Utility Fog

Sunday, 13th of December, 2009

This week Utility Fog joined the world of Facebook, where you can become a fan and suchlike... You can also follow me on Twitter - I haven't found a reason to create a special UFog Twitter yet, but if people are interested I could. Remember you can always subscribe to this blog's RSS feed (rss/atom) or the announcement list too.
LISTEN AGAIN link can be found at the bottom of the playlist as usual. Go download!

Starting with the noise/drone of Yellow Swans, from a just-released live album. Beautiful guitar melodies and harmonic progressions buried in there...
Then we had two bands who played similarly enveloping live gigs in Sydney this weekend - Akron/Family and Animal Collective, both bands at the vanguard of freak folk, whatever that may be :)
Winter North Atlantic’s debut album of lovely folktronica inspired the next batch: I first heard of him via Fieldhead, who sent me his remix (played herein) a good year ago... It's been some time but the album itself was worth the wait, as we hear here. Northerner had an album on the same label as Fieldhead, and all have remixed each other - that's how they play around there!
Back to Fieldhead, whose own album is one of the albums of the year I daresay, here represented by a remix from the hard-working Machinefabriek.
Thence we segue into another track from Machinefabriek’s collaboration with Melbourne guitarist Tim Catlin, beautifully produced as always.
Montreal's glitch king Tim Hecker follows, remixing compatriots Bell Orchestre from an excellent recent remix EP. Not too much of their strings/horns/postrock vibe left here, though.
Next up, the wonderful Tim Shiel aka Faux Pas has a new EP out! One new tune, and a bunch of remixes. We hear from Kane Ikin, one half of Perth band Solo Andata, with a beautiful minimal take with great beats. After a detour with the blissed-out hazy pop of Toro Y Moi, we head back to that EP to hear the track Tim sampled for "Silver Line", from Melbourne alt.country band The Orbweavers - it's a beauty!
Drawing on the quiet & repetitive sounds of late-period Talk Talk as well as drone and other influences, Zelienople’s new album is beautifully evocative. I played the longest track from it, because I can (what better reason do we need?) and because it's my favourite.
Speaking of long... Greg Davis has a new album on that other English "Home" label, Home Normal, and it's two half-hour-ish tracks — but that's not going to stop me when it's such wonderful music, so we had all 35 minutes...
Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australian label that releases music from all around the world, so tonight we are introduced to the excellent ambient and crunchy electronica of Italy's Elisa Luu. Very fine indeed.
Then from the Bay Area chapter of the world dubstep cartel we have Kush Arora with Sub Swara, and very nicely dubby it is too.
CD player troubles meant that I had to swap the next track out until after two tunes from the incredibly JG Thirlwell, Australian ex-pat and musical chameleon. We had one track from his instrumental Manorexia guise (and I'd like to play more of this in the new year, since I only just got hold of it). Followed this with a tape collage from the early '80s released under the Foetus name this year.
And it was not inappropriate to jump from there to our last track, the latest signing to Manchester's legendary SKAM label, Japanese IDM artist Nuearz, fun computer gamey manic stuff.

Dove Yellow Swans - tk3 from Live During War Crimes #3 [Release the Bats]
Akron/Family - Many Ghosts [Dead Oceans/Spunk]
Animal Collective - What Would I Want? Sky [Domino]
Akron/Family - Lumen [Young God]
Winter North Atlantic - The Maid (Fieldhead remix) [direct from Fieldhead]
Winter North Atlantic - Bokor [Boltfish]
Northerner - 1976 [Hibernate]
fieldhead - songs well known (machinefabriek remix) [home assembly music]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Glisten 2 [Low Point]
Bell Orchestre - Water/Light/Shifts (Tim Hecker remix) [Arts & Crafts]
Faux Pas - Silver Line (Kane Ikin remix) [download from Faux Pas!]
Toro Y Moi - Blessa [Carpark/Mistletone]
The Orbweavers - Diving Bell [via Faux Pas]
Zelienople - Can't Stop [Type]
Greg Davis - Burlington, Vermont (05/12/09) [Home Normal]
Elisa Luu - The Garden [Hidden Shoal Recordings]
Kush Arora - Constructing the Absence feat. Sub Swara [Record Label Records]
Manorexia - Zithromax Jitters [Ectopic Ents]
Foetus - Industrial Go-Slow [Ectopic Ents]
Nuearz - Non Linear Vibration [SKAM]

Listen again — ~ 172MB

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