I may have needed less convincing than most, but Broken60 (an offshoot of Ruairidh Law aka The Village Orchestra’s Broken20 label) have published a manifesto of sorts which outlines the reasons why they feel they feel the need, in 2012, to start a cassette label. Dave Donnelly aka Production Unit, who runs the tape wing, rightly focuses not on the purely physical aspects of the object itself, even if a reference to licking the cassette’s cover borders on the fetishistic, but on the interrelationship between the object, the sound that is produced, and the emotions that are evoked. The format demands that we take the time to think more broadly about how we experience music, as being more than just the waves of sound which emerge from speakers/headphones, crashing repeatedly into the crevices of our cranium. The first release on Broken60, Magnet Marsh by 10-20 feels like it was purposefully designed to permit an exploration of this. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.

On 17 July 2011, the minimalist musicians Stephan Mathieu and David Maranha performed an acoustic concert in the tennis court at the Fundação Serralves park in Porto. Stephan Mathieu played his virginals harpsichord with electromagnets, while David Maranha used violin and shruti box. The performance lasted 29 minutes and 20 seconds. The performance centred around a drone in the key of A. In February 2012 a recording of that performance is being issued on a single-sided LP by Cronica and Serralves under the name Strings. Read the rest of this review (it gets better, I think) over at The Liminal.

It feels like it has been a particularly good year for live music in London – I saw a lot of shows, but missed just as many that I really wanted to see. A glance at the top 10 below shows, yep, as expected, a convincing Cafe Oto majority, with 6 of the top 10 places going to performances I saw in that most fertile of places. Judging by the shows they are already announcing, next year is likely to be just as good – I’ll see you there, in the front row.

1. Peter Brötzmann Tentet at Cafe Oto. Review

2. Eliane Radigue retrospective, various venues (photo by Alex Delfanne). Review

3. Joe McPhee and Decoy at Cafe Oto. Review

4. Ghédalia Tazartès at Cafe Oto. Review

5. Barn Owl at the Supersonic festival.Review

6. Entr’acte showcase at Cafe Oto. Review

7. Bill Orcutt at Cafe Oto. Review

8. Ryoji Ikeda at the Barbican. Review

9. Henry Grimes at Cafe Oto. Review of another recent Henry Grimes performance

10. Raster-Noton showcase at the Roundhouse. Review

My picks for this year were fed into The Liminal’s hydra-headed beast of a list, along with my commentary about the year end process. You can read all that over there. The world would clearly be a far poorer place though without my own list getting an airing in its own right though, so I’m publishing that below. The nature of my involvement with The Liminal means that, for the first time, like, ever, I haven’t actually reviewed all of my top 20, so some of the links are to reviews that someone else has written. The estimable Matt Poacher, most likely.

1 Ellen Fullman, Through Glass Panes (Important) My review

2 Chris Watson, El Tren Fantasma (Touch) My review

3 Grouper, AIA Dream Loss/Alien Observer (Yellow Electric) My review

4 Peter Evans, Beyond Civilised And Primitive (Dancing Wayang) My review

5 Michael Chapman, The Resurrection And Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock (Ecstatic Peace) Matt’s review

6 Julia Holter, Tragedy (Leaving Records) Matt’s review

7 Stephan Mathieu, A Static Place (12k) My review

8 Okkyung Lee/Phil Minton, Anicca (Dancing Wayang) My review

9 Margaret Dygas, Margaret Dygas (Perlon)

10 Bill Orcutt, How The Thing Sings (Editions Mego) My live review of Bill Orcutt at Cafe Oto

11 Gillian Welch, Harrow And The Harvest (Acony)

12 Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Couleur Libres (Constellation) Matt’s review/interview

13 Joe McPhee/Chris Corsano, Under A Double Moon (Roaratorio) My review

14 John Chantler, The Luminous Ground (Room40) My live review of John at Cafe Oto

15 Daniel Menche, Feral (Sub Rosa)

16 Khyam Allami, Resonance/Dissonance (Nawa Recordings) My review

17 Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, Low Fired Clay Escape (Carnival) My review

18 Cut Hands, Afro Noise (Some Friendly) My review of Cut Hands at Supersonic

19 Jenny Hval, Viscera (Rune Grammofon) Matt’s review

20 Jurgen Muller, Science Of The Sea (Digitalis)

As 2012 is the 30th anniversary of their first release, I recently interviewed Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding from Touch for the Liminal. We discussed a wide range of subjects, including their genesis, principles, key relationships, attitudes towards technology, and plans for Touch 30 events. The interview is split into three parts – Ritual, Contact and Vectors.

At a recent concert at London’s Vortex jazz club, Evan Parker described his co-performer for the evening, the trumpeter Peter Evans, as “a genius”, and as “the future”. Having heard him play several times now, including a dizzying solo set at 2010′s Freedom Of The City festival, I let the first description slide without question. The second was more intriguing. The future of what, precisely? The future of jazz? Improvisation? Noise? Sound? The trumpet? His live performances make notions of genre seem inadequate, while attempting to locate his approach on a temporal scale is equally problematic. His new record for the Dancing Wayang label, Beyond Civilised And Primitive, seems to revel in this. Read The rest of this post over at The Liminal.

More short reviews by me, of albums by Na Hawa Doumbia, Minamo, The Living Room, Hebden/Reid/Gustafsson, and Ravalico/Khroustaliov. Read them over at The Liminal.

The title of the sound recordist Chris Watson’s new CD, borrowed from a Mexican film from the 1920s, translates as “The Ghost Train”. The name makes reference to the fact that the recordings were made while he was working on the BBC show Great Railway Journeys, where he took a ride on one of the very last passenger trains which ran from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Gulf on the other side, a journey that since 1999 can no longer be made. However, as you listen to it while studying a map of the route, from Los Mochis in the west, through Chihuahua and Mexico City to Veracruz on the east, you begin to trace a number of branch lines which lead off from the main line. You find yourself making connections, hitching your wagon to a number of different trains, in order to chase down some fascinating – and very resonant – ghosts from history. Read the rest of this review at The Liminal.

I see the rhythm section of Steve Noble and John Edwards together in London quite often, but I’ve never managed to catch one of their rare appearances in Decoy, a trio which also features keyboard player Alexander Hawkins. As soon as you walk into the venue in which they are performing, the reasons for the infrequency of this combination are very tangible on stage: Hawkins plays an original Hammond B3 organ through an original Leslie cabinet. Those are some seriously big, seriously expensive, and seriously difficult to transport pieces of kit. However, they also make a seriously wonderful sound; particularly when deployed not just in conjunction with the always listenable Noble and Edwards, but with the seriously great Joe McPhee sitting in too. Read the rest of this post at The Liminal

You’re right – that isn’t a photo of Marc Ribot. Or of anyone else named on the ticket to this event, which listed the following artists’ names on it: Marc Ribot, Matthew Bourne, Mayming. However I wasn’t at this gig to see any of those. It seemed a little odd to me just how little billing was being given to the presence of one Henry Grimes as part of Ribot’s trio, given that his recorded – and unrecorded – history makes for a legend that would dwarf that of most jazz musicians on the planet. Read the rest of this review here.