Utility Fog

Sunday, 19th of March, 2017

Eclectic mix of tunes for you tonight…

LISTEN AGAIN… and again… stream on demand, podcast below, whatever floats your boat.

Sydney producer HC Clifford starts us off with a lovely piece of electronic indiepop, one of his first, I believe, with his own vocals. And very sweet-sounding they are too. He’s got a great mix of influences and looks to be making some great pop songs.

Melbourne producer, radio star, Gotye collaborator etc Tim Shiel continues his soundtracking of computer/mobile games with a score to a new puzzler called Induction. It’s a tasty confection of quasi-classical influences and idm-style beats. Just what you want in a game soundtrack, and very well done as ever.

Next three tracks are selected from a line-up that I’d like everybody to come along to this coming Thursday night (23rd of March) because it features my own band Tangents (I do not own them, we’re all very egalitarian) in our last Sydney/Aus show until late July. Here’s a Facebook event – it’s at the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville and features three excellent electronic acts selected by TEEF including the Sydney duo Iljus Wifmo, and conversely also features the oud-led instrumental doom of Hashshashin. Tangents will, as always, play a fully improvised set ranging across postrock, folktronica, jazz(?) and ???.

Tangents’ laptopist/producer chap Ollie Bown is one half of the (originally London-based) celebrated post-drum’n’bass duo Icarus, and his other half, Sam Britton, is a member of a bunch of other bands too, including the very rhythm-based Fiium Shaarrk, who feature as well as Britton the percussionist Maurizio Ravalico and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner. As with Icarus, the rhythms tend to wrong-foot the listener, with odd movement of the downbeat, but there’s lots of busy movement and rhythmic interaction, along with mysterious almost-melodies and textures. It draws as much from grindcore as jazz or Italian horror movie soundtracks, and is always enjoyably bewildering.

Kailin‘s presumably debut album on the label Mistry (run by Beneath) combines beautiful ambient electronics with grime, house and footwork influences over its eight tracks. I can find no info about the artist, but it’s certainly a great advertisement for Beneath’s label – post-dubstep electronics for dancefloor and bedroom.

Iranian-born, Austin, TX-based producer VVV aka Shawhin Izaddoost has a host of releases on various labels and has been floating around on the internet since at least 2010 when I recall his remix of Caribou’s “Sun” racking up bigtime streams and downloads on SoundCloud. He surfs the hantological samplewaves but of late there’s a skittery footwork influence along with the 2step, house, industrial and of course idm. Back in 2014 Seattle label Hush Hush Records released a very chill EP which was great – but still, I feel he’s really come into his own on this new mixtape for his local label Holodeck Records.

René Pawlowitz has been making music as Shed for over a decade now, and is something of techno royalty at this point. People on forums ask how to make the “Shed” kick drum sound… It’s somehow appropriate that his latest albums find him on Modeselektor’s Monkeytown Records – melodic, gregarious electronic music with a techno/house grounding. But Shed’s credentials go deep – his earliest albums were on legendary Berlin club Berghain’s Ostgut Ton label. But his take on techno is steeped in breakbeats, and he’s always had a sound that to me harkens back to classic ’90s idm, when the Detroit techno influence mashed up with b-boy hip-hop, electro and nascent jungle (and indeed there’s a drum’n’bass track at the end of his second album, Traveller). It’s a heady mix and never less than a joyful listen.

HC Clifford – Luck [unreleased, stream at SoundCloud]
Tim Shiel – Undone 1 [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
Tim Shiel – Undone 2 [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
Iljus Wifmo – Scatter [TEEF Bandcamp]
Hashshashin – Disintegration [Art As Catharsis]
Tangents – N-Mission [Temporary Residence]
Fiium Shaarrk – Krypton Tunning [Not Applicable]
Fiium Shaarrk – Fear Of Mapping [Not Applicable]
Fiium Shaarrk – 12 Bells on Dope [From ringtone collection Fiiumtones vol. 1, available from their website]
Fiium Shaarrk – The Last Common Sense [Not Applicable]
Kailin – Voyeur [Mistry]
Kailin – Wake In Grey [Mistry]
Kailin – Fracture [Mistry]
VVV – No Left Hand Turn [Holodeck Records]
VVV – another way down [Hush Hush Records]
VVV – Talking in the Dark [Holodeck Records]
VVV – Lens & Filter Repair Station [Holodeck Records]
Shed – Flaf2 [Monkeytown Records]
Shed – Estrange [Ostgut Ton]
Shed – Leave Things [Ostgut Ton]
Shed – Silent Witness (excerpt) [50 Weapons]
Shed – Up the Hills [The Final Experiment]
Shed – Outgoing Society [Monkeytown Records]

Listen again — ~193MB

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