Utility Fog

Sunday, 28th of August, 2016

Electronic & experimental sounds coming at you tonight...

LISTEN AGAIN because it pays to be in the know... Podcast here, stream on demand there.

A cross-continental hookup starts the show: Sensaround is a collaboration between Canberran guitarist & electronic musician Shoeb Ahmad, Sydney pianist Alister Spence and Scottish saxophonist Raymond MacDonald. Their second album of improvised electro-acoustic work is out now on hellosQuare, featuring the best live performances from their last outings together; they are launching it this Wednesday, August 31st, at 107 Projects.

For the first time in a long while I'm playing one of my own bands on the show. It's a bit unfair not to give Tangents an airing since 4/5 of the band don't have a radio show on FBi. Along with me on cello & electronics, we've got the aforementioned Shoeb Ahmad on guitar/electronics and his Spartak cohort Evan Dorrian on drums, ex-Triosk piano/keyboard player Adrian Lim-Klumpes, and one half of Icarus, Ollie Bown, on laptop and production duties. Call it post-everything improv, or if that hurts, call it folktronica or postrock or post-jazz or whatever you like.
We're launching our new album Stateless, which we're proud to have released on the legendary US postrock/experimental label Temporary Residence, this Friday the 2nd of September at Glebe Justice Centre.

It's been a long while, well over a decade, since The Necks' pianist Chris Abrahams released an album of solo piano. His solo releases in the meantime have been electro-acoustic wonders, but his musings on his main instrument have been recorded and kept, slowly growing in his private collection. Luckily for us, he's now rummaged through all these recordings and selected some of the best to make up a new album, Climb, which is out in a couple of weeks' time. It's being launched at Venue 505 on Thursday the 15th of September.

Brutalist is a new duo made up of some shiny young Aussie electronic musicians - Seekae's John Hassell and LUCIANBLOMKAMP. It has plenty of Blomkamp's piano, often processed or played electronically, along with plenty of basslines & beats Seekae-style. Very tasty, getting some international attention, so hopefully a continuing concern.

I've been a fan of UK-based Japanese singer & artist Kiki Hitomi for years now due to her work with Kevin Martin of The Bug, including as a member of King Midas Sound (and tonight we hear Hitomi singing over the "Skeng" riddim, turning it into something quite beautiful). Prior to this there was the insane dubstep-meets-breakcore duo Dokkebi Q with Japanese producer Gorgonn. But only now has her first solo album, under her own name, been released. Working with disrupt from digidub crew Jahtari she's crafted a mix of Japanese ersatz-folk genre enka, digidub, reggae and more. It's awesome and couldn't have been created by anyone else.

Brooklyn Joseph Fraioli has been making music at the extremes of idm & breakcore since the late 1990s as Datach'i. It's been 10 years since his last album, and System now finds him released through Venetian Snares' Timesig imprint on Planet µ. His earliest releases pushed idm & drill'n'bass to the limit with extremely wonky rhythms and processing on every sound - although his melodic talents would shine through when he let them. It's evident that even back then he had a pretty singular approach to electronic music production. His new material sees him working entirely on the modular synthesiser, refusing to use any external gear for programming beats or sourcing sounds. Purchases from the Planet µ shop come with a second disc of bonus material, much of which is at least as good as the album proper, so we finish up our special with a couple of tracks from there.

One fine day about 20 years ago Mike Paradinas aka µ-Ziq & Richard D James aka Aphex Twin released a collaborative album on Richard's Rephlex label under the name Mike & Rich. Featuring the two of them playing a kids' game on the cover, and titled Expert Knob Twiddlers, it was never going to be anything but silly, but I recall being bitterly disappointed because at the time I wanted everything to be advanced drill'n'bass madness, and this was harkening back to the early melodic days of µ-Ziq and Aphex, complete with blatant hip-hop beats and silly samples and the like. But for all that, it's very sweet and genuinely fun production (including some ear-splitting noises here and there because they're oh-such-pranksters). It's now being re-released, this time on Mike's Planet µ label, with a bonus disc of material from the same period - unheard µ-Ziq and Aphex Twin collaborations ahoy!

Finishing up, Ninja Tune artists The Invisible have been remixed by modular synth expert Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who've turned their bright Afro-pop into something beautiful and almost choral. It's a nice juxtaposition of approaches with the stuff Datach'i's doing on modular synths.

Sensaround - Windeyer (b) [hellosQuare]
Tangents - N-Mission [Temporary Residence]
Chris Abrahams - Beach of Black Stones [Vegetable]
Brutalist - PSA [Good Manners Music]
Brutalist - Strep [Good Manners Music]
Kiki Hitomi - Yellow Story [Jahtari]
King Midas Sound - Earth a kill ya [Hyperdub]
Dokkebi Q - Black Vomit [Murder Channel]
The Bug - Catch a Fire (feat. Kiki Hitomi) [Ninja Tune]
Black Chow - Wonderland [Jahtari]
King Midas Sound - Aroo [Ninja Tune]
Kiki Hitomi - Every Time You Knock Me Down [Jahtari]
Kiki Hitomi - Nen Nen Korori (feat. Space Ape [Jahtari]
Datach'i - Margin Of Error [Timesig/Planet µ]
Datach'i - Leonard Park [Caipirinha Productions]
Datach'i - Free In A Box [Caipirinha Productions]
Datach'i - In Silence [Sublight]
Datach'i - Nebulae V2 [Timesig/Planet µ]
Datach'i - Irodotomy [Timesig/Planet µ]
Datach'i - Mutant Clap [Timesig/Planet µ]
Mike & Rich - Bu Bu Bu Ba [Planet µ]
Mike & Rich - Brivert & Muonds [Planet µ]
The Invisible - Love Me Again (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Remix) [Ninja Tune]

Listen again — ~195MB

Comments are closed.