Utility Fog

Monday, 12th of June, 2023

A little less emphasis on the beats tonight, or it's beats within other genres or in service of something other than moving bodies on dancefloors... There's riveting spoken word, futuristic raps and weird adaptations, and later, post-jazz and spooky sound-art.
Thanks to Holly Conner aka ilex for her excellent selections last week! She'll be looking after the show again next Sunday while I'm away for Dark Mofo.

LISTEN AGAIN if you dare! Via FBi's stream on demand or podcast here.

Farhad Bandesh & David Bridie - Freedom [David Bridie Bandcamp]
Not Drowning, Waving - Little King feat. Robby Douglas Turner [Rampant Releases/Liberation/Bandcamp]
Edwina Preston & David Bridie - Brother Sister Grave [David Bridie Bandcamp]
Melbourne treasure David Bridie may be cast these days as a pleasant "adult contemporary" pianist-singer-songwriter, but he's always worked in unexpected areas musically, from the ambient/proto-postrock/global-folk gregariousness of the frankly uncategorisable Not Drowning, Waving to the post-Penguin Cafe Orchestra chamber pop of My Friend The Chocolate Cake (never quite as twee as their name would suggest). Lyrically, Bridie has often focused on stories of working class, middle Australians, little people - and also on his dedicated activism, whether for the freedom struggles of West Papua or against the inhumanity of Australia's punishing treatment of refugees. All this comes to the fore on his latest album It's Been A While Since Our Last Correspondence. Each track is a short story or piece of poetry, spoken (and occasionally partly sung) by its writer, and all the breadth of Bridie's lyrical interests is there. I really recommend the whole album, even if you're leery of spoken word and music (he says, having just released such an album recently, maybe check it out?) All contributors have risen to the challenge with deeply engaging and moving vignettes. Essential is the work from Kurdish refugee, artist and musician Farhad Bandesh, freed as part of Medevac but still fighting for resettlement (ten years on from fleeing Iran). The mixture of his spoken word and electrifying singing with Bridie's postpunkish backing is a highlight. And celebrated Melbourne author Edwina Preston presents a sly slice of family life on her piece.
As a longtime Not Drowning, Waving fan I couldn't resist a brilliant, bizarre piece of spoken word from Melbourne indie music & film identity Robby Douglas Turner - too abstract to be storytelling as such, but something that has resided in my head since my school days (if not quite 1987, when it was first released).

Shoeb Ahmad - double checks against the corner (b) [Shoeb Ahmad Bandcamp]
In about 2017 Canberran musician Shoeb Ahmad refocused on her solo career with a collection of deeply personal songs about identity, along gender, racial and religious lines, which became the revelatory album "quiver" in 2018. In 2020 a second suite of songs, ruminating on the same themes, including familial relationships and parenting in turbulent times, which came as two albums: A Body Full Of Tears and Facade, the latter containing the song "double checks against the corner". That song's themes are now expanded into a full set (that one is now "(d)" in this collection) further interrogating these domestic concerns. Where the last two albums often obscured the songwriting & storytelling in harsh, transformative production techniques, the "double checks" songs are all about the songwriting and Sia's soft voice - albeit still with glitch, industrial and the outer reaches of postrock as their guide. Sia's work is frequently unexpected and never less than compelling.

Ryan Fennis & Voidhood - OVERTAKE (feat. BAYANG (tha Bushranger)) [Voidhood Bandcamp]
Taken from their forthcoming album Extender, frequent Naarm/Melbourne collaborators Ryan Fennis & Voidhood cement their combination of experimental digital beats and underground hip-hop on new single "Overtake", with a guest spot from the excellent BAYANG (tha Bushranger). Rad song, even better with the music video the pair directed themselves with insane 3D graphics from Endless Prowl.

Stick In The Wheel - Parasite [Chrysalis Records]
London's Stick In The Wheel are known as leaders of the new generation of folk revivalists, but can't help but extend their deep folk knowledge outwards into post-club production: both Ian Carter and Nicola Kearey were involved with dubstep originals Various Production. Therefore it's not too surprising that their entry into the massive Nick Drake tribute The Endless Coloured Ways is... less than faithful. Drake's original is typical enough of his works - acoustic guitar and vocals, blissful chord progressions, lush yet fragile. Stick In The Wheel don't keep much of the original harmonic structure, let alone melody, instead centring Kearey's autotuned vocals in reedy drones and sparse beats, with a heart-pulling chorus setting that's all their own. Controversial in Drake fandom, but few Nick Drake covers can come close to his originals, so why not do something radical?

Mun Sing - Spirit And Legacy And Muckiness (feat. MX World) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Mun Sing - Trebuchet [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Harry Wright's duo with Robin Stewart, Giant Swan, are known for brilliantly raucous live performances melding techno and punk, shirtless and sweaty... Solo, both members tone down the punk aggression, but Harry Wright's debut album as Mun Sing goes even further afield into MIDI-powered quasi-classical works and considerably deconstructed club sounds. Inflatable Gravestone, released on Planet µ, was written in response to the sudden death of Harry Wright's father, and it tempers grief with humour, while not hiding from the uncomfortable facts of their father's troubles with addiction - nor holding back from deep sorrow. Wright is aided on a few tracks by MX World's beautiful singing. Elsewhere, choral samples carry some of the emotional weight, although much can be drawn from the up-and-down movement of the keyboard patterns, and the blurts of shuddering beats that surface at intervals throughout.

The Orielles - Tableau 002 [Heavenly/Bandcamp]
The Orielles - Tableau 004 [Heavenly/Bandcamp]
Originally formed in the northern English town of Halifax, outside of Leeds, The Orielles are now based in that centre of indie-dance history, Manchester. They have evolved from scrappy indie origins into a highly creative band with Stereolab's talent for mixing high experimentalism with highly catchy pop hooks. Their 2022 album Tableau already slips effortlessly between genres, but on new EP The Goyt Method, material from those sessions is exploded and rearranged into avant-garde works - glitchy textures, transformed vocals, skittery IDM beats and more. Interestingly, the specific stems that went into the mixing pot, so to speak, were selected at random as an initial jumping point for deconstruction. Thus the tracks are numbered "Tableaux", named for the album which lacks a title track itself (there's also one lovely improvisation, a sequel to the one found on Tableau). I always love finding this kind of adventurousness and mutability in the indie and pop worlds, especially when done with so much style and talent.

Hajj - Loosing U 4 Ever [YOUTH/Bandcamp]
Hajj - Our Lady Of Darkness [YOUTH/Bandcamp]
Lyon's Florent Hadjinazarian runs the label DAWN RECORDS, purveyors of dark electronics and experimental pop, as well as DJing and directing music videos and other film works. The album No Soul, No God, No Devil, No Existence follows last year's Drag Me Into The Void, the title track of which appears on this album. In typically quirky form from Manchester's YOUTH label, the single was released as a limited CD, and this (short) album is a vinyl record. Each track is exactly 3:33 long, which may be of numerological significance, but in any case makes for concise but not overly short musical statements, inhabiting the hazy, murky space of northen drill, Burial or Andy Stott. Recommended.

Richard Pike - Museum Station [Richard Pike Bandcamp]
Richard Pike - Mercury Parts 1, 2 & 3 [Richard Pike Bandcamp]
DEEP LEARNING - Open Space (Lauren Doss Pagan Remix) [Oxtail Recordings]
DEEP LEARNING - Boy (Hoavi Remix) [Oxtail Recordings]
Sydney's Richard Pike, alum of PVT, is now based in London. He's found a niche in making soundtracks for TV, and interestingly they connect him back to his original home. The latest is Year Of, a spinoff of Stan's successful teen pregnancy drama Bump. The music is certainly vintage Pike - as he told me it's approaching his soundtrack ideal: ambient-techno-hybrid-orchestral. All the elements are there, and to me this collection of cues works nicely as listening music regardless of its origins.
Last year Richard also released the album Evergreen under his ambient alias DEEP LEARNING on Oxtail Recordings, based around subtly rhythmic glitchy loops. Seven of those tracks have now been remixed by artists from Australia and abroad: tonight we heard the lovely shifting layers from English actor/dancer/producer Lauren Doss, and the astounding fractal rhythms of Russian shapeshifter Hoavi.

Praed - Djinn Dance [Akuphone/Bandcamp]
The duo of Switzerland-based Lebanese musicians Paed Conca (clarinet and more) and Raed Yassin (bass and more) formed out of their common backgrounds and also their love of the Egyptian street music (Shaabi, now mutating into Mahraganat) and the traditional Sufi spiritual/trance music Mulid, both in their ways based around hypnotic, repetitive beats. Clearly their two first names made this partnership inevitable, so Praed was born, and the fruits have been many albums of futuristic, ecstatic grooves with synths and electronics, caterwauling mizmar and beautiful clarinet melodies. In between Praed albums they've also formed the PRAED Orchestra with jazz & experimental musicians from Lebanon, Egypt and further afield, but on Kaf Afrit they return to the duo format, albeit with additional reeds, keyboards and percussion. A never-ending riot of movement and melody.

Joe Gould - distrust the outside world [Joe Gould Bandcamp]
The Crooked Fiddle Band's drummer Joe Gould has generated many side-projects along the way, including acerbic (hilarious) protest-punk and creative Crooked Fiddle self-remixes. But Nobody Joins A Cult is the first project to come out under Joe's own name. It's melodic percussion-led postrock, extending music he's written for the award-winning podcast Let's Talk About Sects. This isn't a selection of soundtrack cues or interstitial music though - these are full-blown mini-postrock odysseys, recommended if you miss Sydney's vibraphone-led Prop or the classic Tortoise-style postrock sound.

Methods Body - Baphomet [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Luke Wyland of under-appreciated freak folk gems AU released a lovely solo album 3PE as LWW in 2008 and has continued with a few mostly piano-based solo works here and there, but in 2020 formed new duo Methods Body with drummer John Niekrasz, with a brilliant debut album that I unfortunately missed at the time. Their follow-up Plural Not Possessive is out next week with a similar mix of keyboards (often in weird tunings) & percussion plus multiplex electronics. While not watering down any of their avant-garde credentials, the duo's music compels and convinces with its liquid intuitiveness, disarming rhythms and ineffable melodies.

Samuele Strufaldi, Tommaso Rosati, Francesco Gherardi - unfold [Elli Records/Bandcamp]
Samuele Strufaldi, Tommaso Rosati, Francesco Gherardi - hyperclockwise [Elli Records/Bandcamp]
Just last month I mentioned the wonderful album from Samuele Strufaldi & Tommaso Rosati released in 2019 called 1.15K, taking jazz piano into glitchy electronic realms. This flashback was due to Strufaldi releasing his Davorio album in collaboration with the villagers of Gohouo-Zagna on the Ivory Coast. Now comes the singularly-titled t, a very different collaboration in which Strufaldi's piano and Rosati's electronics are joined by tabla player Francesco Gherardi - and also "robots" built by Rosati which spit processed piano and tabla samples back from inside the piano. You can see a few videos here, here and here. The musical is playful and improvisatory, complex but approachable jazz drenched in electronics.

Solo Andata - Silhouette [12k/Bandcamp]
Originally Perth-based, Solo Andata found international interest from the get-go, with their debut album released on eclectic Chicago label Hefty Records. The duo of Kane Ikin & Paul Fiocco quickly found a home on Taylor Deupree's 12k, embodying the label's focus on minimal electronic and electro-acoustic music. Over the years Kane Ikin has expanded into weird techno and unsettling sound-art, but at intervals Solo Andata remind us of their existence. It's been 7 years since the last time, so the gentle acoustic explorations and electronic drones of Slip Casting mark a welcome return.

David Toop & Lawrence English - Whistling In The Dark [Room40/Bandcamp]
David Toop & Lawrence English - The Chair's Story [Room40/Bandcamp]
Both David Toop & Lawrence English are known as deep thinkers and wide influencers within various musical systems. Toop is a beloved music theorist, spanning hip-hop, ambient, field recording, drum'n'bass, improv and more. In the mid-'90s his double-CD compilation Ocean of Sound, an extension of his book of the same name, was an impeccable survey of innovative music of all stripes. Brisbane-based English is a restless curator too, through his long-running, internationally fabled Room40 label, and the various live music series he puts together for Carriageworks, Dark Mofo, Brisbane Powerhouse and more. But Toop & English both make music as well, of course, with many shared interests both theoretical and practical. After 2 decades of connection, The Shell That Speaks The Sea is their first duet work together, exploring something English describes as "affective haunting" in sound - which I interpret as the immaterial evocations that listening can create, not necessarily directly from their sources but rather as indirect emotive presences in organised sound. Maybe that's still clear as mud, but listen to the remarkable works on this album, and you'll be richly rewarded.
One aspect of field recording - a practice I have always had an uneasy relationship with - is that it's deeply personal. The act of listening cannot recreate the field recordist's own experiences, so it requires an act of both faith and creativity from the listener to give meaning to the sounds. Thus the recordings of a Tawny Frogmouth sparked in both musicians a particular milieu that is then recreated through a variety of materials, whether Toop's forlorn whistling and imposing but indistinct voice, flutes from both, or percussion, shortwave radio, guitars and electronics. It's dark and evocative, a true affective haunting.

Listen again — ~204MB

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