Utility Fog

Sunday, 10th of January, 2016

So here we are. It's really 2016 now - we've got 2016 music for you!

LISTEN AGAIN to all the new tunes, some real doozies covering lots of ground tonight! Podcast here, stream on demand there.

New David Bowie! What can one say? It's a bit experimental, it's mainly quite pop, it's great. Yup.

Katie Dey is a young producer from Melbourne who caused a bit of a fuss when this excellent EP (asdfasdf) came out mid last year, but I managed to totally miss it. A mixture of punkish indie tunes, heavily processed vocals and glitchy electronic mess, it's right up my alley. Brilliant.

I've known Erik Schoster's work as He Can Jog for some time - his first release was in 2008 and I associated him more with the drone/sound-art crowd at the time. There's definitely an academic bent to some of his work, but also very playful, and the more abstract sound was always tempered with real instruments and some idm-like beats. This new EP follows a 10-minute track from last year and explores glitchy song-like structures. It's a really beautiful set of vignettes, a nice beginning to 2016.

I played hatis noit on ths show last year when she contributed an incredible cut-up track to the Virgin Babylon 5th birthday comp (also heard tonight). Her debut album came out in 2014 from Japanese experimental label Purre Goohn, and an EP slipped out late last year, including a remix from the one and only Matmos, which may serve to bring her a little more fame.

Mark Van Hoen aka Locust, once a member of Seefeel, Scala and many others, is an important figure in both idm and shoegaze. He's lately been releasing a lot of solo music, and it's mostly good but this new album is particularly good. The cut-up female vocals go way back to his work in Seefeel, and the incredibly brilliant Locust material like the track I played tonight. The grainy, processed textures go back pretty much that far as well. Van Hoen is famously a prodigy like various other artists from that era (e.g. Richard D James), and recordings of his from the early 1980s have popped up here and there too, but from the early '90s on he's been very influential.

Michel Banabila also has been making music for a long time - and the source material for this latest release is his first LP, released in 1983! It sounds like his interest in world music goes all the way back to there, and although he is somewhat embarrassed by that early material, he passed it on to musician friends to remix, with some awesome results. Frequent collaborator Machinefabriek hands in some rare beats, while dark ambient/industrial artist Andrew Lagowski takes us deep into the undergrowth... And we heard some earlier from Banabila too, which surfaced on the Tapu Sampler 2016 - gorgeous tape-manipulated vocals and guitar.

Jason Sweeney has settled on Panoptique Electrical for his solo music for some time now, but is also half of Pretty Boy Crossover, and has released jangly indie music, indietronica, ambient, idm and more over 2+ decades. The Panoptique albums have been wonderful of late, and this surprise release for the start of 2016 is no exception. Warm piano, disturbing electronics and spare beats.

Acre resides in the more experimental ends of the post-dubstep/post-grime/techno continuum, and seems appropriate for the somewhat more leftfield bent of Pinch's Tectonic of late. The vocal snippets appearing here among the abrasive beats & textures are a handy nod to the Mark Van Hoen, hatis noit etc from earlier tonight, although it sounds as much like grime to me as anything else. Surprisingly abstract though, with few melodies or clear basslines to anchor anything.

As 2016 began, Kevin Martin aka The Bug started uploading some unrelease dubplates featuring the late Stephen Samuel Gordon aka The Spaceape, and then a number of others - not to SoundCloud or Bandcamp but to YouTube. Which makes them easy to access but harder to rip in any kind of quality I guess! But I can play them direct from the interwubs. Although everything he's uploaded is total quality, by far the biggest impression came from the unreleased remix of "Guns of Brixton" by The Clash, unreleased due to some dispute with the estates of the members of The Clash. But there's also a fantastic dubplate of Flowdan MCing over the "Murder We" riddim - and a bunch of other alternate versions of Bug tracks with Miss Red, Daddy Freddy, Ricky Ranking et al.

Finland's monster of drum'n'bass and breakbeat Fanu,is now just known as Janne Hatula, but will still be releasing just as much music, he assures us. He's also rejuvenated his Lightless Recordings label and inaugurates the new year with a compilation of A New Tribe of jungle/drum'n'bass/slow-fast/juke/bass music. We heard from a duo of German producers, and a Finnish producer who's been around doing some great drumfunk stuff for a few years.

David Bowie - Girl Loves Me [Sony]
katie dey - don't be scared [katie dey bandcamp/Orchid Tapes Bandcamp]
katie dey - all on you [katie dey bandcamp/Orchid Tapes Bandcamp]
He Can Jog - west (feat. s.al) [He Can Jog Bandcamp]
He Can Jog - sukha (feat. derek piotr & s.al) [He Can Jog Bandcamp]
hatis noit - Veins [Purre Goohn]
hatis noit - krabo [Purre Goohn]
hatis noit - chuchr ideins ouy [Virgin Babylon]
hatis noit - Illogical Lullaby -Matmos edit- [Purre Goohn]
Mark Van Hoen - Bring It Back [Saint Marie Records]
Locust - Saturated Love [Apollo]
Michel Banabila - A2. Marilli rmxd 11 (Machinefabriek remix) [Tapu Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila - A5. Marilli rmxd 18 (Andrew Lagowski remix) [Tapu Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila - E.T. [Tapu Bandcamp]
Panoptique Electrical - First betrayal [Panoptique Bandcamp]
Panoptique Electrical - In a forest forlorn [Panoptique Bandcamp]
Panoptique Electrical - Near life [Panoptique Bandcamp]
Acre - Holding Hands [Tectonic]
Acre - Dek U [Tectonic]
The Clash - Guns of Brixton (The Bug feat. The Spaceape Remix) [unreleased, via YouTube]
The Bug ft. Flowdan - Bad Like That Dubplate (Murder We Riddim) [unreleased, via ">YouTube]
ReDraft x HP.Ritch - Champion Killa [Lightless Recordings]
Fistfunk - Do It Right [Lightless Recordings]

Listen again — ~188MB

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