Playlist 18.02.18 (8:08 pm)
Post-classical, avant-garde, krautrock, noise, techno... we've got a bit of everything tonight...
LISTEN AGAIN, you'll get it eventually... stream on demand from FBi, podcast from here.
Madeleine Cocolas - II [Self Center Records]
Madeleine Cocolas - I Can See You Whisper [Futuresequence]
Madeleine Cocolas - Stalactite [bigo & twigetti]
Madeleine Cocolas - Umbra [Self Center Records]
Madeleine Cocolas - III [Self Center Records]
Although she's been based in North America for many years now - first in Seattle and now in New York - Madeleine Cocolas is originally from Australia, where she worked as music supervisor on many TV programs. A classically-trained composer, she combines her piano, many synths and skills at arrangement with, now and then, skittery electronic beats and shoegazey effected vocals. I've been a fan for a few years now and it's great to have something new in the form of the works for dance appearing on her new album SOS.
Evelyn Ida Morris and Aviva Endean - Details Make Diffo [Pikelet Bandcamp]
While we wait for the amazing solo piano & vocal album coming from Evelyn Ida Morris (of Pikelet fame) in the next few months, here's a single track they've recorded with Aussie clarinettist Aviva Endean. Both were undertaking residencies at the time - Morris at the Kunstlerhaus Boswil in Switzerland and Endean in upstate New York. The processed piano and expressive clarinet begin the song in beautiful manner, and everything switches out into twitchy electronics and fractured instrumental interjections once Evelyn's almost-atonal, pitch-shifted vocals come in. It's wonderfully strange.
Didier Petit - La Marche de l'Ombre [RogueArt]
Didier Petit - Sons de la Lune [RogueArt]
Couple of tracks from the new album by French cellist Didier Petit, who's been active since the 1980s, and is quite important in the French avant-garde/improv scene. Although there are plenty of connections with avant-garde & experimental techniques on this album, I was surprised to discover that he frequently sings over his cello, sometimes with similar extended techniques, but often beautifully melodically. It seems there's always another brilliant cellist out there doing innovative stuff for me to discover.
Nighports w/ Matthew Bourne - Exit [The Leaf Label]
Nighports w/ Matthew Bourne - Fragile Years [The Leaf Label]
Adam Martin and Mark Slater's Nighports project is based on one rule: all sounds on each release must only come from the featured musicians. For their new album they're collaborating with the jazz-trained English pianist Matthew Bourne, who they've recorded on an array of pianos, each with its own distinct aural characteristics. There are rhythmic, cut-up pieces here, and contemplative ones. It's sumptuous and rewarding listening.
Divide and Dissolve - Assimilation [DERO Arcade]
Divide and Dissolve - Reversal feat. Minori Sanchiz-Fung [DERO Arcade]
The new album from Melbourne duo Divide and Dissolve has just landed. Essentially an instrumental doom duo of guitar and drums, their guitarist Takiaya Reed also plays gorgeous, pure saxophone in a number of tracks, and it's all through the first track tonight. Their focus is on dismantling the white supremacy, and once again on this album they've teamed up with poet Minori Sanchiz-Fung on one track. Her work "Immigrant Mind" interrogates the English language as host to colonialism, both externally and internally...
Tandaapushi - Introduction [Jvtlandt]
Tandaapushi - Part 1 [Jvtlandt]
Featuring Léo Dupleix, Laurens Smet and Louis Evrard, Tandaapushi create an idiosyncratic version of krautrock, noise rock, free improv and so on - with keyboards & electronics taking the part of the "lead" alongside rhythm section. The rather abstract "Introduction" is a bit of a red herring on their new album Boromean Rings - most of it pursues repetitive structures with a rhythmic drive which is catchy no matter how noisy or atonal everything going on around them seems to be.
The Mermaids - Gypsy Guru [Pulled Out Records]
The Mermaids - Pulled Out [Pulled Out Records]
Newcastle duo of Nicholas French (Polyfox and the Union of the Most Ghosts, Crab Smasher) and Michael Liestins (Cock Safari, Grog Pappy), The Mermaids make sample-based noise music using circuit-bent toys, 8-track tape, turntables, and just about anything else. It's joyful chaos, and the LP from Pulled Out Records comes with incredible artwork from French's Crab Smasher cohort Grant Hunter.
Miracle - The Seventeen Nineties [Relapse Records]
Miracle - The Parsifal Gate [Relapse Records]
Daniel O'Sullivan and Steve Moore both get around - playing in doom & black metal bands, or with indiepop artists, or dark ambient... As Miracle they're doing some kind of odd krautrock/spacerock-tinged '80s electro-pop, and weirdly after one album on Planet µ they now find themselves on heavy metal stalwarts Relapse Records. There are no heavy riffs to be seen though - just heavily sequenced synths and drum machines, along with O'Sullivan's usual emotive vocals.
JK Flesh - PI04.03 [Pi Electronics/JK Flesh Bandcamp]
The brilliant Justin K Broadrick, fresh from a big last year releasing a second new album from the revived Godflesh, a compiled album from JK Flesh and a new JK Flesh EP, has now dropped another new EP of industrial techno as JK Flesh. The latest iteration of JK Flesh is motorik, bass-heavy, acid-tinged techno and happily it seems to have struck a chord. I was lucky enough to see him to it live in Oxford last year, and it solidified what a brilliant musician he is to me - as comfortable and competent at crafting a journey for the dancefloor in beats and effects as he is with riffs and vocals. As long as he's churning out music I'll be there...
Fahmi Mursyid - Hareup [Tandem Tapes]
Although the excellent Tandem Tapes label is based in Jakarta, they're run by an ex-pat Aussie and have a decidedly international outlook. Nevertheless they do showcase plenty of great experimental Indonesian artists, and we finish tonight with Bandung-based "sound sculptor" Fahmi Mursyid, who uses granular synthesis to transform found sounds, guitar and traditional Indonesian instruments into surging drone and glitch works. I love the snatches of choral harmonies floating in and out of this particular track.
Listen again — ~195MB
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