Playlist 25.06.23 (7:28 pm)
A bit of everything tonight: postpunk dub, minimal techno, IDM, breakbeat and minimal d'n'b, ambient, post-classical and post-jazz, drone, indie, folk, glitch, modular synth. What's a few genres between friends?
Thanks once again to Holly Conner for holding the fort while I was away last week!
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V/Z - Habadash feat. Cathy Lucas [AD93/Bandcamp]
V/Z - Bites feat. Coby Sey [AD93/Bandcamp]
Recently we heard the brilliant debut album from drummer & percussionist Valentina Magaletti's Holy Tongue, which was initially a duo with Al Wootton, but for this album became a trio with the addition of Susumu Mukai. Mukai also plays bass in the kosmische/psyche-pop band Vanishing Twin with Magaletti, and this rhythm section partnership now finds full expression as the duo V/Z (Z stands for Zongamin, Mukai's longstanding solo alias). Suono Assente ("Absence of sound") inhabits the same dub/postpunk territory as many of Magaletti's other projects, with just enough of the krautrock/psych aspects prevalent in Vanishing Twin and the beloved Tomaga. But these are all pop song length, even those without vocals - and the vocal spots are perfect. Vanishing Twin singer Cathy Lucas gives "Habadash" a beautiful wistfulness, and Coby Sey murmers darkly over dubwise production and scratchy violin on "Bites". At 8 tracks and only 28 minutes long, it finishes way too soon, but if one thing's certain, there'll be more from both participants before you even notice the absence of sound.
Rrose - Spines [Eaux]
It's somehow easy to forget how long I've been a fan of Seth Horvitz' work. For many years from the late '90s Horvitz released experimental techno and abstract sound-art under the name Sutekh, highly electronic works that frequently referenced biological processes. Since 2011, Horvitz' musical alter-ego became Rrose (named for Marcel Duchamp's female alter-ego Rrose Sélavy), for many years a mysterious identity (although I think those in the know always knew). The gender-fluidity of Rrose connects techno and sound-art to its longstanding queer connections, via clubbing of course but on the sound-art side particularly through Horvitz' work with Bob Ostertag; but this aspect is also tied up with Horvitz' continuing engagement with the body, and more broadly the natural world; the first album proper for Rrose was 2019's Hymn to Moisture, in which deep & slamming techno was juxtaposed with ambient sound-shaping, burbling with life and leaden with decay. These themes are further drawn out on Please Touch, where rhythms swirl and hammer in & out of textural sound, expertly manipulated. The title references this tactility of the sound, but also draws once again from the surrealist subversion of Duchamp, who used the phrase as the title of 1947 art exhibition.
Andrea Taeggi - corporate standardized programming [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
I first came across Italian producer Andrea Taeggi as one half of the experimental electronic duo Lumisokea with Belgian cellist/sound-artist Koenraad Ecker. The duo produced some of the most brilliant & hallucinatory works on the cusp between techno and ambient, bass music and electro-acoustic exploration. Taeggi released some lovely bass-glitch-drone as Gondwana, and more recently under the alias 5HT2, but has also released plenty of modular synth IDM under his given name on various labels. Biomimetics, released through Mille Plateaux, concerns itself with the idea of biomimicry, and more broadly about how ecological thinking could help get us out of the quagmire of capitalist rapacity (I'm paraphrasing). Taeggi emphasises that the sounds here derive from 40 years of electronic music history, including the 1970s modular synth the ARP 2500, and it's an exploration of musical grooves and patterns outside of traditional 4/4.
Nahash - Davide XV feat. Elise Massoni [SVBKVLT]
Taeggi's post-IDM brings us to the post-club adaptations of Raphaël Valensi's Nahash, whose EP A Snake In Your House ("Nahash" means serpent in Hebrew) is released by Shanghai label SVBKVLT. The club night and label, although releasing plenty of Chinese artists, has been a focal point for ex-pats in the Shanghai electronic music scene - it's run by Mancunian Gaz Williams, Montéal's Valensi had a lot to do with it while based there, as did French producer & DJ Elise Massoni. Massoni co-wrote the breakbeat-heavy "Davide XV", which features filtered breaks splintering the 4/4 beat while the bass rises up like a distant rave foghorn.
Air Max '97 - Kaiba [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
Posture - Run [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
The third compilation from Andy Garvey's Pure Space, Proximity III once against features electronic musicians from across the club and club-adjacent landscape from Eora and across so-called Australia. There's techno and bass music, breakbeat and drum'n'bass, IDM and garage. Tonight we have the typical bass-heavy syncopations of Air Max '97, and the skittery slow/fast sound of Eora-based Posture, which finally erupts into amen break-laden fury at the 5-minute mark.
Sun People - Reconnect (Step by Step) [Nehza Records]
Out of Posture's junglisms we turn to Graz-based drum'n'bass producer Simon Hafner aka Sun People, who here turns in a footwork/minimal-d'n'b hybrid for Paris label Nehza for their new compilation Transaquæ, which covers the gamut of dancefloor styles from artists all around Europe (and beyond), include label founder RONI, Polaar boss Flore, and Malaysian-British producer Sayang.
Perera Elsewhere - Hold Tite (3phaz Remix) [Friends of Friends Music/Bandcamp]
Perera Elsewhere - Like This (Aho Ssan Remix) [Friends of Friends Music/Bandcamp]
I loved last year's album Home from London-born Berlin-based musician Sasha Perera/Perera Elsewhere, an album of comfortably weird electronic pop which now receives the remix treatment from 9 artists across 7 remixes. Cairo's 3phaz stays true to his percussive form on his version of "Hold Tite", an already percussive track, letting the vocal pop up with the "you cannot fuck with me" refrain at times. And Paris-based Ghanaian sound-artist Aho Ssan follows his dramatic remix of Richie Culver with a beautiful rework of "Like This" which keeps to glitchy surging drones until 2/3 of the way through splattered digital beats accompany Perera's vocoded vocals, only to ebb back to shimmering quietude for the last minute and a half.
santpoort - so incredibly bright [Friends of Friends Music/Bandcamp]
Coincidentally sticking with LA's Friends of Friends Music we now join Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier, here under his Santpoort alias, with some blissful, sun-drenched folktronic beats from his latest EP a hole in the sun.
Wakati - Wak [Wakati Bandcamp]
Here's some more melodic IDM from Naarm/Melbourne's John McCaffrey aka Part Timer under his new alias Wakati - and so industrious is he that there's already a third Wakati EP on his Bandcamp! Closest comparison would be Plaid, with minor key piano-ambient morphed into joyful cyclical beats and back again.
Balmorhea - Violet Shiver [Deutsche Grammophon]
Balmorhea - Step Step Step [Deutsche Grammophon]
A couple of years ago the US folk/postrock duo Balmorhea surprised the Utility Fog team (that's me) with an album on the venerable German classical label Deutsche Grammophon. This is partly due to DG getting on the post/neo-classical bandwagon (admittedly their ReComposed series of remixed symphonic works goes back to at least 2005), but it's also less surprising when you remember that Balmorhea have incorporated classical instruments and styles from very early on. Their second DG album, Pendant World, is actually less pared back than the previous, The Wind, with Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller joined by the experimental sax of Sam Grendel and strings from minimalist cellist Clarice Jensen and folk singer/violinist Aisha Burns, and production from Jonathan Low, whose credits run primarily in the folk & modern classical direction. The tracks I chose have a bit of everything: chugging percussion and subtle dub delays along with the piano and sung refrain of "Violet Shiver", which finishes with string and flute/clarinet trills, while "Step Step Step" is in that Americana-tinged chamber jazz space pioneered by Bill Frisell and Tin Hat Trio.
Tom Schneider - Serpentines [Macro/Bandcamp]
The first solo album from German pianist Tom Schneider should be no surprise to followers of his recent band Loom & Thread, which took the traditional jazz piano trio into the cyber realm with live sampling and manipulation - and the sampler as instrument is something Schneider has perfected in his other band KUF, in which Schneider plays the role of lead vocalist entirely from the sampler. The surreal piano manipulations are found throughout Isotopes, which, like both previous projects, is released on Stefan Goldmann & Finn Johannsen's Macro Recordings. Virtuoso jazz piano runs and sensitive melodies coexist with granular processing and re-sampling of the instrument, sending the sounds into stratospheric pitch-shifting, or stuttering glitches, blended together so that it's impossible to tell what's composed or improvised, produced live or processed in post. It's mastered very quietly, and works best as listening music to close your eyes to.
the fun years - auto show day of the dead [Barge Recordings/Bandcamp]
the fun years - tape over your l.e.d. [the fun years Bandcamp]
From around 2004 the duo of Ben Recht on baritone guitar and Isaac Sparks on turntable began releasing mysterious, engrossing drone and quasi-glitch music as the fun years. Made up of short evolving loops, it could sound like anything, but mostly evoked drone, glitch and minimalist postrock - and I feel like it was particularly exciting because so often it was impossible to tell how they did it. I've included one of those older tracks tonight, from 2008's baby it's cold inside, where you get to hear the slow evolution of one texture into another. Just now they've released a window into what came before the fun years, an album called realness converts that's not that far off the fun years sound, but features buried crunchy beats and more melodic IDM & glitch-hop stylings. It's great and worth a listen, but take this as a prompt to dive into their guitar & turntable works while you're there.
F'tang - Muscular & Compact [F'tang Bandcamp]
A mere 10 years after their second release, Eora/Sydney indie/postrock band F'tang are getting ready to release a new album later this year. It's jangly postrock with a slightly mathy edge and nice bubbling electric organ, timeless stuff.
Jamie Hutchings - The Men [Jamie Hutchings Bandcamp/DC Cross Bandcamp]
DC Cross - Brumby [DC Cross Bandcamp/Jamie Hutchings Bandcamp]
Speaking of indie music, here's two '90s heroes still at it - in comparatively different veins - are touring together to launch their little 8" vinyl EP (apparently vinyl has sold out, sorry!). Find them at "secret location" in Petersham next Friday, June 30th (Facebook event here or booking form). Jamie Hutchings recently released a solo album of free experimentation, but here gives us the slightly chaotic indie songwriting that always seemed, all the way back to Bluebottle Kiss days, equally influenced by free jazz as punk or indie. Darren DC Cross's acoustic guitar stuff is worlds away from the indie/electronic of Gerling, continuing to explore his love of fingerstyle guitar and instrumental folk.
Bluetung - Desert Glass [Theory Therapy/Bandcamp]
Next Friday, Eora/Sydney's Mitch Bluetung Reynolds releases his new album Eternity By The Stars, an exploration of guitar through electronics. There are hints at other practitioners of guitar-sourced electronics such as Fennesz, or perhaps closer to home the Max/MSP guitar manipulations of Reuben Ingalls (here, here & here). With Bluetung there's a haze to everything that points more towards Benoît Pioulard, and ultimately we've got to say it's his own, very lovely, thing. Cassette copies will come with an extra download of remixes, some of which I'll be featuring a little after the release. Don't sleep!
Ben Carey - Clang [Hospital Hill/Bandcamp]
Ben Carey - Towards the Origin [Hospital Hill/Bandcamp]
When I first met Eora/Sydney musician, composer & academic Ben Carey he was playing saxophone with autonomous electronics, investigating computer improvisation. For some time now, though, he's become more & more proficient in the fractally deep world of modular synthesis. His first album on Matt McGuigan's Hospital Hill came out of some of his early work with Eurorack modular systems, but Metastability was produced in two sessions at Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) with the LaTrobe Serge modular synth, designed in the mid-'70s by Serge Tcherepnin for the La Trobe University Music Department, and restored more recently so that anyone can work on it at MESS. Linking back to my first encounters with Ben, he describes working with the so-called "Paperface" Serge as a process of dealing with the human/non-human interaction necessitated by the complex way that it works, and the delicate balance required to produce desirable sounds. This complexity aside, the pieces Carey has created are beautifully refined and incredibly organic-feeling, tactile and emotive. The percussive clattering at the beginning of "Clang" feels like bouncing, vibrating metallic objects, and the interleaved drones of closing track "Towards the Origin" are exquisitely detuned, like separate alien transmissions hesitantly singing their lonely chorale in deep space.
Listen again — ~205MB
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