Utility Fog

Sunday, 6th of December, 2015

In the first weekend of the last month of the year, we're still powering through with fantastic new music, crossing from folktronica to jungle to mutant dancehall to post-bass ambience, from drone to post-industrial to postrock classical black metal to doom metal and beyond...

LISTEN NOW, LISTEN AGAIN, listen forever... stream it on demand from FBi or podcast it here if that's your poison.

First up we have the duo The Natural History Museum, with production by Dunk Murphy of UFog-beloved Sunken Foal and the vocals of Carol Keogh. This album's going to be gorgeous - the first single combines folk and classical-sounding acoustic instruments with Sunken Foal's beats and Keogh's lovely vocals, and I'm sure we can expect more of the same in the new year.

Sully continues his ventures into incredibly classic-sounding jungle with a four-track EP for the Astrophonica label. Not much more to say except it's perfectly executed and why would you not lap it up?

Israeli MC Miss Red released her mixtape Murder this week, put together in collaboration with Kevin Martin aka The Bug. In mixtape fashion it features Miss Red MCing over beats by a variety of artists, processed, sped up etc by The Bug. Crazy hearing that speedy rendition of a recent Andy Stott tune with Miss Red toasting over the top...

Ancestral Voices is the new name for Indigo, one half of brilliant UK post-dubstep/post-jungle/post-techno duo Akkord. As Ancestral Voices he's moved away from the dancefloor to a more ambient world, although there are still beats and warm, warm bass in there!

Nice fat bottom end is also present in Matthew Collings' surprise release from Sketches For Albinos. It could best be described as drone, although there are some pretty harpsichord(?) melodies in there, and some of the drones are played live on clarinet, among other instruments. It's beautiful immersive music.

For his last release for the year, Brisbane's very busy Benjamin Thompson aka Pale Earth teams up with a kind of industrial electronic metal duo Danyl Jesu for some electronic chaos and electro-pop. Excellently noisy.

Speaking of noisy... Wrekmeister Harmonies are new to me and I'm immensely glad that their album was coming out in a special Japanese edition simultaneously with the new Sunn O))) so I could discover the widescreen amalgam of drone, post-rock, metal and even classical. It's an epic sound, like Swans through a black metal gauze...

Dat Sunn O))) though. So massive. Pure riffage, with Attila Csihar's operatic & black metal vocals, and a host of usual collaborators including Oren Ambarchi. The album comes in surprisingly brief, not much more than 30 minutes, over 3 tracks - but I got the Daymare edition from Japan, with a bonus CD featuring two very different takes on the first two tracks, stripped down with a lot of the heavy guitars taken out so you can hear the other sounds. It's a bizarre listen, but quite fascinating.

These days Mamiffer is the core duo of Faith Coloccia at her partner Aaron Turner of ISIS, Old Man Gloom, SUMAC et al. They also run the SIGE Records label, a smaller affair after Turner's iconoclastic Hydra Head closed up shop. Mamiffer's music features Coloccia on piano and other instruments - and sometimes vocals - and Turner on all sorts of noisemakers, and can as easily be a venue for stately gothic songs, shoegazey folk or drone noise epics. They've teamed up with noise musician Daniel Menche for their latest album, which does foreground the sonic experimentation over the songs.

Faith Coloccia has been collaborating for a long time with Alex Barnett, and in the last couple of years they've released two albums on Blackest Ever Black as Barnett + Coloccia. Barnett's group Oakeater have just released an album on SIGE as well, with black metal yelping behind dark ambient textures and vaguely industrial clanking...

The Natural History Museum - Daga Gadol [Countersunk Bandcamp]
Sully - Crystal Cuts [Astrophonica]
Miss Red - What Would You Like [Murder Mixtape] {beat by Andy Stott}
Miss Red - Come Down [Murder Mixtape] {beat by The Bug}
Ancestral Voices - Medicina [Samurai Music]
Ancestral Voices - Arachnae [Samurai Music]
Sketches For Albinos - Faces [mini50 records]
Sketches For Albinos - All in the Name of Gravity [mini50 records]
Danyl Jesu & Pale Earth - Abdelazer [Danyl Jesu &/or Pale Earth Bandcamps]
Danyl Jesu & Pale Earth - Young Withcott [Danyl Jesu &/or Pale Earth Bandcamps]
Wrekmeister Harmonies - Run Priest Run (Extended) [Thrill Jockey/Daymare]
Sunn O))) - She played such music, flowers blossomed (Kannon 2 Alternate Take) [Southern Lord/Daymare]
Daniel Menche & Mamiffer - Calyx [SIGE Records]
Mamiffer - Mercy [SIGE Records/Daymare]
Oakeater - Respite [SIGE Records]
Barnett + Coloccia - Switch [Blackest Ever Black]
Barnett + Coloccia - Blight [Blackest Ever Black]
Oakeater - All That is Sacred [SIGE Records]

Listen again — ~194MB

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