Playlist 08.04.18 (9:11 pm)
Big show with sad news and exciting news...
And BIG THANKS to Krishtie Mofazzal for enthusiastically filling in for me last week!
LISTEN AGAIN for all them feels... Stream on demand from FBi alwayyys, or podcast over here...
Tunng - Flatland [Full Time Hobby/Tunng Bandcamp]
The duo of Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders as Tunng took my breath away in mid 2004 when I heard their first single, released originally by Static Caravan. Arcane English folk channeled through glitchy electronic production, it was everything Utility Fog was initially conceived to be about, and they became a staple on the show for some years. A few years in, Sam Genders left to pursue some indie & folky directions of his own, and to me the band somewhat lost its way, with grating generic singalong folk songs... (of course your mileage may vary!) So it's with great pleasure that I learned that the original duo have gotten back together, with this single auguring a full album, and what a delightful song it is too. Can't wait for more.
Flame 1 - Shrine [Pressure]
Epic teamup of Kevin Martin aka The Bug and Burial, creating basically just what you'd expect - rainswept dark post-dubstep music. It's a very low-key two-tracker, but really lovely and a nice first entry for The Bug's new Pressure label.
Zozobra - The Vast Expanse [Hydra Head]
Old Man Gloom - Close Your Eyes, Roll Back In Your Head [Tortuga Recordings]
Old Man Gloom - Girth And Greed [Tortuga Recordings]
Old Man Gloom - Sonic Dust [Tortuga Recordings]
Cave In - The World Is In The Way [Hydra Head]
In the first in two pieces of tragic news that hit the music world last week (and we've had more this week although not so much in the Utility Fog realm...), Caleb Scofield passed away in a car accident at the age of 39. Best known probably as the bass player in Cave In, who started off as hardcore/metalcore but moved into alternative rock waters, and in a way came back again... Most significantly to me, Caleb was the bass player in the immense, inventive supergroup Old Man Gloom, featuring Scofield alongside ISIS's Aaron Turner, Converge's Nate Newton and the cheeky Mexican drummer Santos Montano. Montano also played with Scofield in his heavy, rifftastic bass-led solo act Zozobra (named for the same Mexican figure that inspired Old Man Gloom).
Scofield leaves a young family. A YouCaring fundraiser was setup which far surpassed its $1,000 goal within hours, and has now raised over $100,000.
Alias - Divine Disappointment [Anticon]
Anticon - We Ain't Fessin' [Anticon]
Alias - Watching Water [Anticon]
Alias - Unseen Sights (feat. Markus Acher) [Anticon]
Sole - Every Single One Of Us [Anticon]
Sage Francis - Product Placement [Epitaph]
Alias - M.G. Jack [Anticon]
B. Dolan - Fifty Ways To Bleed Your Customer [Strange Famous Records]
Alias - Gold cLOUDDEAD Skiez [Anticon]
A few days after the death of Caleb Scofield, last Sunday for me, the news hit that Brendon Whitney aka Alias had passed away of a heart attack. It's been a while since we had significant work from Whitney - a solo album came out on Anticon in 2014, and he's had an important hand in plenty of (alternative) hip-hop releases but more in the background. But his impact on a lot of UFog favourites through the years can't be overstated. From B. Dolan's incredible 2010 album Fallen House, Sunken City that could not exist without Alias's hard-hitting beats, to many of Sage Francis's important albums including the 2005 turning point A Healthy Distrust, and early work by the likes of Sole and others, and back to his own rap work in the early days, some of which we sampled from early Anticon compilations... And of course there's that collaboration with Markus Acher of The Notwist, a plodding piece of sad-hop that I've loved for a decade and a half. We finish with a track from Alias's last solo album, from 2014, which incorporated trap & bass elements, and in amongst it a rather nice tribute to Odd Nosdam's production...
Brendon Whitney also left a young family behind. There's a GofundMe setup to support them, and I recommend dropping some cash if you can afford to.
Fake - Lo Res [SUMAC]
BLACK VANILLA - SMACKS [SoundCloud]
Cassius Select - Joy Mile [Unknown To The Unknown]
BV - Huh [Black Vanilla Bandcamp]
Fake - blame! [Fake Bandcamp] {under talking}
Cassius Select - Essence [Accidental Jnr]
BV - Hounds Out [BV Bandcamp]
Fake - Living Hard [SUMAC]
We learned in the last week or two that Lavurn Lee, long fixture of Sydney's music scene, is returning to his original home of Toronto. As a result, the beloved BV - his trio with Marcus Whale and Jared Beeler - are going on long-term hiatus. Beeler has also moved to Melbourne, and it's him along with a couple of other Sydney ex-pats in Melbourne who've setup the SUMAC label that just released Lee's new self-titled album for his minimalist grime/trap/r'n'b project Fake. Lavurn originally came to notoriety in Sydney via his r'n'b vocal looping & electronics as Guerre, but apart from the legendary BV who trickle out pure gems every couple of years, he's received international acclaim for his techno/bass productions as Cassius Select. There's a hefty grime influence on his sounds - not just the rawness of the bass & electronics, but also in some of the cadences of his rapping (although no doubt Southern hip-hop has a more substantial presence). BV has always approached the dancefloor as a dark, post-cyberpunk battlefield, and Cassius Select tends to look to the darker ends of the dance spectrum too. With Fake, Lavurn is breaking down hip-hop into its most fucked-up & experimental formats too, processing his vocals, samples and beats as much as possible, and keeping the bass heavy. Mad props.
Listen again — ~204MB
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