Utility Fog

Sunday, 7th of July, 2013

Quite an electronic show tonight, with an album-of-the-year candidate from So, when James Holden, excellent post-classical sounds from Hecq under his own name, new drill'n'bass from France's Ruby My Dear and more...

LISTEN AGAIN in all your favourite ways including streaming on demand from FBi.

So, when James Holden started releasing music I managed to mostly ignore him, as it was pretty much resolutely in the 4/4 house/techno vein which I have an unfortunate (well-known) allergy to. But he's a hugely talented producer, and it's always worth checking out the new shit - and this new album has been hyped by all the right people. Plus it's a strong move away from the dancefloor, even from programmed electronic music on the whole. A lot of it is really hard to pigeonhole, which is great - very organically produced (you could almost say bio-dynamic *snerk* (sorry)), lots of analogue synth sounds, but also lots of crunchy processing, and some epic evolving tracks along the lines of Boards of Canada, Autchre or even Jon Hopkins. It's gorgeous, I could just about play any track from this.

Springintgut is the studio project of Andi Otto, who performs with his process cello aka Fello along with other instruments. I haven't heard enough of his music clearly, but it's great to have this new track remixed by the now-half-Sydney-based Icarus!

It's not precisely surprising or new that Hecq aka Ben Lukas Boysen is releasing an album of classical-inspired soundtrack-ish music. His electronic productions, whether heavy dubstep or breakcore productions, or idm in all its guises, have always had a bit of an epic soundtrack vibe to them, and have sometimes also revealed the classical background of the producer. He's released a couple of actual feature film soundtracks in recent years, and you can hear the fruits also of recent work with Nils Frahm. It's nice that the new album isn't totally beatless "post-classical" stuff too.

We ended with an old Hecq track from 2004 which samples from the delightful second movement of Debussy's string quartet. This segues us nicely into the next artist, French breakcore/idm producer Ruby My Dear, who we hear sampling the same piece in 2011, albeit at quite a different tempo (reflecting quite different performances of the string quartet).
The earliest Ruby My Dear track I've found comes from 2010, and I hadn't heard it until this week: from the entirely official DJ Shadow Remix Project (compiled by Shadow himself), it's a very sensitive (albeit mostly manic) drill'n'bass remix of a classic tune from Endtroducing. How about that!

French poet/vocalist Anne-James Chaton has been collaborating for some time with Andy Moor of Dutch band The Ex, with Moor's always amazing guitar riffs and rhythmic noises underpinning the conceptual poetry of Chaton. A couple of years ago they started a series of 7"s about transport and trasition, including the quite disturbing Princess in a Car, with simultaneous French and English vocals evoking the last hours of Princess Diana's life...

Revisiting the excellent experimental guitar compilation from New Weird Australia compiled by Andrew Tuttle, we heard a beautiful granular guitar piece from A Demon Sheen, along with some nice stormy field recording sounds.

We finish with two remixes of Brisbane's Feet Teeth. First up, back to France we have Marseille's Philippe Petit, a recent visitor to these shores, taking a track from its home territory initially into very abstracted realms; and then fellow Brisbanite Subsea (also of Ektoise and The Rational Academy) contributes some minimalist/maximalist techno.

Holden - Sky Burial [Border Community]
Holden - Blackpool Late Eighties [Border Community]
Springintgut - Incentive Pizzicato (Icarus remix) [Pingipung]
Ben Lukas Boysen - Nocturne 1 [Ad Noiseam]
Hecq - Sura [Ad Noiseam]
Hecq - Steeltongued [Hymen]
Hecq - ghosts [Binkcrsh]
Ben Lukas Boysen - You'll Miss Us One Day [Ad Noiseam]
Hecq - Flood Me [Hymen]
Ruby My Dear - Mashed Rope [Acroplane]
DJ Shadow - Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt (Ruby My Dear Mix) [The DJ Shadow Remix Project]
Ruby My Dear - Shee [Blue Sub Records]
Anne-James Chaton + Andy Moor - Journal on the Péquod [Unsounds]
Anne-James Chaton + Andy Moor - Princess in a Mercedes Class S 280 (feat. Chiara Solari, English vocals) [Unsounds]
A Demon Sheen - The Mask Of Ultimate Embarrassment And Shame [New Weird Australia]
Feet Teeth - Philippe Petit's Fit Feeth [hellosQuare Recordings]
Feet Teeth - B1 (Subsea Inútil Paisagem Remix) [hellosQuare Recordings]

Listen again — ~ 166MB

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