Room40

Lawrence English's name keeps cropping up in different places. I first came across him via Last.fm's radio streams in 2006. People I respect about these streams, Jaron Lanier writes, "Nothing kills music for me as much as having some algorithm calculate what music I will want to hear. That seems to miss the whole point. Inventing your musical taste is the point, isn’t it?" Well, of course. But you need resources to support your invention, and, in terms of high quality resources, Last.fm runs BBC specialist radio a close second over the last decade, for me. It's introduced me to music I would never have heard by other means. Two Weeks I'll Never Have Again and I've Been Happy Like This (free download via this link) are two of the tracks that first drew me to English's work.

Then in 2008 I downloaded from eMusic, first, English's EP with Philip Samartzis and then his solo Kiri No Oto. Apparently Kiri No Oto is Japanese for "sound of fog", and I know I got the download on the strength of Mapsadaisical's "not to be mist" review. I can't remember how I arrived at the Samartzis-and-Lawrence release.

More recently I've been coming across English as the man behind the Room40 label in Australia, featured here just a couple of weeks ago. That made me sit up and take notice — not just because it involved Alasdair Roberts — but because I like the idea of someone who both creates and curates, who makes synthetic sonic landscapes and also scratchy jigs and reels.

This all by way of preface to a CD which features only one 2'13" track credited to English with two collaborators. Nevertheless, the nature of the album means that his "curated and mixed by" contribution is crucial. For this has 32 tracks, 28 of which are under three minutes long. And they're mixed so that each one blends into the next. The effect is closer to one continuous piece of music than to a compilation. The personalities of the individual pieces — which come from some names well-known in the field (Janek Schaefer, Taylor Deupree, Tim Hecker, Chris Abrahams, Sebastien Roux and Philip Samartzis) — are elided, or at least suppressed, by this technique. Right in the middle of the album is one piece that stands apart, Sashay Away by Xiu Xiu, which, complete with unnerving voiceover, is also the longest piece by some margin.

The CD only arrived a couple of months ago, as a covermount with The Wire, and until recently I hadn't listened the whole way through. So I can't say whether I it's great, or just impressive, but it certainly makes me even keener to look out for more of Lawrence English's stuff, including the other Room40 sampler I have. © 

• Room40 - 10 (2010) - 320 Kbps

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