Harvesting August's riches, finally: from the ultimate space rock of Robert Curgenven's (inter)stellar Climata ("made entirely in Turrell Skyspaces...for best results use an external speaker, pointed upwards or away from you") to Stephan Mathieu's predictably mesmerising Stasis 6("a stereo mixdown from an excerpt of a 58-channel installation piece of 52 minutes duration" from his Before Nostromo for The Morning Line) - &via a host of LMYE loves (including William Basinski & RIchard Chartier [both with & without each other, & Chartier both under his own name & as Pinkcourtesyphone], Duane Pitre, Ezekiel Honig & Yann Novak) & discoveries - here are 25 pieces that stood out for these ears over the month... Also featuring Danny Clay & Greg Gorlen, Erstlaub, Fennesz & King Midas Sound, Billy Gomberg, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Tatsuro Kojima, Darren McClure, Toshimaru Nakamura & Celer, Offthesky, Yui Onodera, Nils Quak, Benoit Pioulard, Simon Scott, Andrew Tuttle, Simon Whetham, :zoviet*france: & a raft of Dauw/Eilean Records artists. Note Pitre's comment that the moving, strikingly serene Bayou Electric is his "last “solo” album 4 foreseeable future"... Note too that all proceeds from Tuttle's 177 go to the Malindza Refugee Camp Library "where your enjoyment of great experimental music goes to continuously fund the library that serves over 400 refugees from all over Africa". Finally, most of the 25 are gathered into a 3-hour playlist if you've got some time (it's also at the bottom here). A few not on SoundCloud (Erstlaub, Mathieu) or where the preferred version is in another format (Fennesz & King Midas Sound, Simon Scott) are bunged in alongside...
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
Compelling, expansive sounds from recent collaborators (Naked Island) Felicia Atkinson & Brian Pyle - FA in another trans-Atlantic, male/female pairing (La Nuit), this time with Peter Broderick. Where La Nuit's Road Snakes is a writhing, echoing vamp adhesively shaped around that intimate but distant voice's swerves between English & French, Ensemble Economique's From The Train Window, Red Flowers On The Mountain is all lulling wide-screen stillness - a tranquil, glowing tone poem. Broderick on La Nuit: "after she left I treated those words as lines of an opera under which to make a ghostly string arrangement"...
Back-dated bonus tracks:
NB: artwork at top by Felicia Atkinson. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
While Will Long's staggering fecundity as Celer has finally slowed lately (mid-June already & only two new albums this year?!), the beauty & emotional weight of his work is unflagging. Indeed, the three most recent Celer releases - Sky Limits, Jima & the snappily-titled How could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life - feature some of his most ravishing, affecting sounds. Pieces like the quavering, gossamer Tangent Lines (from SL) are as delicate, as precious as the noting, investing & storing moments of significance that Long describes ("Someday, I won't be in these same places again, and for now, this is what they sound like. Even these minor moments are important when you look back on the memory, and then look out from this overlook, seeing the city lights blinking in the distance..."). Memory is a notable theme across these releases. The literally sun-baked How is especially rich with reminiscence ("Revisiting these pieces after living in Japan for several years, they instantly reminded me of the trip, and what I left behind in the United States. The tapes fluttered and stuck, drenched in hiss and grime. The record skipped, wavered, and dropped in and out. Yet with these imperfections, it completely reflected my memory of the places, and what they represented. There are sides to everything, whether it causes you to change or not..."). Out of "the most basic format-inherent effects", Long conjures something profound, embodied in the exquisitely simple, lulling Bleeds & swell bends.
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
* Profile includes an illuminating interview with Hardwickthat explores Low Point's "logical progression", as well as vinyl love & label challenges...
Blurb: "Employing the same minimal palette of guitar and field recordings but now drawing upon urban, rather than coastal themes; Two Songs is iron, brick and dark asphalt in response to the grey-blue swell and salt wind of Of the Sea and Shore. Side A is built around a buzzing drone, an arc light on concrete, which by degrees dissolves to an autumnal hiss; that low, constant mixture of rain, distant traffic and human life which sits just below the threshold of consciousness for anyone living in a city framed by spare, untreated guitar. The same drone, now dulled and ragged, reappears on Side B as a coda to a gently oscillating wash of interwoven harmonics. Small shifts in texture, timbre and dynamics are concisely entwined to create an atmospheric and evocative EP."
(from sound&fury comp Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow, Vol. 1) Photos by Abbey Rees-Hales. Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
