Utility Fog

Sunday, 4th of December, 2011

Gosh, the year's almost over! I've been going through some 2011 releases, and it's been pretty awesome...
Much goodness tonight, including the perfect folktronica of Origamibiro... LISTEN AGAIN, see below, see podcast, see FBi On Demand...

We'll get to Origamibiro later, but it's a marvellous album. After an introductory piece from him/them, we had the 21-minute journey that is the opening track from the new He Can Jog release (mini-album? EP?) on the Home Normal-affiliated Nomadic Kids Republic. A fair bit of his recent work has been more drone-based, but the drones here meld into more rhythmic sections, then subtle beats and folktronic effects, and vocals here and there. Very lovely.

Second Language have just released the follow-up to last year's Music & Migration comp, once again raising money for BirdLife International. The list of contributors is fantastic, as was the last one, and includes Sydney's own Sophie Hutchings. But before we heard her contribution (featuring some wordless vocals in the mix), we started off with Dollboy's contribution, sounding susprisingly like Robert Wyatt, with piano and gradually more lush instrumentation, plus birdsong.

We find our way to Sophie Hutchings via her "remix" (or cover really) of Finnish artist Ous Mal, of tracks from his first album on Preservation. The Preservation posse have been asked to remix his tracks for a special compilation called Ous Mal is dead, commemorating the fact that he is discarding that moniker in favour of Nuojuva for his album next year. There are some very special interpretations here, and it's only available direct from the label.

Back to Music & Migration, we hear from UFog favourite of days of yore, James Brewster, whose recent album this year was perhaps just far enough into esoteric to not make the splash it should have — but to these ears an amazing amalgam of classical, folk and experimental electronic. His track on this comp manages to mix all of that into a little over 3 minutes...

It's been a turbulent year for Monk Fly, with successes for his Frequency Lab label, losses of relatives and the birth of his first child. This all comes out in his Odes EP, excellent emotion-laden wonky beats.

Remixing Maps and Diagrams, Part Timer gets his post-dubstep on with the first official release under his Dark Mahoney moniker. And he's also remixing Cokiyu as Scissors and Sellotape on her wonderful Your Thorn Remixes release, coming very soon from flau.

We jump straight in with two more tracks from there, killer remixes both from flau boss aus and idm/folktronica legend Opiate. So many more to play you next week too!

And then it's time to get back to Origamibiro. Although he's joined by Andrew Tytherleigh on a few tracks, Origamibiro is mostly the folktronic project of Tom Hill, who used to be half of celebrated idm duo Wauvenfold. As we heard, Wauvenfold could chop up beats with the best of them. Many years later came the first Origamibiro album, surprising us all with wonderful glitchy acoustic guitars, reminiscent of the heyday of folktronica. The new album is another step forward, both in compositional construction and production, incorporating layered violin with the electronics. It's pretty marvellous. I think I used that word before.

I played a gorgeous track from (still) the last Alister Spence Trio album because they're playing at 505 this Wednesday. First class contemporary jazz atmospherics.

On a totally different tip, making make hard-hitting punky rock, with a focus on rhythm and dynamics, and very little vocals. Haven't heard rock this good since Ohana.

Another change of gear brings us to cellist Theresa Wong, teaming up with Carla Kihlstedt to bring us a suite of cello, violin and vocal songs based around Goya's etchings on "The Disasters of War". The Unlearning features so many tracks it can be hard to get one's head around, but it sits in a similar genre to Kihlstedt's own songwriting work — adventurous and experimental but melodic music using strings for rhythm, harmony, texture and melody. In the declamatory, often political bent of the lyrics I hear a little of Dagmar Krause and Art Bears.

From here we segue via cello back into Ous Mal with a lugubrious inerpretation from Aaron Martin, and then a typical droning, chittering remix from Pimmon. Recommended.

Telafonica's new album is certainly a stayer, and happily jumps around many genres, from drone to indietronica to guitar based songs. I also took the opportunity to reprise a favourite indietronic song of theirs from a few years back.

Sydney's got a bit of a post-r'n'b beats scene springing up, to no small amount nurtured by a couple of blogs: Life Aquatic and East To West. The former is apparently releasing a 7" from Albatross shortly, from which we took a very pretty number and then finished with the remix by the internationally-celebrated (by Boomkat at least) Dro Carey.
In between, the floating vocal samples and frenetic sped-up 2step beats of Sepalcure, dancefloor creation of Machinedrum and Praveen.

Origamibiro - Dismantle Piece [Denizen/Abandon Building Recordings]
He Can Jog - Gather / Burn/ Echo [Nomadic Kids Republic]
Dollboy - Birds in my Mouth [Second Language]
Ous Mal - Marraskuu (Marraskewered by Sophie Hutchings) [Preservation]
Sophie Hutchings - Between Two Hills [Second Language]
James Brewster - Dissent en route [Second Language]
Monk Fly - Watching You Watch Him Pass Away [Frequency Lab]
Maps and Diagrams - Jupiter Incidental (Dark Mahoney Remix) [Sutemos]
Cokiyu - Textured Clouds (Scissors and Sellotape Remix) [flau]
Cokiyu - Gloomy Monday (aus remix) [flau]
Cokiyu - Round In Fog (Opiate Rework) [flau]
Origamibiro - Quad Time and the Genius of the Crowd [Denizen/Abandon Building Recordings]
Wauvenfold - Clip (clopt) [Wichita Recordings]
Origamibiro - noshi [Expanding Records]
Origamibiro - Impressions of Footfall [Denizen/Abandon Building Recordings]
Alister Spence Trio - neon and rain [Rufus Records]
making - Partial / AB [available from Bandcamp]
Theresa Wong with Carla Kihlstedt - Candlehat [Tzadik]
Theresa Wong with Carla Kihlstedt - What Courage! [Tzadik]
Theresa Wong with Carla Kihlstedt - We Shall See [Tzadik]
Ous Mal - Tuulensuoja (at breath's end) by Aaron Martin [Preservation]
Ous Mal - Marraskuu (Pimmon's Shallow Grave mix) [Preservation]
Telafonica - I Can Hear There's A Peace In The Dark [4-4-2music/available from Bandcamp]
Telafonica - Nothing Ventured [4-4-2music/available from Bandcamp]
Albatross - Casper's Theme [Life Aquatic]
Sepalcure - Eternally Yrs [Hotflush]
Albatross - Casper's Theme (Dro Carey remix) [Life Aquatic]

Listen again — ~ 152MB

Comments are closed.