Utility Fog

Sunday, 18th of September, 2016

Travel around the world with us tonight, with a melange of electronics, percussion, classical instruments, spoken word, vocals and guitars...

LISTEN AGAIN to the podcast here or stream on demand from FBi.

Dutch artists Michel Banabila & Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek have been collaborating together since 2012, and their fourth album Macrocosm is out really soon! We got a sneak preview of a few tracks (the first one, and last two from this little feature), and I recommend grabbing the older releases and following either on Bandcamp so you can grab the new one when it appears. We hopped back to their first self-titled release, and to the amazing 2013 release Travelog in the middle. Banabila has been interested for decades in sounds (musical and otherwise) from the far reaches of the world, and has a long career making hybrid music from studio techniques, tape sampling & then digital methods along with acoustic instruments. Machinefabriek is best known for long drone works, but also works in shorter forms and is a master of digital sound design. It's great to have something new from their collaboration, which as always is more than the sum of its parts.

Italian percussionist Andrea Belfi has been an integral figure in the Italian experimental music scene since the early 2000s, but works far & wide with musicians around the world - indeed, I came across him in 2009 through a collaboration with none other than Machinefabriek. He has long-running ensembles with David Grubbs (Belfi Grubbs Pilia), and Aidan Baker & Erik Skodvin (B/B/S/), and recently has been playing drums with Carla Bozulich. His solo work is quite sui generis, although there are echoes of the drones'n'grooves of recent Oren Ambarchi and even the The Necks in the way his tight drumming locks in with his pulsating electric machines. Earlier works have appeared on the Australian label Room40 and Skodvin's Miasmah. The latest beauty is from French vinyl label Latency Recordings.

Sydney composer & producer Nick Wales has been making music for dance & theatre in Sydney for many years (after forming his string quartet/band CODA in 1994). Last year he put out a wonderful album with Sarah Blasko, which like much of his other soundtrack works melds strings & other acoustic instruments with electronics. He was recently asked to create the music for a dance work that has just been premiered at the Opé de Lyon, and we're getting to hear an exclusive piece from that work tonight.

I've been hearing about Reuben Ingall & David Finnigan's Kill Climate Deniers project for a while now and it's been quite intriguing. It's a play, and obviously a political satire - and quite a meta one at that, as it seems to be about activitsts putting on a play called "Kill Climate Deniers"? In any case, the meta-sardonic work we heard tonight represents the "He loved Big Brother" moment at the end of the play, accompanied by Ingall's glitchy guitar & electronics.

Among the post-drone artists of the last 10 years or so, artists taking longform ambient and twisting it in with postrock, post-classical and electronic processing, Ben Chatwin's Talvihorros was always one of the most accomplished and absorbing. Last year he switched to using his own name, releasing an album of pastoral, much brighter music. The follow-up brings back some of the darkness, with undertows of growling synths under synth pads and acoustic twinkles. The album's scope is evident from the name heat & entropy.

It's hard to uncover much about US producer Exael past the music itself. He has a couple of releases up on his own Bandcamp, and two cassettes on two really interesting Chicago labels, Beer on the Rug and Lillerne Tapes (both of which have also released music by the unique & beautiful yyu). Just enjoy these late-night rainy techno & ambient pieces. Oh, and if you haven't got enough of the middle track, "Belly", there's a 42 minute version on his SoundCloud.

Norway-based Eva Pfitzenmaier performs as By The Waterhole with instruments & vocals running through loop pedals. For her albums, the looping aesthetic remains but is augmented and departed from, with synths, clattering beats, and vocals multi-tracked and processed along the way. We've heard quite a lot of Norwegian music on this show, but mostly from the extremely fecund jazz & experimental scene in Norway & Sweden; it's nice to hear something also experimental but from more of an indie/pop perspective.

Natalie Beridze is a composer, producer & songwriter based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She was known as TBA previous to using her own name. Her new remix EP comes out from Gudrun Gut's fantastic Monika Enterprise label, and features remixes from fellow Georgian and beloved idm producer Nikakoi and Thomas Fehlmann along with a host of newer artists remixing the track "Love Is Winning". Tonight we heard a tasty deep & skittery version from Berlin-based Italian producer Donna Maya.

And we finished up with a new track from Telafonica, released as part of their year-long Telafonica16 project, in which they are producing music as often as possible (it hasn't been quite every month) and releasing it as soon as they can. As usual, you never know whether to expect folktronica, electronic beats or jangling indie-pop. This time round it's a bit of motork riffing, drum machines and vocals.

Banabila & Machinefabriek - Stokjes [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Banabila & Machinefabriek - Flares [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Banabila & Machinefabriek - Spin n' Puke [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Banabila & Machinefabriek - Narita [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Banabila & Machinefabriek - Awake [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Banabila & Machinefabriek - Macrocosms [Banabila Bandcamp/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Andrea Belfi - Cera Persa 1 [Latency Recordings]
Nick Wales - Traditional Dances [unreleased]
Reuben Ingall & David Finnigan - Australia 2050 from Kill Climate Deniers [Clan Analogue]
Ben Chatwin - standing waves [Ba Da Bing]
Ben Chatwin - the kraken [Ba Da Bing]
Exael - gourd [Lillerne Tapes]
Exael - Belly [Beer on the Rug]
Exael - celm ii [Lillerne Tapes]
By The Waterhole - The End Of It All [Playdate Records]
By The Waterhole - I Fall [Playdate Records]
Natalie Beridze - For Love (Nikakoi Remix) [Monika Enterprise]
Natalie Beridze - Love Is Winning (Donna Maya Remix) [Monika Enterprise]
Telafonica - Bethany [Telafonica Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~110MB

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