Utility Fog

Sunday, 7th of May, 2017

G’day. Tonight’s a bit of a journey. Strap yourself in and enjoy!

Technical issues mean the whole show can’t be podcast. Some of it can be streamed on demand.

We open tonight with an epic masterpiece from Chino Amobi, exploring a post-apocalpytic America through bass music mixed up with industrial, trap, techno, ambient and even hints of black metal – along with a hilarious (and intense) sample from Adventure Time in the second last track! Amobi is one of the driving forces behind the pan-African-disapora collective NON, and gathers a number of fellow travellers on this album. I haven’t even managed to properly drink in the spoken word and rap segments to piece the whole story together, but it’s pretty intense, and masterfully put together. You should definitely dig into this one (maybe with the special USB card edition!)

Continuing with two twitchy tracks from Viennese artist Asfast, tracks which don’t quite want to settle into melodic ambient electronica, with bass interjections and glitches punctuating the tracks. Great stuff.

After many months of trickling out the tracks of their progressive remix/rework compilation Exquisite Corpse, post-classical labels Bigo & Twigetti and Moderna Records have finally finished releasing the whole thing. It’s lovely hearing not just the obvious thread of piano music with electronics, ambience and delicate beats but also the compositional elements that survive through many iterations. There are hints of ex-pat Aussie Leah Kardos‘ beautiful mutation of her predecessors in the second-last track, now available, from Jacob David & Thomas Haahr. Another Aussie based overseas, Madeleine Cocolas, opened the procedings, and tonight I also played the artist directly before Kardos, Italian composer Lorenzo Masotto.

Danish artist Loke Rahbek has a number of releases under his belt as Croatian Amor, as well as a number of other aliases, many of them released on the label (also record store) Posh Isolation he runs out of Copenhagen. There are connections to industrial and noise music as well as ’90s electronica and ambient, and some quite disturbing field recordings. The freakier elements are emphasised and any club trappings mostly shed on the album he’s releasing in a couple of weeks under his own name for the legendary experimental electronic label Editions Mego.

Voyou is the solo project of Sarah Faraday, one half of noise-folk duo Ambrosia(@), who’ve released a few albums and EPs over the last year of beautiful melodies, drones, glitches and distorted beats. An unexpected pleasure, her second solo EP just came out – three fairly brief tracks, encompassing deep bass, distorted delays, pretty guitar strums, and some eldrich screaming just for kicks. Her vocals also grace some of the Ambrosia(@) tracks, including the very early one we heard tonight.

Grindcore band Full of Hell collaborated last year with the brilliant sludge/black metal/electronic duo the body, so when their new album was announced on Profound Lore Records, it got my immediate attention. It’s incredibly short, as befits the grindcore genre, and pretty heavy and harsh, but the title track contrasts the dense riffage and hardcore screaming with the sweet vocals of Canadian singer-songwriter Nicole Dollanganger.

Finishing with a band with the reputation as one of the most extreme of the extreme noise/metal bands in Japan. They’ve been around for about a decade, but only became known outside of Japan a few years ago, with their album Mama and subsequent remix album Bodies released by Daymare. The latter, which featured reworkings from the likes of Boris’s Atsuo, dubstep don Goth-Trad and all-round legend Justin K Broadrick, also featured the disturbing (despite its quietness) “Loss Angels”. Their new album finds worldwide release through the legendary Hydra Head, and is as massively noisy as ever (two bandmembers are credited with “electronics”, along with guitar, drums and various types of screamed vocals), with some relief here and there from the onslaught. With the Daymare CD, some of us were lucky enough to get a bonus EP with two remixes, one of them a bass techno reworking from industrial/electronic duo Carre, who have shared a label – ALTER – with Croatian Amor.

Chino Amobi – GÆNOVA feat. Dutch E Germ [UNO NYC]
Chino Amobi – The Prisoners of Nymphaion [Chino Amobi Bandcamp]
Chino Amobi – MALMO [NON WORLDWIDE]
Chino Amobi – THE FAILED SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF FANTASIA feat. Aurel Haize Odogbo [UNO NYC]
Chino Amobi – KOLLAPS feat. Elysia Crampton, FALSE PRPHT and Poozy [UNO NYC]
Asfast – More [Ventil]
Asfast – Bump Cut [Ventil]
Madeleine Cocolas – Stalactite [Bigo & Twigetti/Moderna Records]
Lorenzo Masotto – Oodaaq [Bigo & Twigetti/Moderna Records]
Leah Kardos – Contact Mic [Bigo & Twigetti/Moderna Records]
Jacob David & Thomas Haahr – Crescent [Bigo & Twigetti/Moderna Records]
Croatian Amor – An Angel Gets His Wings Clipped feat. Soho Razenejad [Posh Isolation]
Croatian Amor – Sky Walkers [Posh Isolation]
Loke Rahbek – In Piles of Magazines [Editions Mego]
Voyou – Year By Year [Bomb Shop]
Ambrosia(@) – Go Your Way [Bomb Shop]
Voyou – Hell Yeah [Bomb Shop]
Full of Hell – Trumpeting Ecstasy (feat. Nicole Dollanganger) [Profound Lore Records]
Endon – Loss Angels [Daymare]
Endon – Torch Your House [Hydra Head/Daymare]
Endon – Perversion ‘Till Death (24K mix by Carre) [Daymare]

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