Utility Fog

Sunday, 23rd of January, 2011

Evening all! Lots of great music for you on this second-last Sunday of the first month of the year!
LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom.

I've started with two artists who did stellar shows at the Spiegeltent at Sydney Festival this week, with a favourite track of each which they failed to play at their gigs. Such is life, of course. Owen Pallett, back when he was Final Fantasy, put in an entry to Tomlab's Alphabet Series of 7"s, with two of my favourite tracks of his. "Hey, Dad!" used to be a staple of his live sets, and you can see plenty of amazing versions of it on YouTube.
Back in 2007, a friend alerted me to an amazing song by an Icelandic artist called Ólöf Arnalds. It's an absolutely gorgeous piece of music, and it's just lucky that she has lots of other beautiful tracks too, since I still haven't seen her play it live!

We'll be hearing quite a bit from Rachel Evans' amazing psychedelic folk/drone/ambient project Motion Sickness of Time Travel tonight. Her debut release on cult label Digitalis came out on cassette last year, and has now been re-released on vinyl. Meanwhile later on we'll hear some older stuff that she's now put up on her Bandcamp.

But first, let us hear of the genius of Fabio Orsi. Italy's produced so much great experimental music, and Fabio's firmly in the camp of drone meets post-rock and electronic... His new album on Preservation, Stand Up Before Me, Oh My Soul, is gobsmackingly good, featuring drums from Richard Baker (collaborator with (brother of?) Aidan Baker/Nadja), lots of noise and guitars and other sounds... I also featured some tunes from his excellent 3CD set random shades of day from last year.

Also (as with the Orsi release) part of Preservation's CIRCA 2011 series is Area C’s Map of Circular Thought, an album of deep hypnotic minimal electronica. These two make a pretty triumphant start to 2011 for the label.

Keeping it electronic and synth-laden is Cex, with a beatless track from his Evargreaz EP.
And back with the Digitalis label, Sweden's Roll The Dice give us an absolute epic of growing synth motion.

Sydney's Ghoul are finally getting their first "real" releases out, after having a free download EP self-released back in 2008 (which seems to have disappeared now). We heard the title track from that EP, a nice experimental, instrumental track, and then one of the hits from their new EP.

People have been talking about the dubstep-influenced beat to Ghoul's "3 Mark", and it sortof seems far-fetched to me - except that it is at the right tempo and mixed in perfectly with the Tunnidge track that followed it. Full points for proving myself wrong I guess! Very deep and dark track courtesy of the very reliable Deep Medi label.

Not so much dubstep as some kind of deep techno, next up we hear Caribou’s Bowls remixed by one of my favourite bands, Icarus. It's dark, dark, dark, and you can download it right now for free from Caribou's SoundCloud!

We then head over to Icarus' own SoundCloud, where they've put up some old and some (I'm guessing) new tracks for free download. Harking back to their drum'n'bass origins with a 45-second amen break rinseout, we then have something in their more recent sound — electro-acoustic sound art, with deeply-buried and obfuscated beat patterns...

Cheeky Sydney/Adelaide duo Collarbones have been ripping up the experimental dancefloors live of late, and in anticipation of their debut album's release on Two Bright Lakes, they've put out a free download comp of covers (including their infamous Justin Bieber cover) called Tiger Beats. Here they remix their friends and label-mates Psuche.

Yet another free download from Bandcamp (because it is a useful artist- and punter-friendly service) comes from LA collective Friends of Friends, who at the end of 2010 put out a compilation of affiliated artists doing tasty pop mashups. First off we heard Brainfeeder artist Strangeloop chopping up the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice".

Back with Collarbones, their remix of Underlapper’s "Kandos" keeps the lovely female vocal, and manages to simultaneously make it more experimental and more pop than the original.
And another LA artist, Shlohmo, takes Soulja Boy's "Pretty Boy Swag" and mashes it up with... Dead Can Dance? The Bulgarian Women's Choir? Awesome anyway.

While we're on the "pop" tip, back with Ghoul we have a more spaced-out jam, which should be a big hit this year. C'mon, make it so!
And two more tracks from Fabio Orsi, a heavily distorted track from the new album (oh so good!) and a beautiful glitchy ambient thing from last year's 3CD set.

Then finally we're back with Rachel Evans' Motion Sickness of Time Travel, exploring a few older releases via her Bandcamp. You can see the original releases via the links in the playlist — there's a cornucopia of music from her to explore, and while the Digitalis album possibly tops it all, there are many wonders to be found in there.

Two Aussie releases round out the show. Brisbane's The Rational Academy keep it rather arcane with a live version of "Satan" recorded in Japan, debut release for new label Bon Voyage.
And doomsters Michael Crafter’s new EP has two 20+-minute tracks on it which are perfect for zoning out on crunching guitars, but for the purposes of radio this track was the only one I could play (and it rocks too). Even more than last year, this will be the year of Bandcamp I think, so of course this is also available over there.

Final Fantasy - Hey, Dad! [Tomlab]
Ólöf Arnalds - Í Nýju Húsi [12 Tonar/One Little Indian]
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Mental Projection [Digitalis]
Fabio Orsi - Naked Trance [Preservation]
Fabio Orsi - I'm Happy Here Part III [Privileged To Fail Records]
Fabio Orsi - Papa Show Me Your Blues LPs [Preservation]
Area C - Map of Circular Thought [Preservation]
Cex - Day of 1000 Radiant Suicides [Automation Records/Bandcamp]
Roll The Dice - Swing [Digitalis]
Ghoul - A Mouthful of Gold [self-released]
Ghoul - 3 Mark [Speak n Spell]
Tunnidge - Dark Skies [Deep Medi]
Caribou - Bowls (Icarus remix) [free download from SoundCloud!]
Icarus - junglebells [available from Icarus' SoundCloud]
Icarus - Elliogy [available from Icarus' SoundCloud]
Collarbones - I See A Wolf (cover of Psuche) [no label/Bandcamp]
Strangeloop - Wouldn't It Be Nice (Beach Boys) [Friends of Friends] {free download comp from Bandcamp}
Collarbones - Kandos (remix of Underlapper) [no label/Bandcamp]
Shlohmo - Pretty Boy Swag (Soulja Boy) [Friends of Friends] {free download comp from Bandcamp}
Ghoul - Dreambeat [Speak n Spell]
Fabio Orsi - Full Metal Flat [Preservation]
Fabio Orsi - Radio Passing [Privileged To Fail Records]
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Memeplexes [Hooker Vision] {download from Bandcamp}
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - I Saw [Hooker Vision] {download from Bandcamp}
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Telepathy [Digitalis]
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - A Forest Aching Cold [Hooker Vision] {download from Bandcamp}
The Rational Academy - Satan [Bon Voyage]
Michael Crafter - Slurry Pills [Vacant Valley] {yes, you can download it from Bandcamp}

Listen again — ~ 167MB

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