Utility FogYour weekly fix of postfolkrocktronica, dronenoise, power ambient, post-everything improv... and more? Sunday nights from 9 to 11pm on FBi Radio, 94.5 FM in Sydney, Australia. LISTEN ONLINE now! Click here to find the start time for the show at your location! {Hey! Sign up to Utilityfoglet and get playlists emailed to you after each show!}
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Sunday, 24th of April, 2011
Playlist 24.04.11 (11:07 pm)
Hope you're enjoying this long long weekend! Starting once again with the amazing sax of Colin Stetson, from his second album. One of the albums of the year, multiphonic rhythmic live saxophone manipulation, and on this track the spoken words of Laurie Anderson and the beautiful singing of Shara Worden. And then the first of a few samplings tonight from what I'm certain will be another of the albums of the year, jenny hval’s first under her own name, viscera. Released on the iconic Rune Grammofon label in her home country of Norway, it's another step forward from the material she released as Rockettothesky. Uncompromising on all fronts - lyrics, production and arrangements, songwriting, vocal approach. It ranges from quiet folk and experimental musings with half-spoken words to full-on shoegazey/gothy rock. Wonderful. Grails are continuing to explore the somewhat psychedelic throwback rock they're known for, and it's always excellent. We took the first track from their new album, and it's riff-tastic. Next up in the rockologue, Italian postrocker ensemble Stearica Invade Acid Mothers Temple. Recorded at the end of a tour by the Japanese psych-rockers, it sounds like Stearica had a lot of fun re-tooling the AMT sound to their own purposes. And it's not all that much of a jump from there to the heavy, heavy d'n'b/breakcore of Submerged. Fresh from his Blood of Heroes collaboration, the Ohm Resistance boss features some of those collaborators on his new album, which as usual is extremely loud and heavy, with lashings of rock guitars. From his first album we heard squalls of free jazz trumpet over his beats. And then another sampling from DJ Hidden's excellent Semiomime side project. Not-so-heavy drum'n'bass with a quasi-classical tilt. And it's always awesome to hear new tunes from Icarus. In the lead up to their new album coming out this year, this is from a split EP with Danish nano-jazz group Badun. The bands swapped synth samples and ended up with a very cohesive sounding EP with two tracks each. Icarus maintain the fucked-up drum'n'bass basis with some nice warm synth pads in the background of the chaos. Continuing the theme, perhaps, of dance/electronic music reinterpreted, the new Hauschka album sees Volker Bertelmann using his prepared piano and strings in a more rhythmic way than usual. It doesn't exactly sound like techno (let alone house), as the promo sheet suggests, but it's clearly influenced by music from that direction as much as the post-classical world he usually inhabits. Lovely stuff. I played a couple of tracks from the new epic45 album last week. It's up there with their best releases, pastoral indie/postrock/shoegaze, with electronic touches. I wanted to give them a little feature as they've never really gotten the attention they deserve, and as we heard, there's plenty of meat to their back catalogue. You might not have heard much of the new album from restream, and that's because it's four tracks, each around 10 minuts long. But that's no challenge for Utility Fog, and with tracks this good it's a must: guitars and electronic beats make for blissed-out shoegaze. His previous album was shoegazey too, albeit less epic. There's a certain amount of shoegazeyness to the new Underlapper, along with their usual postrock and electronic outbursts. My cello's on about 5 tracks on the album (including the one I played tonight), but I've been a fan even of these very songs longer than that, and I can say objectively that it's a wonderful release. For Record Store Day, Radiohead released a limited 12" with two exclusive tracks. It'll apparently get wider release later in the year, which is good because these are adventurous tracks that any fan shouldn't be without. Not much in the way of melody, but if you find that off-putting at this point then maybe Radiohead's not your band? More wondrousness from jenny hval leads into the last two artist specials of the night: south of Norway we find Sweden's Tape, whose first album in a few years finds them in pretty recognizable territory, as indeed the older tracks demonstrate: but it's the kind of place you're always happy to visit — easygoing postrock with occasional biting noise to keep you on your toes. And Deaf Center deserve a little of their older material to be heard too. The Helios remix is just lovely, and we had one track from 2005's Pale Ravine. I do feel, though, that their new album Owl Splinters is an amazing step into the vanguard, growling cello and sparkling piano creating something pretty unusual for the drone world. Ben Frost is perhaps a point of comparison. The album's a grower — give it the attention it requires and it's all-immersing. Colin Stetson - Fear of the unknown and the blazing sun (feat. Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden) [Constellation] Listen again — ~ 174MB Sunday, 17th of April, 2011
Playlist 17.04.11 (11:08 pm)
So much good musics for you tonight... We start with the band with their own genre, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble. Their new album was a slow grower but I'm now totally sold. This track is one of the most upbeat (don't read that emotionally, just in terms of tempo), and lacks vocals, but has wonderfully emotive string lines. Next up, an uncharacteristic track from FaltyDL, taking its time to get going, combining some really classic IDM type sounds with (eventually) some very contemporary breaks, for the new 2CD set on Hotflush, Back And 4th. We heard a number of tracks from this compilation, which has one disc of new material and one of Hotflush classics. We also heard a couple of tunes from the very fine new Kryptic Minds album, the first of which is a very subtle number. In between, one last Hotflush classic, from Pangaea. Paul Elam aka fieldhead recently sent me some new tunes, and his remix of Spokes somehow fits in nicely with the dubstep, with its grainy drone and squashed beat. And you can download it from Soundcloud right now! And moving us out of dubstep into something a bit more hip-hop, albeit nice and heavy, is Sydney's Roleo on The Frequency Lab. And then we're back to Australia, with the sci-fi sounds of "death by white lies", one of many standouts from the new Underlapper album Softly Harboured, finally out in Australia on CD from hellosQuare and vinyl from Feral Media. They're launching the album this Thursday, the 21st of April at the FBi Social and I expect you all to be there. I'll be playing cello on a few tracks too. Next amazing album from a very strong week for amazing albums is epic45’s newie, Weathering. Based around the evocation of their home in pastoral Staffordshire, it's a real beauty, with moments of edginess and noise in there too. The first track I played is like a cross between Hood and Talk Talk, maybe. Tied+Tickled Trio are one of the most venerable artists on the Morr Music label, a post-jazz ensemble featuring The Notwist. On their new album they team up with jazz/improv drummer Billy Hart for an excursion into exotic jazz and dub. In between their two tracks, we had the amazing "Warda's Whorehouse" by Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso, which was sampled by dj BC in a track I played last week on the show. Suso is a famous Gambian musician, and he collaborated on a score for a stage play with Glass. It's incredible music. After Tied+Tickled, we had a bit of a classic from Gary Clail & the On-U Sound System’s 1991 album The Emotional Hooligan. '91 was my HSC year, so needless to say, music from that era means a lot to me. Still, I think this track has enduring value, as does the album in general - digi-dub, sample-heavy and dub-heavy, with a real pop edge to it. Daedelus also loves his weird and wonderful samples. He's one of the great musical collagists of our time, and also an inveterate collaborator. It's nice to hear fellow LA artist Baths on this track, singing in French, no less! ...and back to Underlapper, singing and howling in Australian English. It should be no surprise that Guildhall-educated Mica Levi, aka Micachu, would team up with The London Sinfonietta. Fiercely talented, she's got a number of singles, an album, and a few mixtapes under her belt already, along with at least a couple of orchestral works. Here she combines the indie-crunk of her band The Shapes with those orchestral arrangements, for something woozy and really chunky. Equally heavy and string-laden is the incredible music of Deaf Center. This is their first album in a number of years. Cavernous production yet close recording ensures we get immense cello drones and booming piano, which tinkles beautifully on other tracks. Pretty stunning, don't miss it. Totally stunning, but you've probably already missed it, is the Mort Aux Vaches set from Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek. These sessions are recorded for the Dutch radio station VPRO, and gorgeously and uniquely packaged by Staalplaat. On the third and final track Broderick & Zuydervelt are joined by frequent collaborators Kleefstra/Bakker/Kleefstra and Nils Frahm for a 25-minute odyssey incorporating piano, strings, processed guitar, glitchy drones and Dutch spoken word. I've been playing Motion Sickness of Time Travel quite a bit on the show, and tonight we have another recent release featuring analogue synths and disembodied vocals. And finally I was able to slip one track in from Emanuele Errante’s new album: blissful pulsating ambient music; more next week. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble - Cotard Delusion [Denovali] Listen again — ~ 166MB
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Sunday, 10th of April, 2011
Playlist 10.04.11 (11:09 pm)
Tonight featured another compilation to add to the mix from last week, plus little overviews of Low, John Chantler, dj BC and Various, and new music from Evelyn Morris aka Pikelet. We've got Low past and present, including one track from their most experimental and wonderful Drums and Guns album and one track going all the wack to 1996, with a beautiful bit of slowcore. Hannah Peel is a new artist I know of from Static Caravan. Fantastic string arrangement for a 1 minute track! Later on we had a number more tracks from the Minute Papillon comp (see last week), including Jasper TX, whose forthcoming album sounds fantastic... Evelyn Morris aka Pikelet has been putting a bunch of new tracks up on her Bandcamp each month this year, so you should go and grab them, from $0 to $5. Very interesting seeing her experiment in some new musical approaches, including drum machines (if not full-blown electronica) and almost noise/drone. And in a drone vein, some transcendental synth sequences from Motion Sickness of Time Travel, with her trademark submerged vocals in the mix from a new cassette release that you can find on her Bandcamp. Marina Rosenfeld's track is the first from ROOM40's 10th birthday compilation, a 40-track download release that you can get for free from their online store. It's a stunner of a track, piano and processing, and the later tracks I played are also notable (I await the Andrea Belfi album on ROOM40 with high expectations). And from last week's other featured compilation, Benefit for the Recovery in Japan (even longer than the ROOM40 one at 64 tracks!), we had Oren Ambarchi seemingly sampling some orchestral recording, a lovely bit of indiefolk-almost-tronica from Bear In Heaven (checking more of them out now) and some kind of woozy funk-hop from Leb Laze. Bringing us to Daedelus, whose new album is just out now on Ninja Tune. He's a highly eclectic artist and fits uncomfortably, perhaps, into the LA scene where holds something of a venerable position. He's used experimental electronica, drum'n'bass, hip-hop, electro and whatever else comes to hand to underpin his madcap sampleadelic collage style. And he's collaborated with Busdriver before, along with Radioinactive, on the brilliant album The Weather. Great to hear Busdriver singing on his track; lots of awesomeness on this album. One track from Melbourne's Hugo Frederick showcases yet another brilliant Australian talent in the making. Reworking Mary J Blige's "Family Affair" into a chopped-up 2step affair a la James Blake, she's slowed-down but jittery. It's a production that bodes well for Australian electronic music in general. Also awesome to have a new dj BC mashup album available (briefly, probably). As you can see from the below playlist, his prior efforts include two brilliant Beastie Boys/Beatles albums, Wu Tang Clan reimagined with New Orleans swing jazz backings, and Philip Glass used as beds for hip-hop remixes. This time it's Jay-Z vs Brian Eno, and I'm not familiar enough even with Eno's work to fully appreciate it. But musically it's spot-on. Back to the dubstep styles, a couple of weeks ago there was a new download release from Various (previously Various Production), nice and dark as is their wont. Check out the latest series of releases at their website and join their mailing list to keep up. I played a couple of much-loved older tunes as well. And finally I got around to playing one of the Burial + Four Tet + Thom Yorke collaborations from a month or so ago. I wasn't that sold on the new Burial, which just seems like more of the same but with a more 4/4 beat... much like the latest Four Tet to be honest - I hope he gets the four to the floor out of his system soon :) But these tracks are lovely, aided by Thom's vocal delivery. Low - try to sleep [Sub Pop] Listen again — ~ 172MB
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Sunday, 3rd of April, 2011
Playlist 03.04.11 (11:09 pm)
Tonight was dominated by two excellent big compilations, but we also had a variety of sounds, from insane solo saxophone to heavy dubstep. We started with the genius Colin Stetson (see last week), whose solo saxophone never fails to get comments. His new album Judges is out now and is like nothing else in the music world — absolutely essential. From the Second Language label comes an amazing hour-long compilation of 60 one-minute tracks entitled Minute Papillon. The tracklisting demonstrates how impeccably compiled this is, and many of the artists turn in really unusual and ingenious tracks, a number of which we heard tonight. Also on the strings tip is Nat Baldwin, who's unusual in playing the bowed double bass. His vocal style has always echoed his mate Dave Longstreth (Dirty Projectors) but the double-bass indie songwriting is all his own. Another online compilation with a bit of a string connection is Cloud 11 on Rena Jones’ new Cartesian Binary Recordings. I found out via the brilliant Dutch IDM brothers Funckarma, whose deep electronic sound is augmented by Jones' cello here — a welcome new twist to the Funcken sound! Continuing the string theme, The Bronx's Wires Under Tension give us a track from their new album Light Science. Keyboards and percussion join with violin for a joyful post/mathrock number. See the excellent video here. Back to the Japan compilation, a track from Brookyln-based harpist Shelley Burgon, a member of long lost UFog faves Stars Like Fleas. Ultra-pretty. Also oh-so-pretty are the violin flourishes on Wintercoats’s "Overture". He's from Melbourne and has a bunch of tracks up for free at Bandcamp. Last week I played a track from DJ Hidden’s new Semiomime project, and I thought we should feature it a bit more this week, along with some of his dark and heavy drum'n'bass tracks as DJ Hidden. The Semiomime alias sees him exploring quasi-classical soundtrack sounds, albeit still with a hefty slice of d'n'b-style programming, a bit more along the IDM lines. The arrangements, which are excellent, suffer a bit from being rendered in electronic form — if he'd had access to a mini-orchestra it could've been something amazing, but as it is I'm very fond of this album indeed. And ex-Hood member Gareth S Brown’s one-minute track is a crazy post-baroque bit of controlled chaos. Next little "special" focuses on Tokyo Bloodworm’s Lost Tribe Sound label, and remix albums of theirs (forthcoming) and Vieo Abiungo’s, a digital release available now from the label. After a subtle track from the Tokyo Bloodworm album proper, we had a one-minute piece of pianotronica from d_rradio, very pleasing to me as I hadn't really taken to their more recent ambient leanings. Back to the Japan comp, pianist Sylvain Chauveau sounds an awful lot like an almost namesake, David Sylvian, on his glitchy piano and vox number. An absolute beauty. Zelienople have carved out a space for slowed-down Talk Talk influenced drone-country. Or something. It's a distinctive sound and I'm happy to listen to it for hours. A worthy addition to the Japan comp, one of the highlights. More delightful one-minute sounds come from Ark of Noise, whose website does not exist, but it's the best I can do. It's Jérôme Tcherneyan, a member of Piano Magic, whose Glenn Johnson runs the Second Language label. A simple glitched-up female vocal line, it's the sort of thing that Curd Duca was doing over a decade ago, but it's still a great idea for a one-minute vignette. A less disembodied female vocal comes from Finland's Lau Nau, who fits right in with the amazing Finnish experimental scene. An artist to look out for. This is (one of the reasons) why I love compilations! From a different compilation comes Italy's Obsil, and I'm very keen to hear more of his electronic/folktronic sounds too. This is from the latest Wire Tapper comp from Wire Magazine, whose regular bonus discs (sometimes subscriber-only, sometimes download editions) make subscribing a no brainer every year. Also turning in a welcomely unusual one-minute offering is Machinefabriek, who can't exactly produce a sustained crescendoing drone piece. And next up, Denmark's Opiate, who after a long absence in his solo guise contributes a cute (probably old) one-minute track to Minute Papillon. While in Japan last month I picked up his first album from 1999, so we heard a piece of classic IDM from that one, and then one from one of my favourite Morr Music releases, his EP from 2003. One of the most exciting new Ninja Tune artists is Emika, whose album must surely be on the way — but meanwhile we've had a succession of excellent dubstep pop singles, with dusty English vocals and various dubstep (and other) masters on the remix duties. A bit more dubstep to round out the show: Pacheko’s always a winner, and this acid dubstep party tune from the Murder Channel compilation is no exception. Courtesy of last month's Japan trip, of course. Colin Stetson - The Stars In His Head (Dark Lights Remix) [Constellation] Listen again — ~ 184MB
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email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com Mastodon 
Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Whether cataloguing the jungle resurgence, tracking the ups and downs of noise and drone, or unearthing the remnants of glitch and folktronica, all is contextualised within artist & genre histories for a fulfilling sonic journey. Since all these genre names are already pretty ridiculous, we thought we'd coin a new one. So "postfolkrocktronica" it is. Wear it. Now available: free "Live on Utility Fog" downloads! We got tasty rss2 or atom feeds - get Utility Fog playlists in your favourite RSS reader/aggregator. There's also a dedicated podcast feed. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. Archives of all previous playlists and entries are available:
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