Irisarri :: The Unintentional Sea (Room40)





Richard Chartier :: Interior Field (LINE)
Ryuichi Sakamoto & Taylor Deupree :: Disappearance (12k)
Simon Fisher-Turner & Philippe Petit :: A Ti Dou Li Dum A Ti Dou Li Dum Ti De (hellosQuare) 
Stephan Mathieu :: Un Coeur Simple (Baskaru)
Stephen Vitiello & Molly Berg :: Between You & the Shapes You Take (12k)
Svarter Greiner :: Black Tie (Miasmah)
Tobias Hellkvist :: Turquoise (Small Fragments)
William Basinski :: Nocturnes (2062) 
Yann Novak :: Blue.Hour (Farmacia901)
Yann Novak & Richard Chartier :: Undefined (Farmacia901)







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

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.

Shirt listing

A quick supplement to our recent Festive 30: from 30 releases that particularly mattered to us in 2013 (each co-author restricted, as noted with tedious if sincere scrupulousness, to a single pick per artist & label...) a playlist from the 15 available on Spotify - 3013. 

Drawn roughly half & half from each co-authorial selection, the line-up comprises William Basinski & Richard Chartier (jl), Boards of Canada (al), Dalhous (al), Eluder (al), Bruce Gilbert & BAW (jl), Tim Hecker (al/jl), Jon Hopkins (al), Kiln (al), Main (jl), Mohammad (jl), Tomas Phillips & Kenneth Kirschner (jl), Orphax (jl), Pausal (al), Slow Walkers (jl) & Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree (jl). 












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

Annual hairshirt

Apple-cheeked scamps roasting on an open fire, chestnuts ripping open their stockings in the dawn's half-light & - to complete this touching yuletide scene - LMYE donning the annual hairshirt of our Festive 30...
 
As last year, we've constrained our compilation of this list of 30 releases that particularly touched us in 2013. To spread recognition as widely as possible (& to try in some small way to acknowledge the arbitrariness of singling out a fraction of the year's great music...), each co-author was restricted to no more than one pick per artist or per label.

At the risk of cold-shouldering exceptional albums that fall foul of one or both of these 'rules' (Chris Watson's In St Cuthbert's Time (Touch) & Richard Chartier & Yann Novak's Undefined for farmacia901 come immediately to mind...), this builds some breadth into our choices - while making room for our fairly complementary tastes to have alighted on different pieces in the same artist or label's catalogue.

This year both of us were mostly listening on the run & in the cracks between other commitments. Perhaps as a result, our overlap was minimal (unlike last year) - with only Tim Hecker's blinding Virgins appearing in both of our first CVs.

We'll acknowledge other notable releases in a follow-up post soon. We'll also be running a label of the year-type piece.





Benjamin Dauer :: The Pace of Which (Twice Removed) [al]

Benoît Honoré Pioulard :: Roanoke (self-released) [al]

Boards Of Canada :: Tomorrow’s Harvest (Warp) [al]

Bruce Gilbert & DAW :: Diluvial (Touch) [jl]

Christophe Bailleau & Julien Demoulin :: Outshining Memories (Time Released Sound) [al]

Cory Allen :: The Great Order (Quiet Design) [jl]

Dalhous :: An Ambassador for Laing (Blackest Ever Black) [al]

Eluder :: Through Horizon (Infraction) [al]

Francesco Giannico :: Luminance (Somehow) [al]

Hakobune :: Nebulous Sequences (VoxxoV) [al]

 

 

Jon Hopkins :: Immunity (Domino) [al]

Kenneth Kirschner & Tomas Phillips :: Five Transpositions (Sad) [jl]

Kiln :: meadow:watt (Ghostly International) [al]

Le Berger :: Variations on not too much really (self-released) [jl]

Main :: Ablation (eMego) [jl]

Maps and Diagrams :: Timbre (Dronarium) [al]

Mohammad :: Som Sakrifis (PAN) [jl]

Orphax :: Un Coeur, Deux Coeurs, Un Coeur, Sans Coeur (Broken20) [jl]

Pausal :: Sky Margin (Own) [al]

PITRELEH :: PITRELEH (Important) [jl]

Ruhe :: Easing (Cotton Goods) [al]

Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree :: Origin (12k) [jl]

Secret Pyramid :: Movements of Night (Students of Decay) [al]

Simon James Phillips :: Chair (Room40) [jl]

Slow Walkers :: Slow Walkers (Peak Oil) [jl]

Stephan Mathieu :: The Falling Rocket (Schwebung) [jl]

The Necks :: Open (Northern Spy) [jl]

Tim Hecker :: Virgins (kranky) [jl]

Tomonari Nozaki :: Une Histoire de Bleu (Invisible Birds) [al]

William Basinski & Richard Chartier :: Aurora Liminalis (LINE) [jl]

 

 

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