Utility Fog

Sunday, 15th of November, 2015

Experimental indie, electro-acoustic ambient, and plenty of electronics tonight...

LISTEN AGAIN because it's raining - or because it's not raining: stream on demand from FBi or podcast from here.

Wonderful discovery first up from White Noise Records in Hong Kong (one of the best record stores in the world if you like, er, "my kind of stuff") - a trio from Macau called Evade. Part shoegaze, part dubby experimentalism, part glitchy electronics, it's genuinely hard to pin down and I love that. And the packaging is gorgeous, as always from the Singapore-based Kitchen label.

From Sweden, The Silence Set is a new duo of Dag Rosenqvist (previously drone god Jasper TX) and Johan G Winther (of math rock band Scraps of Tape among other projects). Their debut album is a low-key epic, drones and noisy rasps rubbing up against banjo and drawled vocals - and it's taken even more stratospheric with a guest vocal from Heather Woods Broderick on one track.

In a similar vein is Mute Forest, aka Kael Smith, lead singer of ambient/experimental indie band Mombi. On the quiet end of song-based music, it has pleasing portions of subtle crunch in beats & production, and sinister turns here and there. The new album Deforestation is out now on Lost Tribe Sound and is accompanied by a remix EP called Reforestation with some more upbeat takes and a couple of excellent outtakes.

Marcus Whale's previous solo material went under the name Scissor Lock, but it's fitting that he's chosen to use his real name now. His voice made up a substantial part of the experimental and electronic sounds of Scissor Lock, but as Marcus Whale he's writing songs, albeit pushing songform in uncomfortable directions, navigating against the same stars as These New Puritans, Björk, Liturgy even... but with his distinct voice cutting through. He's an accomplished composer and producer, and also familiar from Collarbones and Black Vanilla - both brilliant (and different) takes on bass/r'n'b/hip-hop and club music. I've heard next year's album and it's heavy, intense and brilliant. You can see why this track is a separate single - it's a different vibe, with muted piano, and beats which are more electronic than the tribal heaviness of the forthcoming album.

On Canberra's community radio 2XX, Michael Norris and Reuben Ingall present a show called Subsequence Radio with impeccable taste. On their Bandcamp they've just released this year's fundraiser to help them keep making the show, and I featured a great dark piece of electronic songwriting from the mysterious(?) P A R K S.

And now we come to the big feature of the show - (some of) the music of Katie English, aka Isnaj Dui. English is a flautist, classically trained, but also has a background in electro-acoustic music and Balinese gamelan among other things. She guests and collaborates with many excellent ambient, electronic, postrock and experimental musicians (a lot of which I had to skip over due to time constraints) - one of her other bands is Littlebow, featured tonight, which is a duo with Kieron Phelan of the legendary State River Widening in which the flute takes the lead in a postrock/folk rock band. But her solo stuff is even more special - her flute creates lugubrious ambient pulsations a la Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, or clicky or breathy rhythms, while at other times amp crackle intrudes, or almost folky repetitive patterns dance over slow-looped phrases. While she is highly respected in the ambient world, I feel English hasn't got the recognition she deserves, so here's a small tribute.

And finally, having played only one (admittedly long) track from Melbourne artist Robin Fox's new Editions Mego album last week, I thought I'd slip in a short bonus track from the release, with some more regular beats and glitchy sounds.

Evade - Untitled Dream [Kitchen]
Evade - Forgetting [Kitchen]
Evade - Pavilion (FJORDNE Remix) [Kitchen]
The Silence Set - we will die enraged [mini50 records]
The Silence Set - the passing [mini50 records]
The Silence Set - worry, glory (feat. Heather Woods Broderick, vocals and Nils Frahm, modular synthesis) [mini50 records]
The Silence Set - mirrored in [mini50 records]
Mute Forest - Impersonating a Firefighter [Lost Tribe Sound]
Mombi - A Crane into the Sun [Mombi Bandcamp]
Mute Forest - Deforestation (Mombi Remix) [Lost Tribe Sound]
Mute Forest - Everglade [Lost Tribe Sound]
Marcus Whale - If (demo) [Good Manners]
P A R K S - Tech Noir [Subsequence Radio]
Isnaj Dui - Hoop Diving [FBox Records]
Isnaj Dui - dulc improv [disco_r.dance]
Isnaj Dui - Mushroom Picking [Home Normal]
Littlebow - For Thijs [Second Language]
Littlebow - Pi Magpie (Oliver Cherer Remix) [Second Language]
Isnaj Dui - Crook-Kneed [FBox Records]
Isnaj Dui - Randall 4033 [Mystery Plays Records]
Isnaj Dui - Potential Difference [FBox Records]
Robin Fox - Counter Strike [Editions Mego]

Listen again — ~102MB

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