Before the year leaves we acknowledge our debts, we try and address those with and through whom we live.  While discrete exchanges of information happen nearly all the time today, those who approach with a face and speak to us remain few and far between.  Musically, this is achieved by those who, against a backdrop of emulsion, of input-output, and controlled chain reactions, resist the draw of the digital download or the anonymity of standard jewel casing and interrupt, confound, and challenge with a body of work whose meanings are quite insidiously written all over it.  My thanks, then, to the following labels who seek to maintain this dimension in music: Spekk, Symbolic Interaction, And/Oar, Helen Scarsdale, Crouton, Mystery Sea, Room40, Gears of Sand, Die Stadt, Twenty Hertz, Edition Sonoro, Sedimental, Afe, Data Bloem, Data Obscura, Noble, Cronica, The Land Of, Experimedia, Kvitnu, 12k, Line, Winds Measure Recordings, Infraction, Dynamophone, Die Schachtel, Sirr, Leerraum [], Staubgold, Samadhisound, Schole, Flau, Elevator Bath, Palace of Lights, and countless others.  A few noteworthy pennyworths:

1.

GRAHAM LAMBKIN & JASON LESCALLEET
The Breadwinner
Erstwihle

2.

STEPHAN MATHIEU
Radioland
Die Schatnel

3.

JANEK SCHAEFER
Extended Play (Triptych For The Child Survivors Of War And Conflict)
Line

4.

ENCOMIAST
Encomiast
Lens Records

5.

JEREMY BIBLE & JASON HENRY
Vryashn
Gears Of Sand

6.

THE WINTERHOUSE
Lost
Data Obscura

7.

IAN HALLOWAY, DAREN TATE & BANKS BAILEY
Summerland
Quiet World

8.

LOREN CHASSE & MICHAEL NORTHAM
The Otolith
Helen Scarsdale

9.

LEVEL
Opale
Spekk

10.

ROBERT HAIGH
Written On Water
Crouton

11.

FENNESZ
Black Sea
Touch

12.

THE HAFLER TRIO
Dislocation
Korm Plastics

13.

CHRISTOPHER MCFALL
The City Of Almost
Sourdine

14.

JOS SMOLDERS
Gaussian Transient (Megaphone)
Non Visual Objects

15.

PAOLA PRESTINI
Body Maps
Tzadik

16.

MOU, LIPS!
Untree
mOAR

17.

BETA TWO AGONIST
Autumn Perdue
Databloem Records

18.

EDWARD RUCHALSKI
Dark Night
Afe Records

19.

ASHER
Untitled Fragments
Leerraum []

20.

JOE FRAWLEY
The Hypnotist
Self-Released

THE 2008 REVIEW

David Abravanel
Robert Rowlands
themilkman