I approached this playlist selecting some favorite tracks from the Aguirre catalog. So often, affinity is affected by personal interest in something. No exception here, as I’ll explain. I try to be transparent about what draws me to them, rather than taking a more critical or objective approach.

Sean McCann
“Aerial Sapphire Show”
From The Capital

“Second vinyl release The Capital by rising drone-star Sean McCann. These all new recordings prove - once again - his ability to keep his stretched out and richly textured ambient drones right on track… gives the feeling of a complete orchestra with his music.”

Reading this excerpt of the press release for this Sean McCann release, it feels very quintessentially of a time around the turn of the century when music composition and production felt very microscopically focused. There were two primary levels to appreciation, both very zoomed-in. Firstly, that the texture of the piece should give the impression of being very wide and dynamic moment-to-moment. Secondly, that the changes in the music be very finely attenuated. Slow-change music from Pauline Oliveros and Eliane Radigue was starting to be extremely influential. It was not just important that a massive amount of care was being put into the texture but that one felt that artist and listener would be in agreement that the changes in the music happened neither too soon or too late through deep investment in close listening. The combination of these things often evoked a sense that some level of “orchestral” coordination was happening within the artist but also in concert with the listener.

The first sense that things would come to move in a different direction was Jim O’Rourke’s I’m Happy and I’m Singing And A 1,2,3,4. O’Rourke had been a collaborator with Mirror (arguably the pinnacle of the aforementioned practice) and produced likeminded work of his own a decade earlier (think Terminal Pharmacy, Scend), but this body of work related directly to composers like Roberto Cacciapaglia and Arturo Stalteri whose music changed slowly but used more stripped down instrumental textures to make a rounder, more phase-driven music. In the years following, I think the balancing of clear musical forms alongside a healthy allowance for deep listening to texture and slow changing dynamics began to be felt not just in McCann’s later work but also musical trends within Aguirre and beyond.

JD Emmanuel
“Part I: Morning Worship”
From Ancient Minimal Meditations

This was the first JD Emmanuel album that really clicked for me. It feels more Cluster influenced than Terry Riley, in a good way. In the summer of 2010 I invited JD to come over from Galveston to play a show at Bill Baird’s then studio, Baby Blue, on Austin’s East Side. It was the after party for a listening event for Elodie Lauten's Piano Works Revisited, which Unseen Worlds was putting out at the time. Sarah Hennies opened and I think about five people paid the door fee plus a few stragglers. Sarah’s sets had become totally mind bogglingly good at that point (she was playing her “Psalms” piece and Alvin Lucier) and I remember stepping outside to chastise my friends that they were shooting the shit instead of catching some of the best overtone music happening anywhere in the world. Those two events were part of what convinced me to leave Austin for New York, where I could actually share that sort of thing with other people. Thankfully, Sarah ended up following on her own for her own reasons and it’s clear how much better her music has been received and shared since coming up here. Not to say there’s a bad scene in Austin, it can just be a tougher place to find a community that feels like there’s room to grow within. JD was a champ and rolled with it all and I think dug the loose vibe we had at Baby Blue. I’d end up seeing JD performing in New York before too long, too. I felt like we all really shared something special that day, even if part of it was us all needing a little more.

Panabrite
“Slipping Into The Deep”
From Sub​-​Aquatic Meditation

I discovered Norm Chambers’s music not through his Jürgen Müller or Panabrite monikers but through the music of Harry Hosono. Back when all my music friends from college in Austin moved to Seattle for grad school and a change of scenery, they were smartly quick to connect with the guy who seemed to know by far the most about Hosono on RateYourMusic.com, Norm. In around 2006, Hosono was becoming a major interest of ours and Norm had already walked the path many times over and was more than willing to connect with us IRL about it. I think that Norm’s good nature and magnanimity are reflected in both his music and his love of Hosono.

James Ferraro
Rerex

Admittedly, I haven’t heard this whole album. I haven’t heard a lot of Ferraro or Vaporwave in general. From my limited experience, its feels like a form of field recording. I experience it most similarly to the works of Francisco López, whereby a gentle construct has been place around environmental field recordings. But whereas López works with audio material that I’m regularly deprived of, Ferraro’s material I have embedded deep in my psyche through mostly not my favourite, saturated in malaise memories - channel surfing, shopping mall lollygagging, video store grazing, radio skimming. When James Ferraro was really taking off, I missed it completely and I tried to pick up the pieces a couple of times at shows in Brooklyn to find out what the excitement was about first hand. The first was a deeply ambiguous apartment/gallery show where Ferraro was a no-show or the party never booked him in the first place, it was unclear (the only other time an artist was a no-show for a concert I went to exclusively for them was Kool Keith at the Warped Tour in Corpus Christi, TX, so that is actually kind of bonus points for Ferraro in my book). The second time was for a Todd P booked show that got busted by the cops almost as soon as doors opened and for which no refunds were given. That was less cool, but no less memorable.

Maggi Payne
“Hikari”
From Ahh​-​Ahh

I love Maggi Payne for having been a good steward for the Mills community and history for so many years, something that has been so inspiring to me and others on such a deep level for so many years and which continues to be an example. On top of that, Maggi Payne’s music is just so uniquely hers and beautiful, and this record is in particular. It showcases such a dynamic range of textures, techniques, and feelings. The video art that goes with this is top notch, as well.

Lol Coxhill & Morgan Fisher
“Que En Paz Descanse”
From Slow Music

When I was heavy into Canterbury prog, Lol Coxhill stuck out to me as someone I wanted to know under records of his own name rather than part of a group, and this is the record that seemed to be the one that really fit the bill for what I hoped for. At the time, it was nearly impossible for me to locate for whatever reason. When I finally first heard it, I felt disappointed because it wasn’t what I imagined it would be - expectations got in the way. Hearing it again now, it sounds exactly like what I should have expected. Rather than compelling stillness through slow music, these compositions are full of mystery and searching - much like Werner Herzog's Aguirre film (the label's namesake) itself.

Read McCutchon's Unlimited Editions article in The Wire 442. Wire subscribers can access the article via the digital archive.