Utility Fog

Sunday, 19th of July, 2015

Some more experimental francophone music tonight, plus mutant electronics from NZ and idm/techno from the UK.

LISTEN AGAIN for your twisted psychedelic needs... Stream on demand over there, podcast over here.

We start tonight with the latest Wire Tapper cover CD from The Wire. First up, noise-folk duo Ambrosia(@) give us what's clearly an excerpt of a larger work (it cuts off suddenly just around the Wire Tapper-approved 4 minutes!) of melodic maximalist electronics. Then UK hip-hop duo Baconhead give us some nice bass-heavy beats featuring Nongenetic, whose vocals are instantly recognizable to fans of Funckarma and the Shadow Huntaz. And finally, an amazing piece of psych-folk from Rachel Mason, excerpt from a work called The Lives of Hamilton Fish which sounds fascinating.

Next up, we feature some psych/post-rock sounds from France from Oiseaux-Tempête, whose debut self-titled album from 2013 was remixed by the likes of Scanner, Machinefabriek, Witxes and others last year. Their new album is a deeply moody affair - much like the first, it has a hefty dose of psych and krautrock, propulsive basslines, and passages of atmopsheric guitar licks... and also features ex-The Ex vocalist GW Sok on the title track.
Oiseaux-Tempête's guitarist Frédéric D. Oberland is also a member of another French psych/kraut/rock band, Le Réveil des Tropiques, whose self-titled double CD I picked up at the awesome record store MusicFearSatan in Paris (it's released on their in-house label). And in a nice segue from last week's show, Oberland collaborated on a gorgeous track from last week's feature artist Bérangère Maximin's 2012 album No one is an island.

And so we move to some equally psychedelic music in a completely different context - the mutant post-drum'n'bass sounds of New Zealand's Fis. His new album The Blue Quicksand Is Going Now is one of the most exciting electronic releases of the year, mutating the beats and basslines of his drum'n'bass origins far from the dancefloor. It's perhaps not quite as beatless as some reviews have suggested, but we have to go back to his first few releases to find much that's actually dancefloor-related: 2012's The Commons on Exit Records does feature autonomic & drum'n'bass beats of sorts, one even insisting it's a "Club Track"... his breakthrough EP on the quite prescient Tri-Angle label finds the still-present beats taking a back seat to the heavily-processed atmos, and even moreso, his follow-up EPs on his own Loopy label pointed the way to this incredible album. Enlisting Oren Ambarchi to remix the title track of his Speech Spirits EP was an audatious move and something of a statement of intent in terms of where he might sit genre-wise. Ambarchi contributes a surprisingly rhythmic track which brings his guitar into the mix and sits comfortably on the one groove for much of its 13:48 (of which we only heard a few mintues tonight!) Meanwhile, Fis has done a couple of high-profile remixes of his own. The familiar vocal samples of Machinedrum's recent classic of footwork-meets-drum'n'bass are preserved in amongst sub-bass drops and almost-rhythms. UK duo Akkord are pushing drum'n'bass & techno into abstraction in very different ways (a minimalist, Platonic ideal rather than a maximalist meltdown), and Fis's rework is a fascinating meeting of minds.

Finally tonight, another UK duo making classic idm to perfection: The Fear Ratio is two well-known techno producers who have been around since the '90s, James Ruskin and Mark Broom. But as The Fear Ratio they seem to be channeling Autechre circa Anvil Vapre and their Gescom side-project, among other classic idm material with its crunchy cross-over of melodic techno and b-boy hip-hop. So it's appropriate that their second album is released on Manchester's iconoclastic idm label SKAM. Both this and their first album on Ruskin's Blueprint Records are highly recommended.

Ambrosia(@) - Kitten, Puppies, Sunsets, Sex (Wire Tapper Edit) [Bomb Shop courtesy of The Wire]
Baconhead featuring Nongenetic - Foreign or Domestic [Bizarre Rituals courtesy of The Wire]
Rachel Mason - Nightmare [The Lives of Hamilton Fish courtesy of The Wire]
Oiseaux-Tempête - Yallah Karga (Dance Song) [Sub Rosa]
Bérangère Maximin - How warm is our love (feat. Frédéric D. Oberland) [Sub Rosa]
Le Réveil des Tropiques - Tunguska [MusicFearSatan]
Oiseaux-Tempête - Kyrie Eleison [Sub Rosa]
Oiseaux-Tempête - Call John Carcone (Scanner remix) [Sub Rosa]
Oiseaux-Tempête - Ütopiya / On Living (feat. GW Sok) [Sub Rosa]
Fis - Frost Pocket [Loopy]
Fis - Club Track [Exit Records]
Fis - DMT Usher [Tri-Angle]
Fis - Speech Spirits (The Nagger by Oren Ambarchi) (excerpt) [Loopy]
Fis - Iterations [Loopy]
Machinedrum - Eyesdontlie (Fis remix) [Ninja Tune]
Akkord - Gravure / Continuum (Fis Hayfield To New Mills Version) [Houndstooth]
Fis - Pedal [Loopy]
The Fear Ratio - Ferm [SKAM]
The Fear Ratio - Guv 1 [Blueprint]
The Fear Ratio - Blood Soldiers [SKAM]

Listen again — ~106MB

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