Playlist 18.03.18 (7:51 pm)
Tonight we've got some pretty cool glitchy sounds and crunchy beats, and we're also having a chat with renowned Sydney drummer Laurence Pike, who's got an album out soon and a launch this coming Saturday!
LISTEN AGAIN for good chatter and great tunes - stream on demand via FBi and podcast right here.
Reuben Ingall - Floriade [hellosQuare]
Reuben Ingall - Free Field [hellosQuare]
It's always a pleasure to receive new music from Canberran audio wizard Reuben Ingall here at Utility Fog Towers. Reuben is one of those producers whose sounds I love to puzzle out - how is he doing that? Especially live, you can see the way his talents as a guitarist interact with his smarts at programming his Max/MSP patches - and whatever else he uses to process his sounds. We've heard him create drone epics from the sound of a pie being microwaved, and we've heard him chop up his voice, piano, ukulele, other instruments and found sounds - but this new album Threads sees him focusing mainly on his guitar. As usual, he's able to draw out a hefty amount of emotive force from the instrument and the soundscapes he weaves around it. It's wonderful stuff.
Laurence Pike - Distant Early Warning [Leaf]
...interview with Laurence Pike...
Szun Waves - At Sacred Walls [Szun Waves Bandcamp]
Laurence Pike - Clouds And Wires [Leaf]
Really nice to talk to Laurence Pike, one of Sydney's top drummers in many different genres and contexts, on the release of his (surprisingly!) first solo album Distant Early Warning, coming out on Friday the 31st of March through The Leaf Label. You may know Laurence as the drummer in fabled Sydney bands PVT and Triosk, or many other collaborations & appearances including an album by Flanger, and albums from Sarah Blasko and Jack Ladder. So it's really nice hearing this stuff, recorded live in the studio in one single session - all glitchy & murky samples & loops trigger live along with the drum kit performance. He's launching the album this Saturday, March 24th, at the lovely Golden Age Cinema in Surry Hills.
Arad - Slua Washed [Bedouin Records]
Arad - Inti [Bedouin Records]
We've heard a lot from Ian McDonnell aka Eomac on this show lately, but as a fan of his duo Lakker for years now I've been interested in what's happening with the other half, Dara Smith. So here we have the long-awaited new EP from Arad, The Glimpse. It's stunning, really - ghostly autotuned vocals accompanied by various takes on bass techno, or crunching, sparse percussion and synth pads. Beautiful but also by and large dancefloor-tuned. So highly recommended.
Mark Van Hoen - Thru [Mark Van Hoen Bandcamp]
Seefeel - time to find me (come inside) [Astralwerks]
Locust - Penetration [R&S Records]
Scala - Naked [Touch]
Mark Van Hoen - Another Light Casts its Will [Touch]
Mark Van Hoen - Closer Than We All Thought [Apollo]
Mark Van Hoen - Don't Look Back [Editions Mego]
Locust - Do Not Fear [Editions Mego]
Mark Van Hoen - Only [Mark Van Hoen Bandcamp]
A new album from Mark Van Hoen dropped with very little fanfare on his Bandcamp earlier this week. Its title, Voices, encapsulates something that's been very important throughout his work with many different bands through his career - that is, vocals. He'd been making electronic music at home since his very young years in the early '80s, but began releasing music in the early '90s, as an early member & producer of shoegaze-meets-IDM band Seefeel, and with solo work as Locust. Sarah Peacock, singer with Seefeel, turned up on many of the classic Locust tracks - including the crunching, overdriven hip-hop of "Penetration" here, from the amazing Truth Is Born Of Arguments album. Peacock was also a member of Scala, the electronic-meets-shoegaze-meets-indie band that put out a few albums in a concentrated period of time in the mid-'90s. Throughout his solo work as well as collaborations with people like Neil Halstead of Slowdive, vocals or chopped vocal samples have been very prominent alongside the weeping synth pads and expertly programmed beats. When he returned to his roots of granulated electronics & beats with a couple of albums on Editions Mego in 2012-2013, the vocal snippets were again very much to the fore - so to the fans, this new album's title immediately rings true, and its contents are just what we expect and crave. A truly important artist of the last 2 1/2 decades.
Listen again — ~203MB
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