NB: Next week I’m away in Melbourne, and the lovely Mr Shannon O’Neill will be filling in for me.

After last week’s Sufjan Stevens extravaganza, this week saw the announcement of a full album forthcoming in October! One absolutely lovely track has been released as a free download, and that’s what we started tonight with — the drum machine and keyboard start belying a typically beautiful and emotional song, with choral lines growing out of the spare beginnings. It’s a bit reminiscent of Zach Condon’s Realpeople stuff, but Sufjan’s actually been doing this kind of thing for ages.
Then, in celebration of seven years of bringing you wonderful music, we had Sufjan’s beguiling and bewildering song “Seven Swans”.

And then it’s back to 2003 for some of the many highlights from that era — truly a fantastic time to begin a regular radio show.
Four Tet’s greatest album, Rounds, came out in 2003. Around the same time I wrote to Tomlab, asking if they’d send me a promo of the new Books album for my new radio show, as I’d been a fan of their first album. And thus, the two genre-defining, unparalleled works of the folktronica/laptop folk/thingy genre were there for me, basically from the beginning.

Next up, something pretty idiosyncratic, from an experimental artist of enormous talent, whose first solo album came out in 2003. Carla Kihlstedt was known to me via her wonderful Tin Hat Trio, and while her various other bands (frequently showcased over the years on UFog) were mostly still a mystery to me, this solo album on Tzadik blew me away (as a string player myself) for the amazing musicianship on violin, viola and vocals, and the complex but touching songwriting.

It would have been a year or two earlier that I first saw Melbourne’s Curse ov Dialect live. Their first album proper, on a proper international label, came out in 2003, and got heaps of airplay on the ‘Fog. Avant-garde, politically-aware hip-hop of the highest order.

Matthew Herbert had been known to me mainly as a house producer, whose 4/4 stuff left me completely cold. I knew he was an amazing producer, and when I was told that his The Matthew Herbert Big Band was something truly special, I took that advice seriously, and thus discovered another of the gems of the last 10 years. Expertly arranged, both in terms of swing band and in terms of live sampling and editing, it’s an album that’s satisfying in every way – like the aforementioned Four Tet and Books albums: the perfect Utility Fog music.

Electric Company was showcased a couple of months ago on the ‘Fog. He has an album out and soon to be heard on this show under his real name, Brad Laner, and first made his name through his shoegaze band Medicine. This 2003 track is just a wonder of intense digital edits and a delightful trumpet(?) melody that crosses who-knows-what genres. Typical stuff from a chameleon like Brad Laner.

I still think of the 2003 album from µ-Ziq, Bilious Paths, as his last. It’s not, but it’s the last one (for now) with his characteristic insane beats and noise along with the melodies. I decided to play a pretty full-on hardcore track, ‘coz I can. Of course Mike Paradinas’ semi-eponymous Planet µ label features frequently on the show still, now. It’s one of the most adventurous and reliable labels in the world.

Dwayne Sodahberk is a pretty under-the-radar artist, but in the spirit of indietronica, which isn’t such a prominent genre now compared to 2003, his crunchy beats and processing accompanied some really lovely songs.

Finally, a few songs that slipped me by in 2003, but I caught up to later on.
Department of Eagles did release their debut album in 2003, but it was another year or two before the rest of the world caught up. In late 2005 I picked the album up when it was re-released by Melodic in the UK, and it was instant obsession. Both Fred Nicolaus and Daniel Rossen (the latter now an integral member of Grizzly Bear) of course are brilliant songwriters, and combining that with the restless experimental production on this album had me in seventh heaven.

Busdriver is my favourite rapper (big call I know), but I hadn’t heard of him in 2003. The album with Radioinactive, produced by the incomparable Daedelus, is an essential classic in my opinion.

Burning Star Core is easily my favourite noise/drone/psych artist, but I’ve only been into that sound for the last 2-3 years. I’ve managed, in trips to the US and trawling the interwebs, to amass a pretty huge proportion of his back catalogue, and this track from 2003 is pretty amazing…

Noise brings us back to the present, with one of the great breakcore artists, Venetian Snares, releasing his latest album on his own label (albeit still through Planet µ). It’s the best stuff I’ve heard from him in some time, and although “Hajnal2” still can’t compare to “Hajnal” from his great work of genius, Rossz Csillag Allat Születtet, it does add some pretty interesting elements of its own. Meanwhile, the title track has some gorgeous sounds along with the raucous beats. I did play a track from 2003 too! — from the rather unusual Moonglow 7”, a jazz-inflected downtempo piece.

I also wanted to feature a number of new oval tracks, as his new stuff is pretty incredible. It’s true that over 70 tracks on the new double CD, plus more on the accompanying EP(s), it gets a bit full-on, but the tracks with John McEntire on drums are particularly effective. I could listen to those ones for hours on end.
So it’s rather convenient that McEntire’s postrock outfit Tortoise (you may have heard of them) has a new EP out, although it’s Japan-only for now. Mark Ernestus turns in a fantastic drum-led remix which is miles away from his work with Moritz von Oswald as Maurizio.

I had to play some more tracks from the wonderful Nils Frahm again tonight, too. His piano playing produces entrancing harmonic forms, combining sometimes with reed organ or electronics. He’s an artist to watch, and the wintermusik album is something else, just gorgeous. Equally brilliant is the collaboration with Anne Müller, who’s a cellist, although most of the strings on this album sound more like violin… Vocals on tonight’s track are from Andreas Bonkowski.

Nils’ piano links us to a lovely piece by Greek-English artist Gavouna, whose track comes from a new compilation on new label Lost Tribe Sound, who will soon by releasing the new album from Part Timer.
Also on that compilation are Melbourne’s freak(y) folk duo Children of the Wave. New material from them is always welcome, and I think they’ve got an album coming soon too!

I know very little about Headless Horseman, but they also make a mysterious experimental indiefolk sound that hits the right spot. And like so much stuff these days, they’re up on Bandcamp, where you can listen for free and download for not very much.

Canberra artist Reuben Ingall has his latest album up on Bandcamp for $0, if you so desire, and among the minimalist guitar glitchery there are a few excellent pop songs (sharing those production values). It’s intriguing, and we should expect great things from him.

Lucia Draft is Morgan Cabot’s solo project, and it’s pretty amazing ramshackle folk stuff (in the best possible way) which, yes, you can get for free via Bandcamp. All the links are in the playlist btw.
And finally, more ramshackle indie from Hobart/Melbourne’s White Woods.

Sufjan Stevens – I Walked [Asthmatic Kitty] {forthcoming – download for free at Bandcamp!}
Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans [Sounds Familyre/Asthmatic Kitty]
Four Tet – And They All Look Broken Hearted [Domino]
the books – there is no there [Tomlab]
Carla Kihlstedt – Trampolina [Tzadik]
Curse ov Dialect – Baby How? [Mush]
The Matthew Herbert Big Band – Misprints feat. Shingai Shoniwa [Accidental Records]
Electric Company – i shall choice my self [Tigerbeat6]
µ-Ziq – Silk Ties [Planet µ]
Dwayne Sodahberk – The Agreeing Song [Tigerbeat 6]
Department of Eagles – The Horse You Ride [Melodic]
Busdriver & Radioinactive with Daedelus – Carl Weathers [Mush]
Burning Star Core – I Wanna Make A Supersonic Woman Of You [Dronedisco]
Venetian Snares – Goodbye9/Hello10 [Timesig]
Venetian Snares – This Bitter Earth [Addict Records]
Venetian Snares – Hajnal2 [Timesig]
Venetian Snares – Hajnal [Planet µ]
Venetian Snares – My So-Called Life [Timesig]
oval – glossy [Thrill Jockey]
Tortoise – Gigantes (Mark Ernestus version) [commmons]
oval – hey [Thrill Jockey]
Oval – Tapasbar [Thrill Jockey] {free download from Thrill Jockey, via FACT Mag!}
oval – i heart musik [Thrill Jockey]
nils frahm – nue [Erased Tapes]
nils frahm – Unter [Erased Tapes]
nils frahm & anne müller – long enough [hush records]
Gavouna – Tricle-Rem [Lost Tribe Sound]
Children of the Wave – Come Play Frolic [Lost Tribe Sound]
Headless Horseman – Growing [direct from Bandcamp]
Reuben Ingall – money [direct from Bandcamp]
Lucia Draft – Red [Lesstalk Records] {free download via Bandcamp}
White Woods – Now is Not a Time [Sensory Projects]

Listen again — ~ 171MB

From Sydney, a band of whom I don’t know a lot, but they do a great line in post-classical full-on drum’n'bass funk thingy. Thingy is my new favourite genre actually. I heard a few of these tracks from forced perspective last year when they put out a promo disc. The album’s pretty excellent, definitely recommended — and the first track I played reminded me in no small amount of the recent These New Puritans album.

OK, the big news of the weekend, other than the Greens’ unprecedented success, the huge informal vote and *ahem* anyway… the other big news was the sudden unexpected appearance of a new release from Sufjan Stevens! Out of the blue, we have an 8-track, almost 1-hour long “EP” called All Delighted People, and it’s pretty fantastic. Could it have been otherwise? And it’s available right now for only USD$5 from Bandcamp (therefore in pretty much whatever digital audio format you like).
There are two versions of the title track, and I played the slightly less epic one – a mere 8 minutes long. It liberally references Simon & Garfunkel’s classic “The Sound of Silence”, so what more excuse did I need to play it? Then “The Owl and the Tanager”, a beautiful Sufjan track with muted piano.

I shouldn’t need any excuse to play the gorgeous tune following either, but Ólöf Arnalds has a track on the new Second Language comp, Vertical Integration, and it’s not quite as great as this one, so a little skip back to 2007. I declared this on Twitter earlier this week to be one of the most wonderful folk tunes of the last few years (decade even?) and I think I wasn’t exaggerating.

From said compilation, we started with Pete Astor — who’s been making music since the ’80s and was involved with a few acts on the Creation label. It’s a lovely, lovely tune, and I took the opportunity to play a track from one of my favourite compilations, the Leonard Cohen tribute I’m your fan from 1991. Nothing can compare to Leonard, but his works do lend themselves to awesome covers, as heard here.
Back with the Vertical Integration comp, a typically pretty and engaging offering from Robin Saville, one half of Isan among many other things.
From Second Language’s previous (highly recommended) 2010 comp, Music and Migration, we heard Hauschka’s prepared piano and electronics.

Earlier this week I saw Chris Morris’s brilliant jihadist black comedy Four Lions. Morris has always had impeccable musical taste, and he’s with Warp Films, so it wasn’t altogether surprising when Aphex Twin’s solo piano “avril 14th” turned up in the very moving end sequence.

Sometime this week I was alerted to the fact that DJ Food had done a cover of The The’s classic tune “GIANT”. It sounded familiar, and when I got home I found the Instrumental on one of his (yes, DJ Food is finally just Strictly Kev) EPs from last year. I’m a The The fan from way back, so it was nice to be able to play the very long original and then the almost-as-long, impeccably-styled cover version.

Next up, the first this week from The Wire’s latest subscriber-only download comp, Below The Radar Volume 4. Renato Rinaldi is a rather below-the-radar artist from Italy, who contributes a fantastic slab of noisy full-spectrum analog synth insanity.
While it’s not wonky hip-hop, it’s pretty wonky, and led quite nicely into Terror Danjah’s latest Planet µ release, taking grime into pretty dubstep and drum’n'bass-influenced territories here.
From Lebanon, Munma isn’t really dubstep either, but once it gets going it’s Middle-Eastern dub with a definite low-end wobble to it. Really great.

Mickey Morphingaz’ remix of fellow Sydney-ites Kids at Risk is described in the press release as “dubstep” — a classic example of throwing popular genre terms around. It’s got a little bit of dub and a little bit of drum’n'bass to it, but it’s basically very dextrous hip-hop. I’ve asked Micha/Mickey for some more tunes, as he’s doing a really interesting klezmer/improv/hip-hop hybrid thing called The Asthmatix which I’d like to hear more of!

From Switzerland, Dimlite is released on Stones Throw off-shoot Now-Again, and although not all tracks on this mini-album are totally to my taste, the wonky aspect and the African influence on the opening track is something special. I’m sure this one will get all the attention it deserves.

Next, back to our two opening artists. forced perspective give us a track which is decidedly drum’n'bass, and then equally funk, and a lot else in between. Crazy, and crazy good.
And then, as promised, the entire 17 minutes of Sufjan Stevens’ “Djohariah”, from that new EP. There’s no other word to describe this except “epic”. It doesn’t go to as many places as his wonderful version of “You Are The Blood” from last year’s Dark Was The Night comp — but it’s definitely a journey, and you have to admire a track that takes almost 12 minutes to get to the verse…

Apropos of nothing much, I wanted to play two breakcore artists sampling Billie Holiday. First up, cdatakill does great injury to “Strange Fruit”, while somehow keeping its impact. And Venetian Snares’ “Öngyilkos Vasárnap” (the Hungarian name for the classic suicide torch song “Gloomy Sunday”) is well celebrated. (New Snares album will be here in a week or two – further cause for celebration!)

The end of the show was all about the latest REFRACTION gig to happen at UTS’ Bon Marche Studio. This coming Friday, the 27th of August, Sydney’s brilliant 3ofmillions (piano/organ, bass & drums), Germany-via-Sydney’s Hinterlandt and Canberra’s Reuben Ingall are joined as usual by a UTS student act for a gig at one of the best spots to see experimental music in Sydney.
On the night, 3ofmillions will see Adrian Klumpes playing electric organ (of some sort) and effects rather than piano, but the track I played was so chopped up in the studio that it’s unlikely to resemble anything they do live anyway. Suffice to say they’re a live experience not to be missed.
I saw Hinterlandt playing last weekend, and it’s an epic, hilarious and wonderful act. The delightful piece I played tonight does feature in the current set.
And Reuben Ingall is quite a discovery, with lo-fi guitar songs jostling with digital cut-ups and drones. And it’s available for as little as $0 on Bandcamp!

In between, a couple more perfect pop tunes buried in murk by White Woods. I love this album, so should you.

forced perspective – exit strategy [self-released]
Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People (Classic Rock Version) [direct from Bandcamp!]
Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence [Columbia]
Sufjan Stevens – The Owl and the Tanager [direct from Bandcamp!]
Ólöf Arnalds – Í Nýhu Húsi [12 Tonar]
Pete Astor – Tree of Birds [Second Language]
Pete Astor – Take this longing [Les Inrockuptibles]
Robin Saville – Wesley’s Fingers [Second Language]
Hauschka – Lipstick Race [Second Language]
Aphex Twin – avril 14th [Warp]
The The – GIANT [Epic]
DJ Food – GIANT (Instrumental) [Ninja Tune]
Renato Rinaldi – Untitled [courtesy The Wire]
Terror Danjah – Power Grid [Planet µ]
Munma – Bits And Dust [Planet µ]
Kids at Risk – I Am A Fire (Mickey Morphingaz remix) [Rice Is Nice]
Dimlite – Kalimba Deathswamp/Kurt Feelings [Now-Again]
forced perspective – you can’t look me in the eye [self-released]
Sufjan Stevens – Djohariah [direct from Bandcamp!]
cdatakill – Strange Fruit [Low Res]
Venetian Snares – Öngyilkos Vasárnap [Planet µ]
Hinterlandt – Lose Lose Situation [self-released]
3ofmillions – the hand of god [space dairy records]
Reuben Ingall – webbed [direct from Bandcamp]
White Woods – Sea Sickened [Sensory Projects]
Reuben Ingall – mountains [direct from Bandcamp]
White Woods – Elbows and Kneebones [Sensory Projects]

Listen again — ~ 175MB

So, I am again very late with writing these write-ups. I do so love having them here though – hope you do too! I do recommend this show (see podacst link at bottom) for some great coverage of post-classical piano music, futuristic drum’n'bass, and, um, other stuff…

DM Stith’s double CD album of remixes and reworkings made an appearance on last week’s show, but I have since gotten to give it a proper listening, and it’s very good value indeed. We had a couple of great beat-driven remixes which don’t lose the emotiveness and musicianship of the originals.

Baths, an LA artist on anticon, seems to mix it all up together into one package. His production isn’t as shiny or bass-heavy as some of his west-coast contemporaries, but he does share a bit of their shuffle and wonkiness in his combo of hip-hop and indie. The piano in ♥ seems to recall a bit of Doug McDiarmid’s playing with Why? (never a bad thing), and the guy is in fact a pianist. Very lovely stuff.

Meanwhile Antony, an artist I often can’t stand because of his vocal tics, delivers a riveting and ravishing version of Oneohtrix Point Never’s processed-vocals-and-analog-synth track “Returnal” on a new 7″. Despite the piano sounding totally “Antony”, it is in fact played (very sensitively) by Daniel “Oneohtrix” Lopatin himself. You Must Not Miss This! The Fennesz remix, mashing up the two versions, is pretty great too (although Fennesz is getting a bit stuck on his particular shtick at this point I feel.)

A very nice vocal track from the new Kammerflimmer Kollektief — see last week’s playlist for lots of these guys.

Next up, I couldn’t resist dropping a couple of tracks again from the wonderul fos, a young Greek lady living in London, making that kind of music I love best – all over the place, ramshackle yet controlled, emotive yet experimental, organic and digital and lovely.

“Discovery” of this week, though, is someone I’ve known about for a while but only just got a couple of albums by. Nils Frahm does that lovely post-minimalist (in the classical sense) piano thing that’s around a bit, recalling collaborator Peter Broderick. The Bells is nice, but wintermusik, from which we had 1½ tracks tonight, is absolutely scintillatingly gorgeous. Meanwhile, his latest release is a collaboration with cellist Anne Müller and is equally extraordinary – Frahm (or both?) on electronics, a small amount of piano, and HEAPS of strings. It’s kind of indescribable. Listen in (again) for some of what it sounds like, and tune in next week for more!
Oh, and Frahm’s piano playing on wintermusik reminded me a LOT of the delightfully delicate playing of Chilly Gonzales on his Solo Piano album. See what I mean?

Back in Sydney, Sophie Hutchings’s album is also based around the piano, along with some lovely cello on this track.

More Frahm and fos, and we’re back with the lovely Mr DM Stith. His Randy Newman cover is rather beautiful, with multi-tracked vocals — and another really great beat-heavy remix.
And another Baths track — much more hip-hoppy track.

We approached our drum’n'bass workout via Salem’s majorly-distorted slow-hop, which they seem to like to term “Drag”. Looking forward to this album!

I was listening to my Nine Inch Nails records earlier in the week, and thought it’d be nice to move into drum’n'bass-land via Trent Reznor’s twisted vision. The How To Destroy Angels EP from earlier this year was a mixed bag, but there were some good songs there, especially this one. Meanwhile, the NIN album Ghosts is quite a remarkable thing, going from AFX Selected Ambient Works-style tracks to essentially instrumental NIN to something altogether different, like this banjo-led piece.

And then… futuristic drum’n'bass madness, starting with Plug’s extraordinary remix of NIN, and one of my favourite of Luke Vibert’s Plug tracks as well.
I did this because of the rather brilliant new album from Macc and dgoHn on Rephlex. If you’re interested in mad-chopped beats and atmospherics (with live drumming! — albeit chopped & processed), you need to check this out.
For contemporary drum’n'bass we also heard from some great Critical Music artists, Sabre & Rockwell.
And we heard from of course one of my favourite bands ever, Icarus, with a track from their stellar first album. And also going back in time, Arcon 2 put out one single album of wonderfully fucked-up dark drum’n'bass… nice!

Just discovered: Rival Consoles’ first EP (his album is apparently more techno-oriented). Nice post-classical piano stuff crossed with drill’n'bass/breakcore! And a nice way of edging back into more sedate sounds.
BUT! I’ve heard quite a bit of Ólafur Arnalds, including seeing him (briefly) playing live in Paris a few years ago (and only being able to speak English to them – *hehe*), and his more ambient piano & strings type stuff didn’t really excite me. However, his newest release contains a couple of tracks with quite crunchy beats mixed in with his usual sounds, and it really works! Pretty thrilling stuff in fact.
These last two discovered via a free online compilation that came with the Nils Frahm album on Erased Tapes. Excellent tactic, you guys!

Finally we make it back to Australia and a couple of first-class releases from down south. White Woods are originally from Hobart, and feature my favourite Hobart artist Keith Mason. Wonderful dirty lo-fi indie; I must play more of this!
Psychic Baggage, meanwhile, are psychedelic noise rock/improv, and they make a great noise.

DM Stith – Thanksgiving Moon (Rafter remix) [Asthmatic Kitty]
Baths – ♥ [anticon.]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal (Antony version) [Editions Mego]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal [Editions Mego]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Move Right In [Staubgold]
fos – in harmony [near the exit music]
nils frahm & anne müller – 7fingers [hush records]
nils frahm – ambre [Erased Tapes]
Gonzales – Manifesto [No Format]
Sophie Hutchings – After Most [Preservation]
nils frahm & anne müller – journey for a traveler [hush records]
nils frahm – tristana [Erased Tapes]
fos – un courant [near the exit music]
DM Stith – Suzanne (Randy Newman cover) [Asthmatic Kitty]
DM Stith – Thanksgiving Moon (Michna remix) [Asthmatic Kitty]
Baths – Apologetic Shoulder Blades [anticon.]
Salem – Asia [Merok Records] {via Stereogum}
How To Destroy Angels – Parasite [self-released] {and still free!}
Nine Inch Nails – 28 Ghosts IV [self-released]
Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug (Plug remix) [Nothing/Interscope]
Macc and dgoHn – Long Tall Sally [Rephlex]
sabre – peril (club mix) [Critical Music]
Rockwell – Bone Structure (ft. Zero Tolerance) [Critical Music]
Macc and dgoHn – Mustard Greens [Rephlex]
Plug – Snapping Fuss [Law & Auder] {also released (perhaps accidentally) as “Natural Suction” on his Musipal album on Ninja Tune (under the Wagon Christ moniker)}
Icarus – Moon Palace [Hydrogen Dukebox]
Arcon 2 – The Beckoning [Reinforced]
Rival Consoles – Helvetica [Erased Tapes]
Icarus – Husky Offset [self-released, through Not Applicable]
Ólafur Arnalds – Til Enda [Erased Tapes]
White Woods – Ballet Tea [Sensory Projects]
Psychic Baggage – Sick in Memphis [Endless Melt]

Listen again — ~ 173MB

OK, I shall now attempt to write this thing. So much great music after all!
We start with On, a collaboration between the very ambient Sylvain Chauveau and percussionist and experimentalist Sebastian Hess. Chauveau is known for minimalist compositions for piano and other instruments, but here plays guitar, while Hess’s ride cymbals and drums float into the mix now and then. This whole album was mixed by Christian Fennesz, and has his usual lovely haze over it. It’s tended to wash over me on most listens so far, though.

And then BAM!, straight into it with Kammerflimmer Kollektief. I played a couple of tracks from their new album, the second(?) to feature the vocals (and various instruments) of Heike Aumüller, especially impressive in the last Kammerflimmer track I played. In between, a bunch of older tracks, going back more than 10 years, starting off quite noisy and percussive, through that particular German strain of dubby post-rock, and nice glitchy instrumental stuff.

Then a little bit of the wonderful pop of Menomena. Their new album is perhaps their most straightlaced, but was still constructed by the band sampling themselves and pieceing songs together in unusual ways. In between two songs from their new album Mines, we heard something very UFog – I had to excerpt it, so we had the last 2/3 of one of the tracks from their Under An Hour album, a fully-instrumental album of 3 long tracks, a soundtrack to a dance work. The familiar Menomena style, great drums, piano lines sidling alongside the barlines, massed saxophones etc (not all at once!) make it constantly re-listenable.

We have a one-track preview of DM Stith remix/cover action tonight – I just didn’t have a chance to listen to this double CD in time, but Son Lux is always reliable. Turns out I should’ve played the Roberto C Lange directly before it, and there’s heaps of good value on the album, so, more next week!

Also from the “just arrived” pile is Take’s album finally on CD. I’ve had a digital version for some time, so just the one track tonight, with lugubrious slowed-down vocals and typical LA-style production — synths and wonky beats and all.

Then dubstep heavy Mala (who was brought out for an era-defining gig at the Abercrombie in Chippendale a few years back, just as dubstep was starting to hit Oz bigtime) brings us a track from a split 12” with Four Tet, who is in his 4/4 mode still and um, fairly boring as a consequence. His remix of Jon Hopkins is actually quite pretty, but irons out the true charm of the track, as we hear directly afterwards (actually, that tune is one of a few absolutely magical pieces on Insides).

As we heard a few weeks ago, grime maestro Wiley recently released a ridiculous amount of music for free via Twitter. This week, another brilliant grime producer, Terror Danjah, put out an entire instrumental album for free (he also has something on Planet µ), and it was about as badly-tagged as the Wiley stuff, so it took me until after I played the track to realise it was a remix :)

The redoutable Chris Cook, a somewhat under-the-radar English artist, has a new EP out as Hot Roddy, on the Bit-Phalanx label. If you can get past the yucky all-Flash site, it’s a free download too. A mix of electronica, from the excellent almost-dubstep-influenced track I played tonight to nostalgic drill’n'bass…

Sydney all-girl band Ah! Pandita have just released a split 7” with folktronic/electronic artist Karoshi, so it’s great to hear one remix the other (from the digital version of the EP).

Also with the remix action, one-time indietronic hero Dntel hasn’t released much really great stuff for a while (sorry, the James Figurine stuff is a bit too techno-meets-cheesy-electronic-pop on the whole, and Dntel album #2 was mostly lame), but he remixes LA wonky-meets-indie artist Baths in fine style. I should have the Baths album for you next week.
Meanwhile Dntel continues to prove me wrong with a really brilliant instrumental track which, yet again, you can download for free! (see playlist below)

Not to be outdone with remixlandia, Melbourne’s riffy postrock outfit The Black Hundred are glitched up by Marcus Newman, who was last seen on these shores remixing another Melbourne postrock band, Radiant City. A seriously great surprise that you can get by purchasing the whole EP at their Bandcamp.

And now for some noise. I sortof wanted to play this stuff earlier, but I’m glad I fitted it in. The North Sea is Brad Rose, who runs Digitalis Industries – an online music magazine, a publisher, a producer of limited-edition cassettes and CDRs… and as well as all that, he makes incredible drone-noise stuff like we heard tonight. This is uncompromising sound, and yet tremendously listenable. So listen!

Another album I needed to listen to more after I first played it was the collaboration between So Percussion & Matmos. There are a number of great tracks there, and it seems like a true collaboration – creativity from both groups, melding together into a complete entity. Contemporary improv/composition/electronic squiggliness.

Oh, and those other Sydney electronic whizz-kids Seekae remix the aforementioned Karoshi, also from that digital EP.

Finally, Montreal lo-fi indie experimentalist Benoît Pioulard is back with another album on kranky, and this very poppy tune is the first we get to hear from it. Here’s hoping the album is as varied and fascinating as his previous efforts.

On – Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not (mixed etc by Fennesz) [Type]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – In Transition (Version) [Staubgold]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Nachtwach [payola]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Hysteria [Quecksilber]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Neumond inselhin [Temporary Residence]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Aum A Go-Go [Staubgold]
Menomena – Lunchmeat [Barsuk]
Menomena – Light (excerpt) [Barsuk]
Menomena – Intil [Barsuk]
DM Stith – BMB (Son Lux remix featuring Carlosaur) [Asthmatic Kitty]
Take – Creosote (featuring As Is) [Alpha Pup]
Mala – Let Me Go [Soul Jazz]
Jon Hopkins – Vessel (Four Tet remix) [Domino]
Jon Hopkins – Vessel [Domino]
Wiley – Taplin (Terror Danjah Refix) [Butterz] {self-released, free album thingy!}
Hot Roddy – The Quant Noise Super Hightway [Bit-Phalanx] {free download from label site}
Ah! Pandita – Gone Missing (Karoshi remix) [split 7" self-released by these two artists?]
Baths – Rain Smell (Dntel remix) [anticon.] {free download via Dntel’s SoundCloud}
Dntel – Super Antihistamine [Peppermill Records] {free download here!}
The Black Hundred – Not Tired of You (Marcus Newman‘s Freaking Wet Remix) [self-released through Bandcamp]
The North Sea – Bloodlines [Type]
The North Sea – Missed [Type]
So Percussion & Matmos – Cross [Cantaloupe]
Karoshi – Sleepwalker (Seekae remix) [split 7"]
Benoît Pioulard – RTO [kranky]

Listen again — ~ 174MB

Er, I have a good excuse for not getting this spiel done properly today – I got a new iPhone 4 on Friday, and the jailbreak was released today, so I’ve been having fun fiddling with things all day :P
And the weekend was mad busy rehearsing in Canberra with FourPlay for this thing with Neil Gaiman at the Sydney Opera House, see…

So… The Book of Knots, Charming Hostess, Tin Hat Trio and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are all projects featuring the wonderful violinist, violist and vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, a big hero of mine dare I say. Everything from klezmer & gypsy-influenced folk to death-prog-metal (well… sortof), Americana and improv.

Sophie Hutchings is the sister of Jamie Hutchings from the much celebrated indie band Bluebottle Kiss, although she’d probably like to be renowned for her own music, and so she should be. Her album is perfect for Preservation, with per piano playing either solo or nestling in lovely string and band arrangements, which sometimes don’t come in till halfway through a track. Recommended.

Mothlite again come to me courtesy of These New Puritans’ FACT mix. Very nice piano-led postrock/indie.

Portuguese electronic pop group :papercutz have a remix album out on Audiobulb with a whole lot of great remixers there. I’ll probably play a couple more last week. He Can Jog I need to check out more! Simon Scott’s a legend of the shoegaze movement now doing lovely lovely drone stuff.

fos is the most exciting find of the last month or more… A young Greek lady living in London, studying dance and making extraordinary experimental songs, made from a large array of instruments and electronics. Really highly recommended – listen to the show or listen to her online.

Sweden’s Andreas Söderström has been maing music as Ass since 2006, and it was around then that I heard his beautiful first album – guitar finger-picking, organ, field recordings… It’s no surprise that members of compatriots Tape appear on his newie.

Sydney’s own boy genius Marcus Whale aka Scissor Lock has an album out through our Canberran friends hellosQuare Recordings, and it’s some of his best work yet. Centring around his layered vocals, with deep electronic processing, it makes for beautiful listening.

Since I’ve been obsessed with the latest album and previous mini-album of Janelle Monáe’s the last couple of weeks, I thought I should give her a spin on the show. She’s very pop, very soul/funk/r’n'b even, but hugely inventive, genre-hopping, and just plain talented. As well as great songs and great musicianship, there’s plenty of interesting sounds on both albums, and it was great to see one of my favourite rappers, Saul Williams, appearing there too.

Jean Jacques Perrey has been around for yonks, and pioneered the use of the Moog synthesiser, inspiring decades of cheesy music. He’s now teamed up with Cosmic Pocket for some new tunes, and the album Froots Juice sees this work remixed by many experimental electronic artists from the ’90s to the present. Tonight we have Himuro, who I played some brilliant drill’n'bass from last week, Jega (who inaugurated the Planet µ label years back), and sometime-breakcore artist Ebola, bringing the heavy dubstep.

Our Melburnian friend Faux Pas has a new free EP out, and we took a couple of cuts — one featuring a very chewed-up sample of Carole King, and one remixed by the wonderful Pasobionic.

As we heard last week, Markus Popp has revived Oval to make some rather different sounds now – wonderful little vignettes using acoustic sounds and simple computer splicing, along with brilliant drumming and his ear for aural construction. I really can’t wait for the album, but meanwhile the Oh EP is pretty fab.

The Book of Knots – Pray (feat. Tom Waits) [arclight/Anti-]
Sophie Hutchings – Portrait of Haller [Preservation]
Mothlite – The One in the Water [Southern]
:papercutz – The gift of self (Simon Scott remix) [Audiobulb]
Simon Scott – She Came From The Sea [Immune Recordings]
:papercutz – A way to emerge (He Can Jog remix) [Audiobulb]
fos – sunset [near the exit music]
Ass – Astrid, where have you been so long? [Headspin Recordings]
fos – un courant [near the exit music]
Ass – Guidelines for bespoke [Headspin Recordings]
Ass – Back To The Old Ways [Headspin Recordings]
Ass – Hit considered [Headspin Recordings]
Charming Hostess – I’m Not Hungry [Vaccination Records]
Tin Hat Trio – Beverly’s March [Angel Records]
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Formicary [The End Records]
The Book of Knots – Traineater [arclight/Anti-]
Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi & Shahzad Ismaily – Listen With My Feet / Bicycle Brigade [Victo]
Scissor Lock – Broken English 3 [hellosQuare Recordings]
Mothlite – Hypnagogue [Southern]
Janelle Monáe – Cybertronic Purgatory [Bad Boy Records]
Janelle Monáe – Dance or Die (feat. Saul Williams) / Faster [Bad Boy Records]
Jean Jacques Perrey & Cosmic Pocket – Frothy (Himuro remix) [In Vitro Records]
Himuro – B To A [In Vitro Records]
Jean Jacques Perrey & Cosmic Pocket – Cheng Guy (Jega remix) [In Vitro Records]
Jean Jacques Perrey & Cosmic Pocket – No Frogman No Cry (Ebola remix) [In Vitro Records]
Faux Pas – I Will Follow [self-released] {free EP – grab here!}
Faux Pas – Pretend Tough (Pasobionic remix) [self-released] {free EP – grab here!}
Oval – hey [Thrill Jockey]
Oval – grrr [Thrill Jockey]
Sophie Hutchings – Toby Lee [Preservation]

Listen again — ~ 165MB

I played Salem last week via These New Puritans’s amazing mix for FACT Mag, and this week have a so-heavy-it’s-distorted slab of slo-mo hip-hop, plus a similarly slo-mo reworking of These New Puritans themselves. You can just about hear the original track if you stick it on straight after…

Here We Go Magic put on a great performance directly before Utility Fog, and “Only Pieces”, from their (at the time, just Luke Temple’s) previous album. There were a gratifying number of HWGM fans in the audience, along with the massed Grizzly Bear fans, who were rewarded with a long set of which I caught less than half (see how dedicated I am?)
Meanwhile, PVT have put together a nice remix of the single(ish) from the new HWGM album — yet another download from Stereogum for this week!

I’m pretty sure Zeal’s debut album will be a stayer. Indietronica from Melbourne, nicely shambolic, with some great tunes.

Like last week, we had a new track from part timer’s forthcoming album, plus a brilliant remix from the now-available remix disc which you can buy direct from him.

The L-O-A-F Explorers’ Club continues to turn up some excellent stuff. From the July EP we have Düsseldorf natives Hauschka & Stefan Schneider collaborating on a track that sounds more like the latter’s Mapstation than Volker Bertelmann’s prepared piano and strings as Hauschka. This month there’s also a lovely piece by Nils Frahm which I’m holding off on because I should have a couple of other releases of his in the mail for next week’s show!

Again tonight I wanted to play something from Chris Abrahams’s wonderful new album, and I played a track which actually Room40 made available on a compilation a while ago – it’s a fitting, beautiful end to the new album; and I wanted to play another little bit of The Necks for context (gotta love “context”), so we had a short and evocative piece from their soundtrack to Rowan Woods’ harrowing 1998 movie The Boys.

In between those two tracks, I played two very interesting little pieces by Markus Popp aka Oval, who’s no longer slashing up CDs and glitching his way through semi-aleatoric ambience, but instead is using live instrumentation in unusual fashions. Both these tracks are available for free, as is quite a bit of tonight’s music – see the playlist below for links.

Sydney’s This Is How It All Begins makes another appearance tonight. It’s hard to excerpt this album, which likes silences in the middle of tracks, and climaxes many minutes in, but it’s highly rewarding listening.

Nick Zammuto of The Books is blogging their new album track by track over at their tumblr, and on Saturday he wrote a fascinating post on what’s in many ways one of my least favourite tracks on the album, A Cold Freezin’ Night. It shares with a fair proportion of the album (and moreso than their previous releases) a dependence on gimmicky joke samples, which don’t take long (for me at least) to become annoying rather than enjoyable or clever.
Nevertheless, it’s impeccably constructed, and what’s particularly interesting in the post is Nick’s discussion of how he created the rhythm track — and subsequently his discussion of drill’n'bass’s influence on The Books’ art. Since I first met Nick online in the late ’90s on the (perhaps infamous) idm-list (immortalised in the artwork for Warp’s second Artificial Intelligence compilation in 1994), it was particularly nice to see him acknowledging this. I played a couple of old Zammuto tracks that he may or may not be embarrassed to see unearthed — one of them extremely obscure and having the dubious distinction of being a remix of sorts of none other than myself, as one link in a chain of remixes.
Nick also released, a couple of years prior to the first Books album, and extraordinary 3CDR set of abstract guitar-based rhythmic music, of which I played one track tonight.

English experimental artist Chris Cook has been sending me his music for yonks – long before I even had a regular radio show. Originally based in Brighton, he was very active in the improv scene there, as well as with the Wrong Music bunch. As Same Actor, he uses sitar and dulcimer along with electronic manipulation, while Hot Roddy tends to be more along the zany electronic lines. His 4-track EP of sitar-based Kraftwerk covers is out now (see below) and I’m awaiting info on when and where the excellent Hot Roddy EP (also a free download) is coming out. The latters “Best Before 1997″ is a perhaps sardonic reference to its drill’n'bass style.

Speaking of drill’n'bass, Himuro’s “Tonoma Shock”, from 1998, is one of my favourites of the genre – insane drum programming, classic bassline, drops and crescendos. He’s still making music, and predictably his latest EP is dubstep and wonky-influenced, and pretty nice — oh, and free!

Not free, but pretty cheap, is Autechre’s latest album, released as an EP. I’ve played it a fair bit already, and you can now read my review over at Cyclic Defrost. The track I played is, seriously, almost wonky hip-hop. Cute, eh!

Salem – King Night [Merok Records] {download courtesy Stereogum}
These New Puritans – Hologram (Salem remix) [Angular/Domino] {download courtesy Stereogum}
Here We Go Magic – Only Pieces [Western Vinyl]
Here We Go Magic – Collector (PVT remix) [Secretly Canadian] {free download from Stereogum}
Zeal – They All Say [self-released]
part timer – in your hand [lost tribe sound]
part timer – the runner (feat. heidi elva) (jazzy jones is nano remix) [self-released, click here for purchasing options]
Hauschka & Stefan Schneider – Common Exposure [L-O-A-F Explorers' Club]
The Necks – The Boys II [Fish of Milk]
Oval – Salajingle [Thrill Jockey] {free download from Thrill Jockey, via FACT Mag!}
Oval – Haste [Thrill Jockey] {free download from FACT!}
Chris Abrahams – Leiden [Room40]
This Is How It All Begins – Within [self-released, get from Bandcamp!]
The Books – A Cold Freezin’ Night [Temporary Residence/Spunk]
Zammuto – fairly aggressive salsa [Very hard-to-find track from the idm-list's remix helix in 2000. As it happens, this is a remix of my Raven track "I carpet bombed the old school"]
Zammuto – Full Martyr Status [No Type]
Zammuto – theme [Apartment B]
Same Actor – Computer Love [wombnet] {free download! Yes – Kraftwerk covers!}
Hot Roddy – Best Before 1997 [forthcoming free download EP]
Himuro – Tonoma Shock [Worm Interface]
Himuro – Pay For What [Bedroom Research] {free download!}
Autechre – rew(1) [Warp]

Listen again — ~ 146MB

Tonight we started with an awesome crunchy electronic tune from Loopsnake, who can be found spinning electronic music on FBi on Friday nights. To my mind this is his best work yet.

Aaron Martin is taking his always-beautiful music into the stratosphere on a new EP. Released on cassette & CDR, Night Erased Them All was written out of a need to have some music for a late-night road trip, and it’s certainly journeying music, quite psychedelic at times. Highly recommended — you can get it direct from the label.

See the last two playlists for a description of the Herfsttonen release. Tonight I played the last track (there are only three), from Gluid, post-rock and sound-art, featuring cello and vibraphone along with computer.

Next up, These New Puritans inspired a few tracks this week via their awesome mix for FACT Mag. Their recent album Hidden displayed broad influences including, clearly, that of 20th century composer Benjamin Britten, from whom we heard a couple of lovely English folk-inspired compositions, along with two highlight tracks from These New Puritans, and one track I found on that mix, the dark occult electronics of Salem.
And speaking of dark English-folk-influenced music, how about the very first single from Tunng?

Back to vibraphone (or something like it) with a rather lovely piece of electronic songwriting from proem, who some may remember from the IDM days.
Meanwhile, percussion meets electronica in a different way on So Percussion & Matmos’ collaborative album. It’s not as adventurous as I’d hoped, but it’s certainly very pretty…

Well, other than our Benjamin Britten detour earlier, perhaps the meat of the show is our little special on The Books. This is a band that’s been special to me for a long time – since before Utility Fog started with FBi in 2003. So I played at least one track from each of their albums, with acoustic guitar and cello combined with their love of weird found recordings. Obviously my favourite is the lemon of pink, and obviously just like all the artists who were doing the “acoustic instruments meet digital glitchery” thing in the mid-’00s, they couldn’t or were unwilling to keep it up.
Still, what they went on to with the next album, and further continue now, is fun and clever stuff, and there are truly beautiful songs in there too. I find they verge (as ever, perhaps) too much on jokey vocal samples now and then, but they always take a surprising, sideways approach to their material that can’t help grabbing the ear and the mind.

A rather convenient segue (er, in the middle) took us to Brisbane and producer Chris Perren’s Mr Maps project — named, as you might guess, for the Books track we heard before. This track comes from a very excellent forthcoming remix-swap project between Sydney’s Feral Media and Brisbane’s lofly, and here we had a remix of a favourite tune from the lovely afxjim.

Karsten Pflum’s debut album made an impression when the legendary English label Worm Interface released it in 2002. A few albums later, he’s still releasing melodic electronica with plenty of nice beats, and has even put out a dubstep-influenced 12″ on Ad Noiseam (might have that for next week’s show). I thought it was worth having a couple of older tracks along with a newie tonight.

Mike Cadoo’s been making electronica for ages, as part of Gridlock, as Dryft, and more recently as Bitcrush. His latest release is a remix album, and typically I’ve chosen the Funckarma remix tonight.

Loopsnake’s EP is backed with a beautiful drone piece, completed with distorted crescendo and decrescendo. Lovely.
One of the attractions of Owen Pallett’s remix 12″ (other than that it’s Owen) was that it featured a Benoît Pioulard remix. Pioulard has two lovely folky, shoegazey, experimental albums on Kranky, and here takes orchestral samples and fragments of the original track into a hazey vision very much his own.

Melbourne’s Part Timer has a new album coming soon, on US label lost tribe sound, and you’re gonna love it. With vocal contributions from Heidi Elva, Nicola Hodgkinson and his wife Dani, and some subtle beats, it’s been a long time coming (despite the steady stream of exclusive tracks and remixes he feeds me…)
Also on offer is a remix album which you can get direct from him and from selected online retailers. The many fine contributions include fellow Melbourneites Children of the Wave.

Finally, an artist we’ll be hearing much more from next week — Sydney composer Rob Underwood aka This Is How It All Begins. Piano compositions rub shoulders with chugging guitars, washes of distortion, and ambient passages. His album is very much made for full-album listening, but you can get a picture of his approach from individual tracks. I’m wondering, from the increasing distortion in “In a Layer of Frost”, whether the Frost being referenced is our Ben Frost. In any case, definitely an artist to watch.

Loopsnake – Good Morning Raver VIP [free download from Loopsnake!]
Aaron Martin – Limb Study [Sonic Meditations]
Gluid – 101009 (Hellige Ding’n) [esc.rec.] {you can get this album for €3 from Bandcamp – c’mon!}
These New Puritans – Hologram [Angular/Domino]
Benjamin Britten – The Driving Boy (Spring Symphony Mvt IV) [London Decca]
These New Puritans – We Want War [Angular/Domino]
Benjamin Britten – Dirge from Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings (performed by Peter Pears, Barry Tuckwell, English Chamber Orchestra) [London Decca]
Tunng – Tale From Black [Static Caravan]
Salem – Water [Merok Records]
proem – skulls [n5MD]
So Percussion & Matmos – Needles [Cantaloupe]
The Books – IDKT / I Didn’t Know That [Temporary Residence/Spunk]
The Books – enjoy your worries, you may never have them again [Tomlab]
The Books – the lemon of pink / the lemon of pink [Tomlab]
The Books – An Animated Description of Mr. Maps [Tomlab]
afxjim – The T in Tchina (Mr Maps remix) [Feral Media/lofly] {forthcoming…}
The Books – Thirty Incoming [Temporary Residence/Spunk]
Karsten Pflum – Thael Spir [Mindwaves Music]
Karsten Pflum – Te [Worm Interface]
Karsten Pflum – God [Rump]
Bitcrush – Colder (Funckarma remix) [n5MD]
Loopsnake – As If To Sleep [free download from Loopsnake!]
Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (Benoît Pioulard remix) [Domino] {the EP is free for an email address still, if you’re lucky!}
part timer – the runner (feat. heidi elva) (Children of the Wave remix) [self-released, click here for purchasing options]
part timer – interalia [lost tribe sound]
This Is How It All Begins – In a Layer of Frost [self-released, get from Bandcamp!]

Listen again — ~ 172MB

FBi DJs have been asked to support before and after, and this Thursday, the 15th of July, I’ll be playing the late set from 9:45-11:45pm.
So if you want to get some interesting ideas up ya, and also hear some Utility Fog music straight from my hard drive, head down to Artspace at 43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo, this Thursday night.

Department of Eagles have released (er, are about to release) a compendium of recordings from between their two albums — mostly material they recorded towards an aborted second album. Dan Rossen put down a number of sketches in the studio, one of which turned into a small part of a Grizzly Bear song (see later this evening), and a couple of which have some lovely little tape manipulations plus piano.

And piano is what you expect from the greatness that is Chris Abrahams. A bit later on, I’m hoping to bring you a bit of his work which is more like solo Necks piano, but his new album for Room40 is a Numba One Stunna, as this piece for organ and glitchy piano bits shows.

Around 2006, a couple of new tracks appeared on Department of Eagles’s MySpace, and I loved them so much I ripped them off there. While “Balmy Night” finally made it on to their real second album, In Ear Park, its partner “Deadly Disclosure” has remained unreleased until now. The whole of the new Archives 2003-2006 really is great, but this one song is worth the price of admission 11 times over…

And then… guess what? Amanda Fucking Palmer has been recording Radiohead covers, and OMGZ they’re great! Well, the one that we’ve gotten to hear so far is! Her trademark ukulele, plus piano à la the original, and it’s a really great take on a great song! Can’t wait to hear more.

Speaking of great takes on great songs, Vancouver’s CFCF is one of a number of artists to taken on Owen Pallett on a new 12”, and adds a stompin’ beat and yet leaves the song to do its great thing.

Meanwhile… earlier this week, in a move that was either very canny or completely insane, Wiley decided to dump 11 enormous zipfiles full of music on the internet, as a way of clearing the decks so he could start afresh. It’s an amazing, scattered, mostly un-tagged mess of sound he’s bequeathed us. The ACOUSTIC tune sounds awfully like a little bit of Crash Test Dummies… on the other hand the other track is quite a manic piece of electronica. Nice!

Speaking of free downloads… the two Funckarma tracks from tonight are free, but only if you’ve bought something from their online store. Since re-vamping their website over the last 6 months (at a guess), they’ve been putting up deluxe versions of some of their older (and also more recent!) work in download formats, so it’s been well worth frequenting their store. These two tracks are a little “thank you” from them to the people who’ve supported them in this way, and both are great. Bass-heavy electronica, nice warm and big sounds and hard-hitting beats.

Sydney’s Silver Bone Tone continues to make music at an alarming rate. Tonight’s tune was some very nice dubbed-out electronica. Check out some of the music of this hard-working local musician at his Bandcamp.

Future Sound of London have been gradually flooding the world with copious amounts of music from their archives, and somehow in the midst of it all have started sneaking out new music under the FSOL moniker – real ambient techno stuff, rather than the (also excellent) psychedelic pop/rock stuff they’ve been doing as Amorphous Androgynous. Environments 2 and now Environments 3 (certainly the latter) appear to be new music, and it’s very fine too, including some live piano and strings. Looking forward to number 4, guys!
At some point in the near future I might do a bit of a look back at the 20-odd years of FSOL’s music. There’s many treasures to be found there (as the foot or so of FSOL CDs on my shelves can attest to…)

From there we found our way to a very very nice drum’n'bass tune from 2007, featuring Macc (from whom we heard last week), and 0=0 (from whom we used to hear quite a bit in the breakcore years). I really hope 0=0’s much-vaunted (for many years) album on Planet µ really does arrive sometime in the near future; meanwhile Macc & dgoHn’s album on Rephlex is out soon and you’ll definitely be hearing from it here.
Back in 2003, when UFog and FBi began the long journey to today, 0=0 released an insane little verison of the Super Mario Brothers theme, which I revisited tonight. Gamers take note!

I received a rather beautiful and mysterious package from Estonia in this week’s mail, complete with nice Estonian stamps. It came from the artist Evestus, whose industrial breakcore-influenced music has really impressed me. We heard the sort-of title track “Dramacore”, which features amen breaks, yelling and I think some of that cello quartet that’s all over the album. It’s crazy stuff as only Eastern Europeans can do.

Back to Australia, we join Edwin Montgomery who has some Travel Ideas, to be released soon. The most song-oriented of this evocative multi-instrumentalist’s releases yet, it’s a challenging and rewarding affair.
Zeal’s debut album (after a number of well-received EPs) is delightfully raw (yet accomplished) indietronica, and it won the heart of FBi’s Dan Zilber, who has made it this week’s Album of the Week. Always nice to hear something out of the ordinary getting some extra spins.

And thence, back to Chris Abrahams. His new album (and second) for Room40 is pleasingly experimental, and we had some nice chopped drum breaks and found sounds in my second selection; meanwhile I thought I’d also play a solo piano piece from his 2001 album Glow, and something bizarre and lovely from the first Room40 album, Thrown. However, I’ve just now been listening through just about the entirety of the The Necks’s back catalogue, over a marathon 2-day period, and I wanted to give a bit of context with this iconoclastic trio of his, so we heard from their second album (from 20 years ago!), which rather cheekily starts with a brief sample of their debut album Sex, before a sinuous bassline from Lloyd Swanton takes over, Tony Buck joins on drums, and Chris starts with a very bizarre, perfectly off-key piano thing.
Chris is also an inveterate collaborator, and I thought I’d play a favourite track from a couple of years ago, from Dean Roberts’ autistic daughters project. Lovely stark songwriting.

From the same compilation that brought us Paul de Jong’s track last week, we hear Dutch artist MiaMia, who combines field recordings from the Okkenbroek area with spoken word and ambient electronics. Beautiful stuff. I’ll play the last track from this comp next week!

And from Holland to Italy, with the remarkable sound artist Fabio Orsi, who has recently released a 3CD set on the boutique UK label Privileged To Fail Records. One can only hope it does really well for them — it’s very nicely presented, and compiles a large amount of really great music from Orsi, washes of shoegazey guitar and electronic chords, disembodied samples, some beats, plenty of glitches and crunches. It’s something I imagine most Utility Fog listeners would get a lot out of.
Last year, Sydney’s Preservation label released a collaboration by Orsi with another Italian, Valerio Cosi. Wonderful drones and post-punk vocal samples and buried beats.

And finally… two more tracks from the wonderful Department of Eagles. First off, a studio sketch from Dan Rossen, part of which turned into the intro for Grizzly Bear’s “Easier”. Second was one of a number of just great indiepop songs that would have remained unreleased were it not for this collection. So let’s give thanks to Bella Union and go and grab another 31 minutes of beautiful sounds from Dan & Fred…

Department of Eagles – Practice Room Sketch 5 [Bella Union]
Chris Abrahams – There He Reclined [Room40]
Department of Eagles – Deadly Disclosure [Bella Union]
Department of Eagles – Balmy Night [4AD]
Amanda Palmer – Idioteque [self-released] {yes, through Bandcamp! Rock it}
Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (CFCF Remix) [Domino]
Wiley – ACOUSTIC / IIIIIMMMMMMM [both released as part of his great big Twitter dump a couple of days ago! Try this Grimeforum thread for a round-up of all the links...]
Funckarma – Clod Nuem [a free download for people who've bought music direct from funckarma.com]
Silver Bone Tone – DS Template [unreleased, but heaps of his tunes available at his Bandcamp]
Funckarma – Stamp [a free download for people who've bought music direct from funckarma.com]
Future Sound of London – Heart Sick Chord [Jumpin' & Pumpin']
Macc & 0=0 – Bridge Over Broken Water [Subtle Audio]
0=0 (as “mr. mezzy”) – s.m.b.#1, w-1,l-1 [Dross:tik]
Evestus – Dramacore [self-released Estonian industrial gothic breakcore madness]
Edwin Montgomery – train song [self-released, due out soon!]
Zeal – Vigilante [self-released]
Zeal – Robellion [self-released]
Edwin Montgomery – recollections [self-released, due out soon!]
Chris Abrahams – Twig Blown [Room40]
The Necks – Garl’s [Fish of Milk]
Chris Abrahams – Self Taught Bouncer [Vitamin]
Chris Abrahams – Can of Faces [Room40]
autistic daughters – bird in the curtain (feat. Chris Abrahams) [Kranky]
MiaMia – The Branches And The Frogs [esc.rec.]
Fabio Orsi – I’m Happy Here (parts 3 & 4) [Privileged To Fail Records]
Fabio Orsi – Radio Passing [Privileged To Fail Records]
Fabio Orsi / Valerio Cosi – The Frozen Seasons of Lysergia (Part One) [Preservation]
Department of Eagles – Practice Room Sketch 2 [Bella Union]
Department of Eagles – Brightest Minds [Bella Union]

Listen again — ~ 168MB