Lend Me Your Ears

Mogul reinvention

2009-11-11T21:23:00.001Z

Now that Allez-Allez are reinventing themselves as recording artists & industry moguls, they're getting the remixers in.

You'll have heard Shackleton's epic Sometimes in Autumn Harmonia/Eno remix for their Amazing Sounds [head here immediately if you somehow haven't]. The paired Appleblim/Komonazmuk's By the Riverside completes this week's white vinyl (!)/download release & is also on Allez's recent AS mix - featured here in last month's round-up of Tweeted mix treats (& also including Allez Sam's Walls collaboration).

Now Allez's fine debut, Defeatist, is also out (via Kickboxer - a Kompakt relative, apparently). It's offered in a host of flavours on top of the fierce original - justly self-described as "a growling analogue peak time stormer". LMYE's most partial to the distantly ringing Ricardo Tobar version.

But the package excludes an awesome ambient krautronica version by Somfay - so much to admire in his sustained 10-minute Doubled Up Foldable Iona Rarity (whatever that is!) excursion : that affecting, plaintive organ line, the skittery, ultra-dry beats, the subtle tensions & sense of bare containment, the swelling clouds of noise, the bell-rung ending...

Allez-Allez > Defeatist [Somfay 'Doubled Up Foldable Iona Rarity' Remix] (from Defeatist 12", Kickboxer)

Bonus: Somfay > Bristlecone (from somfay.ca)

NB: higher-res versions available here & here. Plenty more Somfay on Soundcloud & (with his Archipel co-conspirators) archive.org.

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

Nice work

2009-11-10T16:47:00.008Z

Exemplary clangfest from new Warpsters Nice Nice (MySpace) - an urgent chant flogged along by a nicely noisy brew of skittering toms, squelchy electronica & something that sounds suspiciously like a penny whistle, underpinned all the while by a big booming bass drum...

Blurb: "We really wanted to capture/reflect what we do live. We focused on trying to convey elements that we think have generally characterized our live show: high energy explosiveness, bright colorful textures, lots of rhythm, large dynamic movement, willingness to explore new directions," says Jason Buehler, one half of Nice Nice.

"A big part of what makes our live show engaging is the “freakshow” factor of watching us build the loops live and interact on top, hopefully the intensity of the recorded music compensates for that. We hope people will hear the record and think "that was a trip, I want to experience that live" - and we hope that it will blow a few minds."

Nice Nice > Ark Drum (from One Hit, Warp - & perhaps the forthcoming [April 2010] Extra Wow album too...)

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

The next four minutes...

2009-11-09T23:32:00.003Z

I've heard the future. It's not even a whole track, but to these ears the second half of s p a t i a l's 90729 (on his own Infrasonics) is the year's most forward-looking, next-level, game-changing [insert additional cliches of choice] dance record.

No, really. Forget Hyph Mngo (great though it is). When 90729's pan-galactic low-end announces itself at 3:00 precisely, we're being signalled the thrilling sound of contemporary bass/garage in mid-morph.

Flicking either side of its implacable, lurching core, flitting into & instantly out of its voice snippets again while accumulating an ever more clattering, clicky percussive momentum, the next four minutes tell us what this music is supposed to sound like next.

The plinkily swinging 90807 & brisk, blithe Creative Commons goodie 90731 aren't too shabby either...

s p a t i a l > 90731 (from infra003 EP, Infrasonics - previews of 90729 & 90807 here)

NB: s p a t i a l himself (featured previously on LMYE here) is rather more modest about 90729. In an exchange with LMYE before this weekend's Infrasonics rave, he was quick to shrug off any comparison with the more overtly ecstatic Hyph.

BONUS: Ike Release - Sonic Router mix ("an exclusive mix of his own, mostly unreleased material")

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

Blissy tricks

2009-11-08T22:00:00.009Z

No, it's none too minimal - & no less delicious for that. The techno cognoscenti may not rate Luciano's Tribute to the Sun, but to these ears Sun, Day and Night is a superbly zestful, percussion-drenched treat for a Sunday: languid yet propulsive, studded with blissy tricks, claps, whacks & sparkle...

Luciano > Sun, Day and Night (from Tribute to the Sun, Cadenza)

Update: as for the rest of the album, I've only heard Celestial, Hang for Bruno & Metodisma so far. Although the hang showcase never recovers from its rapid degeneration into sub-Herb Albert cheese, the other two (notwithstanding a self-consciously 'celestial' interlude on the otherwise bone-dry former) exhibit a crispness & invention that belie Tribute's fairly sphincter-clenchingly awful c over...

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

Foothills or meadows

2009-11-07T16:03:00.003Z

"A kind of formless post-stoner rock combining a limited sound palette, musical development & emotional range with a near-limitless protractedness…"

I’m an unashamed Mountains lover. But even — or especially — with an appetite for their shimmering, accumulating sound that takes in any release I can find (including both solo guises), it’s worth trying to imagine why people might not love their music.

Only for a moment, though, as those people are wrong! For me, Mountains’ limits & limitlessness are at the core of their uniqueness. Listening back across their albums before Choral & Etching, they seem always to have had this subtly self-confident willingness to work & rework their narrow but, in its sly, slow way, very intense furrow — gentle, accepting, somewhat yearning (but muted).

You could say that the newer records, the relatively vigorous Etching especially, are in more obviously Mountainous terrain: yomping up to single note-driven swollen, riffy peaks, then ebbing down to regroup below. But I’ve never found that their name fits them at all well — this is music of the foothills or meadows, one that is precisely not about soaring peaks but rather long (not arduous) journeys or undertakings.

There’s also a timelessness at work, clearly – both indifference to conventional notions of structure, of starting & ending, & in the sense of a sound out of time: not especially contemporary nor actively backwards-looking either (though fans of Another Green World-era art-rock might feel an unexpected spark of recognition at some of the textures making up Etching’s lovely murk).

Etching has a definite performance feel (though that might be down to Thrill Jockey sharing the circumstances of its making, I concede). I seem to hear more overt kinetic energy than before, though the languid, reflective tempo has hardly altered.

It’s a dense, rich sound of several boxes of tricks being emptied out & put to play – more strummed than I remember from initial listens, but also clattering, buzzing & with a darker, riffier tone towards the end.

And although there’s evidently not a vast narrative arc from something like 2005’s lovely Blown Glass Typewriter or the previous year’s more glitch-droney Tonic performance to now, there’s been more than enough enriching of the sound along the way to make want to hear where it goes next…

I mentioned there being more strums than I remembered from early listens of Etching. What I didn’t mention is how relatively dispensable a part of the Mountainscape they can sometimes seem.

Perhaps it’s just my prejudice. But granted the power to ban Mountains from their acoustic guitar (guitars?), I might be tempted – to force them to work even more with the blobbier, more viscous part of their sound, or even to dig out the bells of Melodica another time.

But then I’m back at the limbering start of Etching, where they seem integral & coherent (if not ear-grabbing). Still, some passages on Choral – the start of Telescope, for example – I’d consider purging from the record!

It’s interesting to put Mountains up against Emeralds (the closest peer?). In this light the duo’s bristly, blurred sound seems more individual & less rooted in a single influence than the excellent Emeralds of What Happened & the European tour CD…

In this light, consider the new Cluster album (Qua) too – their first studio recording in 14 years. The lovable old krautlords are now trafficking in notably short little pieces in contrast to Mountains’ languid unravelling.

NB: post stitched out of LMYE's contribution to a recent Disquiet discussion... Go here & here for typically great reviews of Mountains live in London & of Etching from mapsadaisical & The Milk Factory.

Mountains > Etching [edit] (from Etching, Thrill Jockey)

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

To the waterfront

2009-11-06T00:01:00.002Z

A perfect, gleaming poptronica gem, made in a mere afternoon: Pezzner & LMYE regular Lusine throw together a handful of Seattle found sounds with breathy & regal vocals & a little Reichian plink to create the moving (emotionally & kinetically) Station to Station for XLR8R.

Pezzner & Lusine > Station to Station (unreleased)

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

Martian shoe factory

2009-11-05T13:46:00.018Z

Why isn't this something more people are talking about? Perhaps I just wasn't listening, but the first studio album in 14 years from krautlords & premium collaborators - not just with Eno but, in a couple of Sundays' time, the de-hibernating Tortoise too - Cluster is a landmark that merits a bit of a fuss. I feel fanboy breathlessness coming on...

What's more, Qua sounds both as expert as you might expect with 40 years' pioneering experience behind it & way more engaged than conceivable after all this time: from the clanging, noodling So Ney & clicky Na Ernel to the lugubrious Xanesra, Cluster's textured, loping playfulness is present & correct. Oh, & a creaky door gets played too....

"After a 14-year stretch of releasing only live albums, the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius — more succinctly known as Cluster — has emerged from Tim Story’s Ohio studio with another Cluster classic, Qua.

“It’s like having a cup of coffee and a donut in the middle of a Martian shoe factory,” says Story of his first experience producing a Cluster session. “Moebi and Achim always have the incredible knack of carving a bit of warmth and humanity out of the most unlikely elements. On Qua, there's a surprisingly melodic solo that Moe performed on our squeaky bathroom door, and a virtuoso performance ‘playing’ the feedback from the unplugged end of a guitar cable. Meanwhile, Ach plays a bass line on our old orange Farfisa organ — and naturally centers his riff around the one note that's broken.”

The squeaky-door solo is one of many mysterious sounds on the 17-track Qua that Cluster and Story have sewn together to make seamless, artful music out of what others hear as noise.

Story muses: “It’s what makes Cluster absolutely unique — taking the debris of life, and the sounds most other people would ‘tune out’, and turning them into supremely odd, but engagingly human poetry. A happy marriage of Dada and romance.”

That happy marriage (albeit with its on-again, off-again moments [see the glaring omission from Moebius' links - LMYE]) has continued for nearly 40 years — so it would be a natural to assume that the music resulting from Cluster’s return to the studio would have been something of a nostalgia trip. But at an age when other musicians are making bank on old ideas, Cluster is making music that is in every way new.

“When we first starting talking about making this record, I imagined a 20th-century version of Sowiesoso or Zuckerzeit,” recalls Story, “abandoning for now the long, freeform improvisations that had been a staple of Cluster’s recent live performances, and revisiting the short idiosyncratic miniatures that we would be able to achieve in a studio setting. But even I wouldn’t have guessed that a total of 17 great pieces would result — each with it’s own inner logic and personality, and all working within the framework of the whole.”

Even more remarkably, Qua’s 17 tracks aren’t just audio novelties — they have a richness of texture, tone and character unexpected in the electronic music genre. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Cluster’s sound-as-sandbox approach to music — and why they’ve inspired so many other influential musicians — is that they explore inventive and expressive potentials in electronic music seldom realized by others.

Story concludes: “With the humbling honor of being the first Cluster ‘producer’ in several decades, I felt my main duty was to give Ach and Moebi as many good options as possible, then get out of the way, and record their process as transparently as I could. Hopefully, Qua captures the richness and humor and the warmth that made the recording sessions so much fun for all of us."

Below, a taste via an LMYE-'curated' 'hack' (meaning I glued some samples together & changed their running order from the album's...).

Cluster > Qua-lude [LMYE hack] (from Qua, Nepenthe)

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

Yes bloody please

2009-10-20T22:44:00.012+01:00

Rude not to department: a Tim Hecker remix? Dredging a characteristic emotional yield from another boiling sea of scratchy feedback & bass swells - while less familiar bells, wordless voice & adagios break the swirling surface?

From an EP also featuring reworkings by Mad Professor, Susumu Yokota & Kid Koala? As JPP would say, yes bloody please...

Bell Orchestre > Water / Light / Shifts [Tim Hecker remix] (from Who Designs Nature's Now remix EP, Arts&Crafts)

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

Highbrow mucker

2009-10-20T00:06:00.006+01:00

A snappy post in keeping with the succint - by ambient-drone standards, at least - but rewarding source: hear a scintillating, metallically groaning edit (originally for FACT) of Olympia & Variation III from the rich To by P Jørgensen on Low-Point. If you're in the UK, come out to see him at one end of next month or the other...

Blurb: "‘To’ is the second album release by P Jørgensen, a sound artist and composer for ensemble, theatre and film based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Exploring the relationship between composition and chance, Jørgensen created the music for this release by drawing upon a palette of acoustic instrumentation and field recordings which were then transformed via computer processing into luminous textures, crystalline tones and vibrant ambient drones.

‘To’ is divided into two clearly defined sections across its 30 minute running time. Broad swathes of sound, juxtaposed chords and miniature crescendos during the first half give way to a more introspective and peaceful denouement as the album draws to an end.

Whilst the running time of ‘To’ may seem surprisingly concise for an album of this genre, Jørgensen’s purposeful and streamlined approach to composition ensures that not a single second goes to waste. By focusing on timbre and texture, these distinctive tracks establish vibrant atmospheres which seem to take on the properties of a morning's fog or the diffuse glow of reflected light."

P Joergensen > Olympia/Variation III [FACT edit] (from To, Low-Point)

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

“as ignorable as it is interesting”

2009-10-19T22:14:00.022+01:00

LMYE trying to engage with TU M's beguiling Monochromes Vol.1, from a discussion at disquiet (with a few hindsightful amends): tranquil, languid, subtle, TU M’ exemplify a kind of gentle drone-ambient that is utterly likeable, though perhaps not completely challenging. Long repeated waves of breathy sound at breathing pace, topped with very gradual accretions & embellishments, do what Eno dictated all those years ago ambient should do: provide an immersive music that works as well in the background as the foreground, & allows the listener to vary their stance to it as mood dictates - or in his far snappier version: “as ignorable as it is interesting”!

Foregrounded, the pieces have of course to be accepted on their own terms. Inevitably, their elongation & repetition means that ‘development’ is near-glacial — & limited: more like time spent static than travelling. That feeling is clearly heightened by their being monochromes in the sense of a very restricted palette of tone & mood.

Although far from revolutionary & strikingly narrow in range, they do reward the substantial investment of time (if not constant attention) they demand… But it’s a bit discomforting to ask what difference it would have made if ‘Monochrome 4′ had come in at 17 minutes, rather than 30?

No doubt TU M’s artistic judgement about how long each piece should go on was based on their assessment of that weight & cadence – but as artists like Scanner &, yes, Eno start to make use of the iPhone to offer loops that listeners can run for however long they like, it’s kind of interesting to imagine the Monochromes released in that endless format.

[Scanner's newly-released & currently free Whisper for iPhone/iPod Touch (http://bit.ly/sP8oU), is a strong recommendation in these parts - a haunting, moody loop that feels like an ultra-modern conception & delivery of music...]

Another angle on this. TU M’ put an 8:16 “excerpt” of the unreleased Monochromes 00 up online (it's below). Since we don’t know how long the full version is intended to be, we can only take the excerpt on its merits (it’s as beguiling as the rest, with an occasional sliver of muffled echo somewhat reminiscent of Chris McNamara’s ‘Vague Cities’).

To weigh the excerpt against an unavailable but by definition longer full version, an iPhone-type loop would let you feel your own way to its perfect, Platonic length – if one exists!

TU M' > Monochromes # 00 [excerpt] (unreleased) > Monochromes # 03 [excerpt] (from Monochromes Vol.1, Line)

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

Rude not too

2009-10-13T00:01:00.005+01:00

'Rude not to' department: worth it for those space drums alone, but sbtrkt's giveaway of his brisk, frisky (if a bit unresolved) Kaoss is also an opportunity to point you to the masked producer's ravishing 2-step reinvention of Portico Quartet - with the hang intact, but not much else...!

The underlying track, Line, is from the quartet's imminent Isla.

Sbtrkt mix for MAH (featuring no fewer than five unleased dubplates) here & interview with Fabric here.

sbtrkt > Kaoss (unreleased)

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

It ain't so

2009-10-12T00:01:00.037+01:00

You might be forgiven for thinking that ambient (never the most revolutionary of musics, after all, except perhaps in the fact of itself as something defiantly non-linear & sideways-on...) has nothing much left to offer - that we've pretty well exhausted all of the microsound/found sound tropes, all of that gradual, delicate accumulation & manipulation of detail, texture & tone.

It ain't so, of course. Countless other examples could be found (one would be Loscil's predictably fine Strathcona Variations, soon to be covered here separately). But two new albums - one from the droney end of the spectrum, one laced with techno whispers - underscore how rewardingly the seam (which is now only short-hand for 'slower instrumental music, typically with some electronics' anyway...) can still be mined.

Take cacao's Permutopia on stdio. Throughout this lovely self-release (with a fascinating back-story/conceptual underpinning - see below) judicious glitches & judders work the more obviously pretty into something richer & deeper: the shuddering Kallipolis, the scratchy drone of Circum Europa, the ululations of Palanese, the piercing sparkle of Life Without Objects (returning on For Civilia).

Hear the whirring Anarres, where a windy, 'copter-ish drone adds urgency to submerged piano & backwards voice, below.

"Permutopia is an amalgam of found sound — tape loops, turntable manipulations and field recordings pulped into highly textured compositions. Based on 6 different conceptions of utopia from throughout the ages — from techno-agrarian island idylls to anarchic moon colonies — sound is used as an evocation of new forms of living, as an expression of that which is unattainable by design.

Taking its cues from the work of superstudio, Ursula K. Le Guin, Aldous Huxley, Ivor de Wolfe & others, Permutopia is a tribute to past futures, richly imagined conjecture and radical transformation."

cacao's older Tropisms I-VI is still available at stdio, by the way.

Meanwhile, muffle & echo help shape the slow washes of Chris McNamara's Vague Cities on Overlap: the crepuscular Trimalchio, Sleeping Car/Shunting Yard's serene accretions, the darker unfurling of et puis, the gradual march of Subsandtaxis in Markus Guenter's remix.

oooohdear, a shimmering, reflective highlight, is below.

cacao > Anarres (from Permutopia, stdio)

Chris McNamara > oooohdear (from Vague Cities, Overlap)

NB: higher-res versions available from the artists/labels.

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

Amalgamated twit

2009-10-09T10:54:00.022+01:00

By no means an original idea, but twitter is such a big part of LMYE these days that it seems worth recycling what we do there for non-'followers' (sorry, not our term...). Some recent mix tips:

Crisp & urgent mix of @unsound performers by bshosa = http://bit.ly/4wa24I. "Recorded in one take, with no editing" - UK gigs soon, please!

Appleblim's Harmonia/Eno refix & Walls' (@allez_allez + @banjoorfreakout) post-krautery in AA Amazing Sounds launch mix http://bit.ly/U5uUw Oh, & if Appleblim meets Eno's not enough, also features Suicide, DJ Koze & Mount Kimbie (& Walls)!

Deaf Center, Chauveau, LJ Kruzer, To Rococo Rot, Benge... RT @unchartedaudio Kone-R's "deep, dark mix" for The Circle: http://bit.ly/meNKT

Scott Grooves' own 'Keytroit' makes wonderful, throbby closer for @factmagazine's "elusive Detroit house maestro" mix: http://bit.ly/ZWHaL

@Keshhhhhh's subtle @poplarpenguin mix circles back to ISAN via Caretaker, Eno, Fennesz, English, Rabelais, Greiner: http://bit.ly/f2ilV (RT)

Indisputably tasty... RT @InvertedAudio Highly recommend Scuba's mix for mnml ssgs as SCB - his house/techno project http://bit.ly/10qiai

This 'christopher rau live in his bedroom' mix is also tasty: http://bit.ly/b2a0D

STP/Peverelist, ISAN/Martyn, DJ Koze, Peter Van Hoesen, The Mole... RT @unsound new podcast by The Bunker's DJ Spinoza = http://bit.ly/CKg7T

The "loud, intense & riotously entertaining" sound of Melvin Oliphant III... RT @factmagazine - DJ Traxx mix (FACT 88) = http://bit.ly/IqaiW

Persuasive about Saki, @chrisjohnpower's new 'Wow + Flutter' British Males mix looks quite persuasive too: http://bit.ly/lNGFx

"Say Hey" - checking out @siart/Leo Zero's Ze 30 mix http://bit.ly/2qe5q8

Sesame St, Indeep & BOC... RT Boards of Canada mix joins the @ninjamixdump Choice Cuts sound gallery @percussionlab = http://bit.ly/17Ug4n

Bonus: iTAL tEK > Lightning Fields (Mako EP giveaway via Atom River & @alan_italtek): restrained, spacey, atmospheric...

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

Forthcoming murk

2009-10-09T10:47:00.004+01:00

As tweeted at twitter.com/earslend. Feedback/suggestions welcome...

Forthcoming on LMYE - Loscil/Chris McNamara/Cacao &/or Loscil/Sunken Foal/Hulk/J. Behan; Max Richter/Leyland Kirby (Caretaker); Anticipate special (Klimek/Mark Templeton/Honig)...

...Vulva String Quartett; Excepter/iTAL tEK; kranky special (Nudge/Greg Davis/To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie/more Ethernet); LRAD...

...; Astral Social Club (& other half of split); Jodi Cave/Kirschner/Deupree; TVO; & something murky in my notes ('CT'?)...

Rude not to

2009-10-08T21:52:00.020+01:00

From the 'rude not to' department - "old song. pre onandon. have it": the blurred delights of Lukid's Everybody Make Happy, which manages to seem like several different songs in the course of its eight minutes. You may like the somewhat formulaic one in the middle less well, but the plaintive, found voice start & the splintered, stuttering second half are quite gorgeous, even touching.

Lukid > Everybody Make Happy (unreleased)

Somehow resisting the allure of the FlyLo/Brainfeeder sphere (despite Undomondo's efforts...), this half of LMYE at least doesn't spend too much time in warped beat territory these days. But new stuff from the charming Kelpe easily changes that.

Not yet heard the rest of it, but the blissy, breathy Eye Candy Bath bodes pretty well for the imminent Cambio Wechsel.

Kelpe > Eye Candy Bath (from Cambio Wechsel, DC Recordings)

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

Return to Navapolatsk

2009-10-04T00:03:00.006+01:00

Lovely, dubby squelch from cross-border collaborations with Belarus, curated by ~scape: I/DEX vs Pole > Minsk, Pinch meets Pavel Ambiont > Poison / Remedy (both from Connections, re-upped [original post] to mark its release today...).

"The first Unsound Minsk in May 2007 was a revelation for Western European artists who performed, as well as the local audience. It was an event that via (mostly) electronic music created a spontaneous and strong route directly between the Belarus capital and the rest of Europe. Pole – Stefan Betke – was one of the artists who performed on that night. Together, Unsound, Betke and the Minsk team IN-Touch decided to take things further, to join Belarus producers and musicians with their counterparts from Germany, Poland, the UK, Switzerland and Sweden to form new collaborative projects. The artists on this CD travelled to Minsk for a week at the end of September, giving workshops and working on recording sessions with Belarus artists, working in a variety of music genres.

This CD is the result, a very diverse collection of tracks recorded in Minsk and mastered in Berlin. On the one hand imbued with a dark, heavy atmosphere, at times the music here is also playful, revealing the talent and energy of the Belarus artists, as well as the open minds of everyone involved. The project has led to releases beyond this compilation, and the continuation of forged collaborations. It promises the opening of more channels, more connections."

More background.

PsyPhotos by Pavel Ambiont

Bonus: I/DEX's fine Scalene (from Seqsextend, Nexsound).

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

Gothic gravity

2009-10-03T15:05:00.028+01:00

As immense as the 16th-century Gothic church in which it was recorded (St. Catherine's, Krakow, since you ask), it's no exaggeration to say that Ben Frost at Untold 2008 is one of the most stunning (& demanding) things I've heard all year -huge slabs of trembling, brooding, intensely physical sound, manipulated with great deftness into something monumental, beautiful &, at times, pretty fearful.

A number of people report it as the highlight of last year's festival. There's also a wry story around that it triggered a queue of priests complaining to Unsound's organisers...

Find a 10-minute LMYE hack below. The full thing is here. Note that the recording "was made from the audience seating area, rather than via the mixing desk, to capture a sense of the church's massive interior and acoustics."

Unsound have Biosphere & Stars of the Lid performing in the same space this year, making these ears wish they were trekking out to Krakow this time round. So too do the tribe of other tasty performers captured in Philip Sherburne's round-up mix of 2009's cast of thousands (fascinating background here, by the way) & in bshosa's crisp, urgent 08/09 package.

Frost's new By The Throat is out imminently. I've not heard it yet (apart from the The Carpathians giveaway featured below), but those who have rate it - no surprise, given the savage excellence of the earlier Theory of Machines. It & other fine Frost output (though not Steinbruechel's amazing, ultra-subtle Theory reworkings on Basis, regrettably...) can be streamed here.

Ben Frost > Unsound 08 (LMYE hack) > The Carpathians (from By The Throat, Bedroom Community)

Oh, & Unsound & ~scape finally unveiled the Connections free download album previewed here previously today. As reported & rehosted, its east/west collaborations feature both Pole & Pinch (will re-up separately)...

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

Earthling release

2009-09-30T23:13:00.004+01:00

LMYE implores you - sign up to Christopher Willits' Facebook fan page & help get his Live on Earth - Vol. 2 released from captivity soon (he projects November, by the way).

If the new set's anywhere near as fine as the exquisitely subtle & shimmering Vol. 1 (recorded in Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Foshan, Kyoto, Philadelpia & Tokyo between 2006 and 2009) you & 2,221 others will be very well rewarded. Hear Vol. 1's rumbling, juddering Berlin piece below.

Less saturnine than the great Aidan Baker, though equally promiscuous in his serial collaborations (including Ryuichi Sakamoto &, especially, Taylor Deupree), Willits is endlessly engaging & beautifully inventive. See previous coverage of his lovely collisions & extensive solo stuff here.

Christopher Willits > Improvisation (live) - Berlin, Germany - June 19, 2009 (from Live on Earth - Vol. 1, self-released; photo by Jan Kruml)

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

Venerable vigour

2009-09-22T00:01:00.014+01:00

Warp's exuberant 20th birthday celebrations bring home the realisation that the same landmark is looming for another venerable independent. But while Thrill Jockey may date all the way back to Bettina Richards' bedroom launch in 1992, it's hardly showing its age - indeed, to these ears the Chicago label's hit a particularly rich, vigorous vein of form lately.

Perhaps that has something to do with Tortoise's emergence from hibernation. Certainly, the post-rock leviathan's first proper album in five years (see here) has added to the label's recent momentum.

Besides the many pleasures of Beacons of Ancestorship itself (interview & performance here), Tortoise have also revived the former glory of their remix encounters with the likes of Oval & Autechre. Most notably, Mark Ernestus (Basic Channel) has fermented a slowly decaying version of the zithery Gigantes - sold out on 12", but available on US iTunes & released in Europe next month...

At the other end of the band's spectrum, Doug McCombs' collaboration with David Daniell has also budded into a release (Sycamore). No accident, perhaps, that the wonderfully sustained 15-minute post-jazz/rock epic Vejer de la Frontera features Tortoise's John Herndon too.

With their unashamed lap-steel & accumulated hours of improvising, you could see the Daniell & McCombs duo as deconstructor-editors of a guitar-led American tradition.

David Daniell & Douglas McCombs > F# Song (from Sycamore)

As ever, there are also compelling things happening on the label away from Tortoise's orbit. Take Lokai & Jason Urik.

There may be a few cheap points to be scored by claiming Lokai as a European version of Daniell & McCombs. But a closer model for the pair is probably something like Eno's Music for Films - rewardingly moody sketches, often brisk or even curt by the standards of Thrill Jockey peers & with a portentous, clangy quality recognisable from sister/cousin incarnations Nemeth & Radian (previously featured here).

Lokai > salvador (from transition)

Meanwhile, Urik's forthcoming Husbands & remix (with Joe Williams) of Thank You's Pathetic Magic pick up the brilliant mantle of Mountains (featured here previously) - dense, elongated, immensely textured droney vamps. Ironically, the twinkling, slurred remix is the shortest of these lovely pieces: pretty perfect in its own right, but due a further reworking/stretching, perhaps?

Jason Urik > The Eternal Return (from Husbands - vinyl-only!)

Other Thrill Jockey-related posts on LMYE: here (Lithops), & here, here & here (Nobukazu Takemura).

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

Dit’moi Monsieur

2009-09-07T22:19:00.020+01:00

NB: scroll down for exclusive mix...

Ever since the bravura display of May's eight Tam Variations, there could be little doubt that LJ Kruzer's Manhood & Electronics (Uncharted Audio) would be one of this year's landmark albums, notwithstanding its indifferent title - a lift from a memoir by Bryan Strange, apparently. But it's only on full immersion that the gentle, timeless brilliance of this ravishing post-modern hymnal unfolds completely (sorry if the physics of that don't quite hold up...).

The more you hear it (full stream available), the more obvious it is that Manhood is a masterpiece of a kind of urban pastoral - spare & reflective, but still warmly engaging. Its restraint & modesty, its delicacy, its poise are all pretty rare, & welcome, commodities.

The definitive, untampered (or at least differently tampered) Tam is a clear highlight - a beautiful orchestration of block-chording piano with counterpointing keys, dreamy washes & more abrasive buzz. Others include the yearning opener Barnab & the frozen Glassisms of Poil, as well as the brisker lushness of Tram & drowsy prettiness of Frum.

A couple of '814' (Bach or a cool keyboard - who knows?) versions feature among the Tam Variations. Two more, both extended, here:

LJ Kruzer > Barnab814 > Poil814

EXCLUSIVE: LMYE is thrilled to present LJK in the mix - if Manhood weren't enough, his excellent This is What I Like electronica mix whets the appetite still further ahead of his unmissable, free (!) Union Chapel gig on September 26. Its 30 minutes range catholically from Moondog to Villalobos' Minimoonstar, & feature unlikely to be repeated debuts here for both Maurice Chevalier & Tomita...

00:00 Maurice Chevalier avec Yvonne Vallée – Dit’moi Monsieur Chevalier
01:27 Regolith – Sap Rising
03:57 Signal – Ermafa
07:05 LJ Kruzer – Kruzerlude
09:46 Moondog – Tugboat Toccata
11:48 Benge – Polymoog
12:29 Moondog – Gloving It
12:48 Autechre – Altibzz
14:16 Ricardo Villalobos – Minimoonstar
17:05 Justus Kohncke – Yacht
22:14 Benge – Oberheim Xpander
23:47 Jordi Savall performing Tobias Hume: Beccus An Hungarian Lord
25:45 Tomita performing Debussy: The Girl With The Flaxen Hair

Tam - LJ Kruzer Video from JimJam Graphics on Vimeo.

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

"This Awareness asks"

2009-08-12T19:34:00.014+01:00

At 6pm tonight I'd never heard of Ethernet: by eight his sublime Kansai was very possibly my favourite new track this year. Its fuzzy spaciousness, its artful shards of noise, its intensely textured depths & its confidence to throw the occasional prettily echoey bone all testify to a very rich, uncowed take on the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction heritage - & leave me hungry for 144 Pulsations of Light (out on Kranky in October, apparently).

Ethernet: "Based on my research and experience in using sound for induction of meditative states, I set out to apply trance-inducing sonic effects to drone-ambient music. I recontextualized the deep bass kick sound used in techno dance music as a subdued hypnotic pulse to accentuate the textures. An unprocessed analog Roland TR-808 was used for this pulse, as well as binaural beats and spatial effects processing to create music to facilitate deep meditation. I blended layers of synthesized textures with organic field recordings made in Central Japan in '00-'01, and Northern California between '03-'08. The intent of the album is to produce an introspective sonic environment conducive to self-healing work and voyaging into new states of awareness."

Kranky: "While Tim's description may read as somewhat dry and technical, the sonic landscapes that he composes are anything but. He sculpts textural washes of sound to create immersive, constantly shifting aural psychedelic environments. Hazy, gaseous atmospheres that are alternately arid and humid float above, in and around the muffled pulses used as rhythms. The experience is not unlike that of landing on an alien planet, stepping out of a spaceship, and surveying new terrain."

Ethernet > Kansai (from 144 Pulsations of Light, Kranky) > Whistleblowers/Orgonite [Flow Dub] (from Orgonite EP, Bump Foot)

Archive (including 'sound healing meditations', mixes as DJ Tanuki & music as Oneironaut) here.

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

Distiller's macho

2009-08-11T23:55:00.011+01:00

After the refreshing physicality of the Moritz von Oswald Trio's Vertical Ascent - thrillingly flogged along by his threshing drums - Vladislav Delay's next is that fine album's inverse, despite being another trio piece. Indeed, the wispy, barely there Tummaa is so reduced, so austere that it can feel like a sketch or a blueprint of itself.

There's a bravado in that, of course - a sort of distiller's macho. In which case, to use a word not readily associated with Delay (though it was disconcerting recently to come across his own description of his early motivation as "I just wanted to kick ass as much as I could"), he's just made the butchest album of his brilliant career...

Vladislav Delay > Melankolia (edit from Tumaa, forthcoming on Leaf)

Earlier Delay coverage here. Substantial interviews by the milkfactory (plus eleventh volume/hard format) & Tokafi here & here.

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

Dappled meadows

2009-08-10T22:12:00.021+01:00

So modest that a cloak is seemingly the very least it would throw over a puddle in your way, yet so committed to its own way of doing things that even its punctuation idiosyncracies are evidently all quite deeply meant (though what slightly random dots, colons & commas might be meant to mean, over & above 'I have my own way of doing things', is something else...): Alpine.'s Fr:om Harmed Weather To Stark, Micro, Climates. is a little piece of pastoral bliss.

Despite the name & the obvious parallels with the excellent Mountains, it is more dappled meadows & orchards than magisterial uplands - an English summer record/English summer of a record (meaning fleeting, warm loveliness, not lagered, lobstered lads & sporting woe). Yet another feather in the plumage-rich Highpoint Lowlife cap...

Alpine. > Fr:om [lo-res]

Video art from Alpine. here, by the way.

Alpine. is also half of Pausal (who've toured with Koen Holtkamp, cementing the Mountains connection). Their eponymous net-release via HPLL a couple of years ago shares the warmth of Harmed Weather - whose composition pre-dates it, if we're being chronological - but stretches out more languidedly; a remastered version with an additional track (Semi-Submerged) & a reworking (Place [Revisited]) is out now, with an album to follow (not featured in head Highpointer Thor's recent beat-driven 'Future Sounds' mix of forthcoming releases for reason of fit).

Pausal > Song From a Cloth Pocket [lo-res]

Same track also features on this mix of "hazy ambient jewels" via archive.org.

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

Neither being nor non-being

2009-07-30T22:33:00.010+01:00

Put on the spot about the dancefloor preferences of the great post-structuralists, most of us'd probably plump for Michel Foucault over Jacques Derrida when it comes to an inclination for minimal techno. Nonetheless, Hauntologists is, in its mysterious way, an impeccably Derridean conceit - barely there (a group whose only 'presence' is a Twitter account, more or less uniquely), two-sided ('produced in Duesseldorf & Berlin') & named for one of Jacques' portmanteaus...

Quite sincerely, I've no idea how much - if anything - to read into these Derridean trappings. Perhaps it's enough to simply say Hauntologists is To Rococo Rotter/Mapstationist/September Collectivist Stefan Schneider collaborating with Monolake co-conspirator Jay Ahern on minimal techno.

But East Germany is one of several huge spectres haunting modern Germany, of course. & there's a host haunting today's techno too...

In Hauntologists' case, there's also the 'other' of Schneider's extensive body of work (a long-standing LMYE enthusiasm - see here & here, among others). But I hear fairly little of those groups' idiosyncracies here.

Instead, we're mostly in austere, intensely reduced post-Basic Channel territory, with an unexpected, quite refreshing tendency towards - yes, really! - acid...

Hauntologists > B1 (from EP 1, Hardwax) > A1/EP 2 Samples [LMYE hack] (from EP 2, Hardwax) > Live (Part 1)

Hear other EP tracks in full at last.fm, by the way...

Sincere thanks to Jay for his help.

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

Rushing raucousness

2009-07-14T00:01:00.009+01:00

Despite its intensity & ambition, its rushing raucousness & huge, mesmerising bass, & the enthusiasm of some respected ears, I haven't yet got into the first instalment of Battler Tyondai Braxton's new solo record - on the contrary.

But others are no doubt as excited about hearing it, in view of his & its lineage, as I definitely was (& am still hopeful of finding wonder & thrills in Central Market - "Stravinsky let loose in a toyshop", according to@joemuggs). So here it is - for a few days only, as always here - for you to judge for yourself.

Tyondai Braxton > Uffe's Woodshop (from Central Market, forthcoming on Warp)

Warp hype: "Composed, arranged and produced by Braxton, the 7-track set features guitars, vocals, electronics, percussion and the Wordless Music Orchestra, unified to create orchestral music re-imagined for the 21st century, and perhaps the 22nd as well.

Central Market introduces Braxton as an exceptional addition to the world of New Music composers, while maintaining a strong hold on the poly-rhythmic and technically awe-inspiring creations he is already known for.

If you were wondering - instrumentation on ['Uffe's Woodshop'] features vocals/whistling, kazoos, violins, violas, synths, electronics, piano, 6 guitars, bass and drums/percussion."

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