THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010
a selection of the best records of the Year made by theWire magazine
Lost Daylight
'The compositions on Lost Daylight' by John CAGE and the almost-forgotten American Fluxus composer Terry JENNINGS date from between 1958 and 1966. Yet in the hands of John Tilbury and Sebastian Lexer they sound astonishingly modern. JENNINGS' solo pieces couldn't be more conventional in using only pure keyboard notes, but they could hardly be more radical in the way in which the notes are reduced, isolated and surrounded with silences. As Michael Pisaro's sleevenotes say, 'It is music of simplic…
Works With Flutes
The release of this CD celebrates Aldo Clementi’s 75th birthday in 2010. Clementi is one of the remaining living composers of the Italian avant-garde generation, which included Berio, Nono and Maderna. Clementi’s works for flute (including works for multiple flutes and flute with tape) are performed by one of his long-time collaborators, Roberto Fabbriciani – some of these works were written for or dedicated to him. Many of these works utilize Clementi’s signature explorations of the canno…
Mail from Fushitsusha
Mail from Fushitsusha, which Keiji Haino himself calls 21st-century blues, draws out exquisite dynamics and 'space' - like a nerve being passed through the eye of a needle. Carrying out their sonic explorations while adhering to the Fushitsusha method, these three tough artists create a muscular sound - a sound that turns the rock - blues concept on its head! Keijo Haino sent Seijaku out into the world as his permanent band. At the time of recording, this was to be a single album, but the combin…
I Love You, Please Love Me Too
With "I love you please love me too", Joseph Hammer continues his journey into playful yet heavily focused idiot-savant infinite psychedelic inertia. Utilising consumer audio technology and 20th century detritus, Hammer lovingly decodes his passion for mid century sci fi and AM radio station beyond all point of recognition like a snakecharmer. Multi-dimensional audio collage techniques to a free form and completely unorthodox plunderphonic hypnosis. Baked devotionals for tape loop minds. Joseph …
The Rocker
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010!
Jailbreak s the duo of pedal steel-vocalist Heather Leigh and drummer Chris Corsano. The name foregrounds the kind of outlaw violence with which the two reformulate rock-roll instants by bringing free jazz fire power to amp-humping sex beats. Their musical alliance goes all the way back to the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, the birthplace of the 'New Weird America', where Corsano and his long-term saxophone partner Paul Flaherty joined Leigh and Christina C…
On Patrol
Gorgeous double LP version "If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around, shit still gets crushed. If Cameron Stallones holes up solo-style in a suburban cave and wah-riffs over canned bongos for five straight months, double LPs still get dropped. These are basic life laws. The latest from Mr. Araw is easily his least compromising audio self-portrait to date. Three minute rhythm sketches are stretched into ten minute loop pedal odysseys. Organ solos last for entire vinyl sides. Ambiguou…
Mass
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010! While Morse followed traditional avenues of rugged folk narrative tinged w/ psychedelic foxing, Mass is an unchartered, one-way trip through a world of ritual. Broken guitars, percussive loops, backwards tracking, a (home-made) glass harmonium, lullabies, bagpipe thievery & the odd bit of fighting talk are just some of the many bricks laid here. New Zealand’s Alastair Galbraith, while originally coming from the Flying Nun stable of bands, has for many years now been…
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
After a fourteen year absence, Michael Gira resurrects his legendary apocalyptic no-wave band for a fabulous new album on his own Young God imprint. Assembling a cast of musicians that includes familiar Swans and Angels Of Light conspirators, Gira also welcomes a few new members to the fold with guest stars including Devendra Banhart, Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, Bill Rieflin (of Ministry, REM and Robyn Hitchcock's band), Shearwater multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris and even Gira's three-and-a-hal…
Landings
RESTOCKED, reduced price - Having recorded a significant body of work under various guises including A Broken Consort and Clouwbeck, Richard Skelton returns with a brand new and long anticipated album under his own name. Following on from 'Marking Time' (originally released via Preservation in 2008 only to be reissued on limited vinyl by Type over the summer), 'Landings' is an album steeped in the wild rural landscape of Skelton's surroundings. Over the span of just a few releases he's ma…
More 74
UK free jazz guitar icon in unreleased solo material remastered from the original reel-to-reel recordings recorded in London, 1974, Bailey playing mostly electric guitar. Previously unreleased recordings, remastered from original reel-to-reel tapes. The music on this CD came to light when, during preparations for the reissue of Derek Bailey's Lot 74 - Solo improvisations (incusCD57), Karen Brookman discovered tow reel-to-reel tapes stored along with the original album masters. They turn out to …
Disasters of self
I've known Joe for close to 15 years - his audio output for a few more. His composition techniques, recording and editing methods, and persistent refinement and redefining of his aural goals has helped to define a body of work that I firmly believe only few artists could hope to match. After a handful of releases on C.I.P., ranging from full-length CD to one-sided 7, my resolve solidified that Joe was a contemporary artist whose work deserved the focus, breadth, and depth of a multiple LP…
Plastic Materials
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010 Over the past decade, Marina Rosenfeld's work has come to represent one of the most progressive approaches to experimental sound emanating from New York. Rosenfeld is equally known as a composer for large-scale performances and groundbreaking turntablist. Her sonic palette - entirely drawn from hand-crafted dub plates she imprints with blips of vinyl static, bursts of instrumental noise, conversation, and other audio detritus - evokes both the ecstatic electronic artifice…
The World's Longest Melody
The World’s Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky’s musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the enthusiasm for his work by the musicians of the Belgian electric guitar quartet ZWERM.
The acoustic and electric guitar are featured both solo and in small and large combinations; a few pieces not originally conceived for the instrument are also pre…
Disingenuity/Disingenuousness
FINALLY RESTOCKED! "Keith Fullerton Whitman has consistently blown our tiny minds this year with a stream of utterly crucial releases. Whether morphing the Arabic Oud into majestically ornate formations or commanding his self-generating hybrid analogue/digital modular setup into unimaginable arrangements, we're witnessing the culmination of years of dedicated research and experimentation blossoming into tangible, cherishable productions in 2010. Arguably, he's saved the best for this LP, u…
Natural Information
AMONG THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010! Joshua Abrams in an infectious groove-based album built around the guimbri, a 3-stringed animal hide bass used by the Gnawa of North Africa. "Bassist & composer Joshua Abrams has been in the thick of Chicago's vibrant music scene for fifteen years, playing & recording as leader & sideman in projects across the genres. He co-founded the 'back porch minimalist' band Town & Country (Thrill Jockey/Box Media), & with Matana Roberts & Chad Taylor, the trio Sticks & Stone…
Way Down South
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010
Very limited self-released tour-only one-sided LP on clear vinyl from Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy. Recorded live during his recent tour of New Zealand in Christchurch, this is a more spacious take on the four-string guitar barbarism of A New Way To Pay Old Debts, with long seconds of silence connecting runs of squealing strings that combine iconoclastic Ayler/Beefheart style melodies with wailing wordless vocals that are somewhere between Loren Connors’ early Dagget …
The Electric Harpsichord
Finally available again, reprinted in 500 copies only housed in a elegant white boxed edition:: Known to the very few, The Electric Harpsichord is possibly THE obscure masterpiece of the days of the early American minimalism. Recorded live in 1976 after many years of study under the guidance of Pandit Pran Nath and LaMonte Young, it has finally found the perfect home in the DieSchachtel ART catalogue: a lavishly produced and innovative silver/black cardboard book+CD edition, that gives the …
Necro Acoustic
The gold-embossed box has been compiled by Norway’s Lasse Marhaug for release on his Pica Disk imprint, and is comprised of the albums Lights Out, Malaise, Decrepit, No Edit and Organ, each housed in individual CD wallets, together with a 24-page wallet.The laptop guitarist and all-round prodigious noise-maker is best known for his game-changing drone and dark ambient albums Sheer Hellish Miasma (Mego, 2002) and Imperial Distortion (Hospital Productions, 2008). Necro Acoustic’s contents are a li…
Location momentum
Eleh has been an enigma since the first record under that name was released in 2006. In numbered editions with letterpressed sleeves, usually on Important Records from the U.S.A., these vinyl-only releases were evidently a labour of love and attention. Further recordings have been released on the labels Taiga and Touch, making 11 vinyl editions in all. Eleh began as long ago as 1999 as an exploration of analog synthesis, emphasising low frequency oscillation and resonant acoustic phenomen…