Utility Fog

Monday, 24th of July, 2023

A random-not-random aesthetic runs across a lot of the music tonight, which is one of my favourite vibes in the music I've encountered and spread through this show's many years. Whether it's sounds from indie rock, krautrock, sample-based electronica, musique concrète or hip-hop, you can hear cacophanies of sound that reveal themselves to be sensitively and surprisingly thought-out.

Keep up! LISTEN AGAIN via FBi's stream on demand service, or podcast here.

Animal Hospital - Ok, Kevin [Sipsman/Bandcamp]
Kevin Micka's Animal Hospital made a huge impression with his 2009 album Memory, on which strummed indie rock and Americana collide with glitch edits and blackened doom drones. Recently there were a few odd & quirky digital releases under his own name, but this year Animal Hospital has returned. A typically expansive 17-minute track came out earlier this year, and now "OK, Kevin" appears at a more digestible length, but once again we have the hallmark strategy of luring us in with jaunty indie riffs before extending doom chords to infinity. An album is on its way through Sipsman, and you'll hear about it here when it appears.

Rutger Hauser - Signs in my hand [Scatter Archive Bandcamp/Rutger Hauser Bandcamp (CD)]
Rutger Hauser - A good sleep [Scatter Archive Bandcamp/Rutger Hauser Bandcamp (CD)]
A few years ago I featured the second album from English/Faroese ensemble Rutger Hauser. The Swim was recorded in the Faroe Islands, a remote archipelago between Scotland and Iceland, but their new one, Good Sleep found the current members in a town in Anglesey, Wales, although key member Jón Klæmint Hofgaard's parts were recorded later. The band create pieces through improvisation, field recording and embracing of chance, and are gleefully scornful of structural norms. The 9-minute "Signs in my hand" spends the bulk of its length chopping up samples of a composition by Benji Jeffrey called "Nymanesque" alongside scattershot free jazz-esque percussion before coalescing into something resembling a "song". This is post-music in the best way - and if Utility Fog's conceit is to cover "postfolkrocktronica" then at this point why not break it down to just "post-"?

skipism - Only Choppo knows [Mound of Sound]
skipism - Window Sylvia [Mound of Sound]
Drusilla Johnson/Jones has been part of the Sydney underground for over 4 decades, her distinctive art gracing many of the covers of Scattered Order, the experimental/post-punk/proto-industrial band formed by her husband Mitch Jones in 1979. Dru Johnson was a member of Height/Dismay with Patrick Gibson and at times a member of Scattered Order too. These days, she makes ambient/experimental music with Mitch under the name Lint, and her art and solo music appear under the name skipism. Last year she released a cassette of vignettes called Sound Stitches and now, again on cassette, we get Under your hat, which entices the listener into a close-up sonic space where sounds lurk behind your head and, well, right there under your hat. With snippets of vocal samples and fragmented beats, this music is uncannily well-adapted for the zeitgeist.

Morwell - Starlight [Morwell Bandcamp]
Morwell - Looking for Somebody [Morwell Bandcamp]
Max Morwell is back with more rave adaptations, this time with a mixtape called Resonance that explicitly places the breakbeats and vocal samples of rave into a short non-stop mix (split across 3 tracks on each side of the cassette). As with Morwell's usual strategies, the music here is redolent of '90s rave styles, but could only have been made now.

Yunzero - Dunk Constellation [.jpeg Artefacts/Bandcamp]
Yunzero - Con Air [.jpeg Artefacts/Bandcamp]
Yunzero - Invisible Dog (Slo Version) [.jpeg Artefacts/Bandcamp]
Just as I was putting this playlist together on Saturday, a new album appeared from Naarm/Melbourne iconoclast Yunzero. His 2022 album Butterfly DNA came out via Huerco S's West Mineral Ltd but now he's back on Naarm's influential .jpeg Artefacts with Donkey Laundromat. The music here was created for a "video + meme compilation" presented just last week at Collingwood moving image agency/venue Composite - and when you purchase the album on Bandcamp you get a link to download the entire 40-minute video. The funny thing is, Yunzero's music has always been made up of lo-fi YouTube snippets and other cultural detritus, rearranged and built into hi-fi post-club concoctions. The music here is as compelling and strange as ever, whether it's bass-heavy beats or unsettling atmospherics.

Deepchild - Underworlds [Seppuku Records]
Deepchild - Learning To Grieve [Seppuku Records]
2022 was a big year for Sydney's Deepchild, now comfortably ensconsed on Gadigal land after many years in Berlin. His deep techno know-how is evident in releases like last year's Black Atlantic and the recent 77, a set of DJ tools in tribute to the long-running Club 77 where he has a residency. But in 2022 Rick Bull also unleashed his ambient side, harkening back perhaps to his days with Frigid/Cryogenesis and Club Kooky in late '90s and early '00s. The archetypal '90s ambient underground label Mille Plateaux (sister label to techno heavyweights Force Inc) released Fathersong, his moving tribute to his late father, and then LA-based idm/ambient lovers A Strangely Isolated Place released a postscript to Fathersong, Mycological Patterns, which spread like fungus into the nooks and crannies of the ambient internet - a highly deserved success. On August 4th Deepchild's next ambient (or at least non-techno) album Portals comes out through his own Seppuku, with more murky and profound electronic works, two of which we previewed tonight. Lots of humanity goes into these pieces as always.

Magic City Counterpoint - Sun [Magic City Counterpoint Bandcamp]
Magic City Counterpoint - Main Beach [Magic City Counterpoint Bandcamp]
I had the pleasure of previewing two singles from Meanjin/Brisbane duo Magic City Counterpoint, and now you get two more from their debut EP Dialogue, out on August 4th. Madeleine Cocolas and Chris Perren collaborate here on widescreen electronica that benefits from both musicians' work in post-classical circles as well as postrock, math rock, ambient, drone and more. This album will simultaneously come out in game format courtesy of Gadigal-based queer duo Fuzzy Ghost. This was how I first experienced the album - wandering around a surreal landscape watching as things gradually changed as I listened to each track. "Sun" in particular has these gorgeous saturated sun flares when the music hits its peak points, while "Main Beach" is a blissful slow crescendo. Follow Magic City Counterpoint on Bandcamp, and subscribe on their website to get notified when this comes out - you'll thank me later.

Fatboi Sharif - Ash Wednesday [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
Fatboi Sharif - Phantasm [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
Fatboi Sharif - Brandon Lee [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
billy woods isn't just one of the most important voices in underground hip-hop at the moment, he's also the founder (and A&R guy, and executive producer) of Backwoodz Studioz, endlessly reliable for quality joints. And that's how we got the phenomenal album from Fatboi Sharif this week. Decay is entirely produced by Backwoodz stalwart Steel Tipped Dove, and their simpatico relationship is evident throughout. The vibe here is extremely downturned, albeit still with great humour. Sharif's burly but adaptable voice gets pitched right down (or up high) over pitched-down loops or avant-garde piano, with beats that at times doggedly refuse to line up. Throughout, Sharif serves surreal, dislocated, collaged lyrics. Uneasy listening for uneasy times.

David Shea - MG [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
David Shea - String Rhizomes [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Steel Tipped Dove's manipulated samples give way to contemporary musique concrète from Downtown New York veteran David Shea, who's been based in Melbourne since the mid-'00s. In fact the material on Una Nota Solo dates from 2005, just as Shea had relocated to Melbourne, and bears the influence of Luc Ferrari, who he befriended in his last few years while Shea was working at IRCAM in Paris. The music here features performances from Belgian chamber orchestra Ictus and contemporary music Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, including samples from Shea's Chamber Symphony #1. It moves seamlessly from classical composition into droned-out spectral processing and glitch. Shea is a pioneering "un composer", incorporating the sampler as a musical instrument alongside live musicians since the early '90s, but here it's more about post-processing performances of his own work.

Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci - Amorphic Foothills [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
Shea's album is released on Lawrence English's ROOM40 label, and now we hear English himself collaborating with Lea Bertucci, who has formed one half of a number of duo lineups recently. Chthonic, to be released by American Dreams on August 11th, builds tectonic soundworks from Bertucci's cello, viola, flute and lap steel guitar, manipulated through English's tape machines, analogue effects and field recordings. On last year's duos, Berucci was more likely to be on the tape machine (among other things), but she's equally adept with the tables turned. Imposing orchestrations in cavernous settings. One to look out for in a couple of weeks!

Sote & Mazdak - Forsaken Clouds [Zabte Sote]
Ata "Sote" Ebtekar was recently here in Eora/Sydney for Soft Centre, performing his Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran with incredible, massive visuals from Tarik Barri. Now, on his own Zabte Sote label, we get a four track EP, Forsaken Clouds, in musical collaboration with Mazdak Khamda. Khamda is credited to Acoustic Musical Composition alongside Ebtekar's Electronic Music Composition, with Khamda on piano and guests on violin & cello as well as traditional Persian instruments like setar and santour. Because of the western classical instruments, the music here feels a little less "Persian" than some of Sote's more recent work, but it's no less beautiful for that, and Ebtekar is in fine form manipulating and accompanying the acoustic sounds.

Ava Rasti - Cow [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Ava Rasti - Goldberg [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Staying in Iran we now meet Ava Rasti, who is a pianist and composer, sound-artist, and bass guitarist (she played in an underground all-girl post-punk band in Tehran, which sounds extremely daring!) Her new album Ginestra, released next week on Flaming Pines, is a deconstruction of works from the classical canon, reflecting on the violence that exists in the beauty of nostalgia, and performing a revoltion by taking apart past beauty to build something new. There are metaphors here, of course, for the world and for current-day Iran. Ginestra is Italian for "broom", and this music was recorded during a residency at Fabrica in Italy. On these tracks we hear fleeting glimpses of classical works (e.g. JS Bach in "Goldberg"), through murky haze or booming distortion or even shuddering blasts of glitch-noise. I feel like this could have fitted nicely on the Editions Mego label (Peter Rehberg RIP).

Flaer - Forever Never [Odda Recordings/Bandcamp]
Closing with some very pretty post-classical folktronic stuff, done all in analogue. Odda Recordings is the new imprint from The Leaf Label's Thea Hudson-Davies. Flaer, aka visual artist Realf Heygate, is the debut artist on the label's debut release, with analogue recordings of cello, acoustic guitar and piano, replete with the interstitial environmental sounds of creaking furniture and the sounds of the rural setting in which it was recorded. The echoing, stuttering sounds of multiple takes layered on top of each other comes to sound like the glitchy digital edits of early-'00s folktronica. This is subtle music, worth tuning into.

Listen again — ~204MB

Monday, 17th of July, 2023

Classical instruments getting themselves into strange situations, noise shaped into hip-hop, field recordings shaped into techno, IDM, dub... and lots of experimental electronics in general tonight.

LISTEN AGAIN and you may find the secret meaning of life. Try streaming on demand on the FBi website, or podcasting here.

Sun Ra - Nuclear War (Joel Tarman x Kronos Quartet Remix) [Red Hot/Bandcamp]
In 1990, when the AIDS pandemic was still rising, the compilation Red Hot + Blue was released to raise funds for AIDS research and community support. It was a pretty extraordinary collection of a diverse selection of artists of the time, doing often highly creative covers of Cole Porter songs, chosen, no doubt, in reference to Porter's homosexuality. Since then Red Hot have gone on to release numerous compilations and continue to raise money for AIDS research and more broadly health pandemics. The most recent covers collection is Nuclear War, a tribute to Sun Ra featuring current jazz trailblazers like Irreversible Entanglements and Georgia Anne Muldrow. This is extended further with Nuclear War: The Remixes, which features remixes of not only Malcolm Jiyane Tree-o and Angel Bat Dawid's Sun Ra covers, but also two reworkings of Sun Ra & his Arkestra. Of particular interest for me is the teaming up of producer Joel Tarman and the Kronos Quartet, who also remixed Tanya Tagaq to brilliant effect last year. Starting with an absurdly jaunty American radio spot about the equally absurd "duck and cover" defense, Tarman blends this into a drone from the string quartet, perfectly off-key, which accompanies Sun Ra's "Talkin' about / Nuclear War" chant ("It's the motherfucker / Don't you know"), with flowing drums. The whole track is done in this slightly off-kilter way: radio chatter, string drones, Sun Ra samples, combined to disqueting effect.

alice does computer music - Coiled [Jolt Music/Bandcamp]
The first step in appreciating experimental cellist Alice Gerlach's music is getting over my resistance to the name alice does computer music. Any resistance was a mistake - don't judge a book by your own dumb feels about the cover. The second single from the forthcoming Shoegaze 5G is a languid pop song with melodic cello, synths and acoustic guitar as well as computer beats and a super-glitchy breakdown. You'll love it.

Forest Swords - Butterfly Effect [Ninja Tune/Bandcamp]
A decade or more on from the first releases of Matthew Barnes as Forest Swords, the hypnagogic/chillwave/witch house genrescape is no longer particularly relevant, but Barnes continues to draw influences from everwhere from post-punk to ambient, dub techno to IDM and more. A new album is on the way via Ninja Tune, who he's been with since 2017, but in the meantime we get this lovely piece of bleepy trip-hop, Andy Stott-style, which sports an otherwise-unreleased sample (somehow!) of Neneh Cherry.

Saint Abdullah & Eomac - No One Thought Of Love Anymore [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Saint Abdullah & Eomac - Wali [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Last year's Patience of a Traitor was a revelation from two forward-thinking acts, the New York-based Canadian-Iranian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani aka Saint Abdullah and Irish IDM/techno producer Eomac (Ian McDonnell of Lakker). New EP A Vow Not To Read continues this collaboration, despite the brothers and McDonnell still not having met in person. There's a clearly sympathetic resonance between the artists' styles, across cultural and physical distances, and even with Saint Abdullah working on outboard gear and Eomac in the box. There are electronic beat workouts and pieces with the location-based recordings Saint Abdullah often use (Shia mourners on "Wali"), and any melancholy is tempered by humour (track 4 is called "Toes In The Hummus"). I believe there's another full album coming, and I for one can't wait.

Melvins - Discipline 23 [Amphetamine Reptile Records]
From the unhinged minds of the long-lived sludge/grunge/noise pioneers The Melvins comes, of all things, a tribute to industrial/electronic legends Throbbing Gristle, Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits. There are, as far as I can see, no guitars on the album, and while TG's original Discipline is overflowing with the shouted, echoing voice of Genesis P-Orridge, Melvins' "Discipline 23" is an instrumental, with similar squiggly synths to TG's, and bodaciously distorted beats. Awesome.

Shapednoise - Family (feat. Armand Hammer) [Weight Looming]
Shapednoise - Poetry (feat. Moor Mother) [Weight Looming]
Nino Pedone has been destroying speakers and dancefloors with his since 2010 as Shapednoise. Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient's Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. His latest Shapednoise album, Absurd Matter, is the most "musical" yet, grounding the crushing, heavily overdriven beats with some basslines and hints of melodic content, as well as some star turns on the mic. Armand Hammer, the duo of billy woods and ELUCID, contemplate generational trauma, and Moor Mother resists erasure on "Poetry". Allowing hip-hop to shape his noise here inspires the best work yet from Pedone.

CORIN - vīsiōnem [UIQ/Bandcamp]
CORIN - trānsīre [UIQ/Bandcamp]
Filipina Aussie Corin Ileto aka CORIN has gone from strength to strength over the 9 years since her first solo EP. In 2019 she released an album on Bedouin Records delving deep into cyberpunk, and she debuted on Lee Gamble's UIQ in 2021 with an album about impermanance and change. Outside of her recorded work, Ileto does sound design and composes music for theatre, dance, puppetry and installations, as well as frequently DJing. Now Lux Aeterna finds her back on UIQ, once again inspired by science fiction, although more space opera than cyberpunk this time. The title is Latin for "eternal light", but specifically is drawn from the eternally famous micropolyphonic choral composition by Ligeti, forever associated with the monolith scenes from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Thus clusters of vocals can be found throughout, sometimes supported by organ-like synths or moody piano, sometimes by massive sub-bass and clattering beats. The high ambition of CORIN's conceptualisation is easily justified by the results.

NHK yx Koyxen - Spider of Hanns Heinz Ewers [BRUK]
NHK yx Koyxen - Fluido and Piacing [BRUK]
Kohei Matsunaga has used many aliases in the past couple of decades, include Koyxen, Kouhei, NHK, NHK’Koyxen and others. Of late he seems to have settled on NHK yx Koyxen. A purveyor of the more glitchy, chaotic end of electronic beats, he's appeared on many prominent experimental labels, but turning up on BRUK, one of the many labels run by Low End Activist, is surprising. But Climb Downhill 2 does bring a certain amount of brukkage and head-nodding, albeit still in a broken-down way. Deconstructing clubs since before it was fashionable.

Hecq - BKN [Mesh/Bandcamp]
Hecq - Redom Solid [Mesh/Bandcamp]
Ben Lukas Boysen is best known these days as a composer of electronically-treated post-classical music, but for many years he was making IDM, breakcore, dubstep and dark ambient under the alias Hecq. I honestly thought those days were over, as he gained kudos for his more classical works, but Max Cooper's Mesh have just released the Form EP, which sees Boysen returning to IDMish skittery beats and various tempos. It's a lot more lightfooted and lighthearted than the old Hecq, which had ended up in the heavy, in-your-face brostep territories of the time. I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Felicity Mangan - Körner Park [Care Of Editions/Bandcamp]
Based in Berlin, Aussie sound-artist Felicity Mangan takes field recordings and warps them into musical forms. She has a special interest in the biological, but here we have the sounds of water fountains and sprinklers around Körnerpark, a faux-palace park & garden found in Neuköln, in the heart of Berlin. The sounds of children playing fade into a kind of acid techno in this inventive piece.

Travis Cook - padam [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
Fresh from the farewell touring of his beloved duo with Marcus Whale, Collarbones, Adelaide's Travis Cook brings us two new tracks to commemorate a set at the prestigious Unsound Festival. Pop samples reconstituted with breaks, very much Travis Cook as we know him. Thumbs up.

Bazil - Calling Ft. Izness [Dubwiser]
Bazil - Herb Corner Ft. Mc Spee [Dubwiser]
James Bainbridge has been a member of long-lived dub/reggae/electronic band Dreadzone for over a decade, but his solo production roots are in tech-step drum'n'bass. His debut solo album Sub Liminal mashes up the dub feel with halftime d'n'b and pop appeal from vocalist Izness and ex-Dreadzone member Mc Spee on a few tracks. It's a very enjoyable album for fans of these kinds of sounds.

ASC - Future Music [Auxiliary/Bandcamp]
Just about every month seems to feature one or two new EPs from ASC these days. His jungle/drum'n'bass love was rejuvenated by some conversations with Samurai Music a few years ago, and now we are getting EPs left, right & centre on his own Auxiliary label, as well as collabs with UK producer Aural Imbalance - and some of his grey area techno as well. There's always pleasure to be had, and the portentous bassline that opens "Future Music" heralds some very tasty breakwork.

NikNak - Ikigai (Special Version) [NikNak Bandcamp]
NikNak - Combative Embers [nonclassical/Bandcamp]
Amit Dinesh Patel aka Dushume has been examining the lack of visibility for Black and Brown artists in experimental music & sound since 2021, and as part of that has released the new compilation Disruptive Frequencies through UK label nonclassical. Each of the six artists chosen get two tracks on the compilation, allowing for a fuller artist expression, and I recommend the whole lot. Particularly awesome are the tracks from experimental turntablist NikNak, who seems unfettered by any genre assumptions. Earlier this year she was one of four artists to remix Philip Glass; she's also the first Black Turntablist to win the Oram Award, named for Daphne Oram and designed to "elevate the work and voices of Women, Trans and Non-Binary music creators in electronic music". Explore her Bandcamp and you'll find strange ambient pieces, field recording cut-ups and other evocative sounds, and just like "Combative Embers" from the Disruptive Frequencies compilation they're littered with warping, spinning and scratching. However, on Ikigai, released earlier this year, there is a "special version" which adds a nice breakbeat to the proceedings, in case you thought there was no link to hip-hop at all. Wonderful stuff.

Simon Fisher Turner - PURR [Calax Records/Bandcamp]
Simon Fisher Turner - Acceleration [Calax Records/Bandcamp]
Few have as long & varied a career as Simon Fisher Turner. Scott Walker comes to mind, but even compared to Scott, SFT has done a lot: a actor since childhood, a pop idol since the 1970s, he turned to more experimental climes, including a long association with the filmmaker Derek Jarman, and as well as acting, he wrote soundtracks for many Jarman films. He worked with sound collage and tape manipulation, and then in the digital realm as well. I just discovered that earlier this year the Japanese label Calax Records released a cassette of recent film works and other pieces. The digital release presents each side as one track, but being the I who is me, I downloaded it losslessly and chopped it into the credited tracks. So tonight you heard the lovely glitchy chittering of "PURR", and the plucked string cut-ups and layers of "Acceleration".

Marc Richter - Umweltmusik [Cellule75]
Marc Richter - Geisterfahrer [Cellule75]
Better known as Black To Comm (named for a song by proto-punks MC5), Marc Richter has made moody, evocative, absurd music from samples and live instruments for 2 decades now. He also runs the Dekorder label and more recently Cellule75, both of which release his prodigious solo material as well as other people's music. Richter's last few albums as Black To Comm have come out through Thrill Jockey, but on Cellule75 he has just re-released classic albums Alphabet 1968 (originally from 2009) and Earth from 2012. Alongside them is a "Marc Richter" release of unreleased pieces from the same period, going by the name Coh Bâle. The music here is easily as good as those other albums, and in some ways in keeping with some of his later work. Each of the short tracks here seems to focus on one or two sound sources, looped, glitched, edited and processed. Recognizable at times are piano, guitar, disembodied voices and percussion, but much is impossible to pin down - and that's the pleasure of it. And a real pleasure it is.

spectrical - Illucid [perceptual tapes]
To finish tonight, some smeared, granular piano processing from Timothy Allen aka Spectrical, who hails from Nipaluna/Hobart. This is a beautiful musical manifestation of his childhood memory of hearing his Dad playing Prokofiev through the walls of their home, and fittingly the piano is performed by his father, Richard Allen. The Fleeting visions into sleep EP begins with the beginning of the 8th piece ("Commodo") from Sergei Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives (yes, that's "Fleeting Visions"), which gets gently caught in spectral reverb and stretched to infinity (well, 20 minutes). There are two more drone pieces, but "Illucid" takes a glitchy cut-up approach which I particularly loved, since I don't have 20 minutes in which to play the first track! Check it out on Bandcamp, where you can also buy the cassette.

Listen again — ~206MB

Sunday, 9th of July, 2023

A quite international Utility Fog tonight also covers ground from purely acoustic folk to purely electronic, generative music, managing to shift into jazz, doom, and jungle from surprising quarters, with sound-art and a dash of contemporary composition rounding things out.

LISTEN AGAIN to the widest sounds around. Podcast here, stream on demand from FBi.

Mike Lindsay feat. Guy Garvey - Saturday Sun [Chrysalis Records]
Camille - Hazey Jane II [Chrysalis Records]
Last month I played the concertedly unfaithful cover of Nick Drake's "Parasite" by English folk revivalists & reimaginers Stick In The Wheel. It was one of a number of tracks released on a series of 7" editions ahead of the 2CD compilation The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake, released this week from Chrysalis Records. Apparently the artists were instructed to ignore the original and do their own take, which help explain Stick In The Wheel's approach, as well as for instance the punky version of "'Cello Song" by Fontaines D.C. Of course there are some (perhaps too many) rather faithful versions that add little of interest to Drake's songs which, it could be convincingly argued, are perfect in his original versions. I could be particularly scathing about Craig Armstrong & Self Esteem's "Black Eyed Dog", which sounds like the artists are blissfully unaware that this is an anguished song about depression; or Ben Harper (*sigh*) who apparently thought "What if 'Time Has Told Me' but country?", and it's, you know, fine I guess. Fine for Ben Harper. Oh well. Anyway, YMMV and there are some beautifully reimagined versions as well. Mike Lindsay is the producer behind folktronica band (as I still like to call them) Tunng, whose first incarnation with Sam Genders helped shape Utility Fog's character in the first few years. Here he enlists Elbow singer Guy Garvey for a version that's Drake-like folk, glitchy "folktronica" and... more. And it's a shame that there isn't really any fingerpicking guitar playing, a characteristic feature of Nick Drake's sound, but we do get French singer Camille's version of "Hazey Jane II", which repurposes the broken chords on plucked cello. Camille of course has form with reimagined cover versions, via her earlier gig as singer in Nouvelle Vague. I've yet to discover who the cellist is (maybe I'll update this when I get the CD?), but it's gorgeous, and Camille's singing is agile enough for the flittery melody at this slightly higher tempo, yet emotive enough for, well, Nick Drake.

Anne Bakker - Sailor [Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Anne Bakker - Summer in my Hands [Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Like Marisa Baars aka soccer Committee last week, I discovered Dutch viola/violin player & singer Anne Bakker via her many collaborations with Machinefabriek. A verstatile musician across many genres, she works in the background of many other musicians' work, but does also write her own lovely songs which she performs solo, as found on 2017's VOX/VIOLA and now its sequel VOX/VIOLA II (LIVINGROOM SESSIONS). As well as its usual roles, her looped viola plays the role of rhythm section (including percussive sounds). Both EPs are collections of lovely indiefolk songs with creative arrangements, and particularly on the new EP a smattering of electronic experimentation that may have rubbed off from her collaborations with Machinefabriek.

Minhwi Lee - Borrowed Tongue [Alien Transistor: LP here/Bandcamp]
Minhwi Lee - Swollen Foot [Alien Transistor: LP here/Bandcamp]
Speaking of versatile musicians! South Korean singer/songwriter Minhwi Lee is an accomplished soundtrack composer, jazz musician, indie rock musician, and also plays bass in doom metal band Gawthrop. She is also responsible for this wonderful solo indiefolk album Borrowed Tongue, released in Korea in 2016 and now available more widely on LP via The Notwist's label Alien Transistor. The album shows off Lee's composition and arrangement talents with instrumentals at the start and end and in between (check out the Sakamoto-like cello & piano work that closes the album!), but you'll also find classic folk and acoustic chamber pop songs that owe a lot to her composing style but also recall Japanese psych-folk like Eddie Marcon and the aforementioned Nick Drake. A thousand thanks to The Notwist for bringing this incredible music to our attention.

공중도둑 (Mid-Air Thief) - 쇠사슬 (Ahhhh, These Chains!) [Mid-Air Thief Bandcamp]
I have my brother Tim, who was recently at the Global Greens Congress in South Korea, to thank for introducing me to this South Korean musician. 공중도둑 (Mid-Air Thief) keeps their identity under wraps, but has a few albums of quirky folk-pop and folktronica under their belt, which were re-released or co-released internationally by Top Shelf Records. It's cool stuff, but from 2018's 무​너​지​기 (Crumbling), the song "쇠사슬 (Ahhhh, These Chains!)" is phenomenal. It starts off with cascading guitar a la Department of Eagles, and flies in all directions. Blissful and thrilling.

HEKKA - Oil Slick [HEKKA Bandcamp]
HEKKA - It's A Chimera! [HEKKA Bandcamp]
Made up of some top jazz musicians from Eora/Sydney, HEKKA is a jazz piano trio taking tips from postrock and techno as well as more familiar jazz trio connections. There's virtuso playing from Novak Manojlovic on piano, Jacques Emery on bass and Tully Ryan on drums - all musicians who've worked in more avant-garde realms as well - and there are electronics around the edges here too. Energetic and always enjoyable.

Lý Trang - and phosphenes... [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Lý Trang - look, I finally had an umbilical cord [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Following the release earlier this year of the incredible *1 from Vietnamese group Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective, Subtext Recordings have now put out the second solo album from Lý Trang, who was briefly part of the collective, but grew up in the mountains of North Vietnam, and incredibly found herself in Moscow not long before the invasion of Ukraine. Syenite was recorded under those circumstances, in the wake of massive geopolitical upheaval at the same time as personal dislocation. Although less so than on her debut Snail Skeleton, there are songs on Syenite, but they're often buried in the middle of longer tracks, or the vocals are buried in echoing drones or industrial detritus. There are references to traditional Vietnamese music, but the music is always likely to take a left turn, from thumping percussion to whispers and less forthright rhythms. It's a fascinating and complex, layered piece of work, worthy of close listening.

Divide and Dissolve - Kingdom of Fear (feat. Minori Sanchiz-Fung) [Invada/Bandcamp]
Divide and Dissolve - Derail [Invada/Bandcamp]
Each album from Naarm's Divide and Dissolve builds on the last, with Systemic the least dependent on doom metal but no less intense. Although still appearing on the album, drummer Sylvie Nehill recently left (for personal reasons, no big disagreements), and the powerful musical vision of Takiaya Reed brings us looped drones and melodies on saxophone (the most beautiful yet), as well as piano and electronics - and of course pounding gloopy riffs. The band's commitment to dismantling white supremacy and honouring ancestors and Indigenous land provides the impetus and meaning to all the works here, even though as usual the only words come from longtime collaborator Minori Sanchiz-Fung. Even if you thought you knew what Divide and Dissolve is all about, you should know that this is revelatory and powerful.

Faizal Mostrixx - Muke Eka (Woven Tales) [exclusive to The Wire Tapper 62, with issue 474 of The Wire]
Faizal Mostrixx - Onions and Love [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
An exclusive track on the cover CD with the latest issue of The Wire prompted me to properly check out the recent album Mutations from Ugandan producer Faizal Mostrixx, released on the Hamburg-based global label Glitterbeat. "Muke Eka (Woven Tales)" came out of the same sessions as the new album, but inhabits a dubbier and more broken-down soundworld. On the album proper, Mostrixx joyfully mixes amapiano and other contemporary African dancefloor styles with global club music, and field recordings from across the continent. Mostrixx is creating his own form of "Afrofuturism" - although Nigerian science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor has defined "Africanfuturism" to differentiate from Afrofuturism, which has originated from the African diaspora, particularly African American culture. Whatever the term, this music is a brilliant synthesis and extrapolation of forward-looking African dance music.

African Head Charge - Microdosing [On-U Sound/Bandcamp]
African Head Charge - Push Me Pull You [On-U Sound/Bandcamp]
Over to Ghana by way of London, African Head Charge was always a bizarre concoction, and never a Western fetishisation of the African continent. The band is led by percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, who has almost always worked in collaboration with On-U Sound founder Adrian Sherwood, postpunk/industrial dub producer extraordinaire, often credited as Crocodile. Twelve years since their last album, with Bonjo long based now in Ghana, A Trip to Bolgatanga feels the most straightforwardly African-centric of their work, but Sherwood ensures they preserve the psychedelic dub invention that made them legendary through the '80s and into the '90s. A very different vision of Africanfuturism from Faizal Mostrixx, but awesome to have these pioneering musicians back together.

ITSUFO - Let The Beat Troll Your Body [Airlock Recordings/Bandcamp]
Bay Area DJ Edwin Garro has been active in the drum'n'bass scene since the mid-'90s, as UFO!, with or without the exclamation mark, and probably should be credited as that here, but on Bandcamp the last couple of EPs have come out as ITSUFO, so let's go with that. This is solidly in the breakbeat-juggling jungle revivalist side of things, and super fun. The trolling title is funny stuff too (of course it's "control your body" but the first syllable is rather quiet in the sample). Released on the label he co-founded, Airlock Recordings.

YOUNGSIE - HA [Richard Youngs Bandcamp]
Of all the people I'd never have expected to get on the jungle bandwagon, Richard Youngs has just dropped 2 chaotic beat-mangling tracks under the hilarious moniker YOUNGSIE. Much like the scattered electronic beats on 2012's Core to the Brave, or the never-quite-aligned electronic beats on Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits from 2009, this is not entirely danceable stuff, but it's kind of exhilarating anyway. His unique & beautiful voice does not appear here, but once you get over the shock of the sound, it's kind of vintage Richard Youngs, i.e. weird shit you'd never expect to work but it does.

Matthew Ryals - etude no. 24 (take 3) [dingn\dents/Bandcamp]
Matthew Ryals - both sides know (take 13) [sound as language/Bandcamp]
A couple of years back, Brooklyn musician Matthew Ryals released his Voltage Scores on now-Sydney-based label Oxtail Recordings, a record which placed his modular synths in a strange free jazz world, with help from cellist Clarice Jensen on one track. This year he's undertaking a pretty cool endeavour: a series of EPs in three Volumes, with each of the three EPs in each volume featuring the same tracks, in different versions (each EP is also on a different label, just to make things even more complicated!). The modular synth was programmed to produce versions of his compositions within certain sets of rules (among them, a rule that the program should stop itself, which is surprisingly hard to build into any system that produces complex enough music to be interesting). This doesn't sound like randomly generated music at all, of course, and I'm looking forward to hearing just how different the variant takes are on Volumes 1.1 and 1.2 (the first is 1.0, naturally). Most of Ryals' track titles include a numbered take, suggesting that some version of these techniques has been part of his practice for some time. On 2022's Impromptus in isolation, I found a number of tracks with some real emotional heft - akin to the expressive musicality produced by Autechre's machines. "both sides know", represented here by take 13, is one such heartfelt work, and I like to think that Matthew Ryals' Eurorack modular synth poured all of its digital soul into the performance.

MonoLogue and Matt Atkins - To Find [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Just out from Kate Carr's Flaming Pines is the collaborative work Homework from Italian composer & sound designer Marie Rose (aka Marie e le Rose, Moon RA, MonoLogue and more) and the London-based percussionist and electronic musician Matt Atkins (who is also a visual artist). The two artists' styles mesh very nicely, dense soundworlds created from Atkins' bells, gongs and rattles, decomposed by Marie Rose with various analogue techniqes (damaging tape recordings in various ways). The result is surprisingly physical-feeling but at the same time rather abstract. Typically immersive stuff from Flaming Pines.

Jim O'Rourke - One Way Or Another I'm Gone [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Jim O'Rourke - Go Spend Some Time With Your Kids [Drag City/Bandcamp]
The thing about soundtrack music is that it's often background music made for a purpose, rather than to stand on its own. But it can often bring out the best in a musician too. For his soundtrack to the surreal "prairie Western" Hands That Bind, written and directed by Kyle Armstrong, O'Rourke has produced a score that evokes the starkness of the Canadian prairie as well as the tension of a movie which by all accounts has an undercurrent of deep weirdness. O'Rourke seems mostly to play detuned piano and electronics here, joined by Marty Holoubek on double bass, ex-pat Aussie Joe Talia on drums and Atsuko Hatano on violin. Within the droney atmospherics are passages that evoke Bill Frisell's chamber Americana through a distorted lens. Jim O'Rourke has many strings to his bow, so to speak, but this kind of chamber jazz/folk doesn't come up that often, and is gratefully welcomed. Thanks Jim.

Listen again — ~199MB

Monday, 3rd of July, 2023

This week saw the release of some beautiful guitar-led, experimental singer-songwriter stuff - leftfield indie folk, perhaps, and we also have de/reconstructed English folk, de/reconstructed Brazilian samba stylings, trailblazing '80s experimental cello-pop, trip-hop and other beats, post-industrial, instrumental shoegaze and post-classical piano & guitar. This has been your genres of the week.

LISTEN AGAIN, when you get time. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Freda D'Souza - The Love Song of J Alfreda D'Souza [demo records/Crossness Records/Freda D'Souza Bandcamp]
Freda D'Souza - Windowledge [demo records/Crossness Records/Freda D'Souza Bandcamp]
I'm very grateful to the brilliant & adventurous singer-songwriter/producer Ana Rita de Melo Alves, aka Anrimeal, for sending me this stunning new EP from fellow London-based musician Freda D'Souza, which Ana has co-released on her own demo records in conjunction with friends Crossness Records. D'Souza plays free improv, does experimental performance-arty stuff, and even fronts a black metal band, but the music here is a collection of sumptuous songs which owe as much to Jenny Hval as the obvious Joni Mitchell, Linda Perhacs and perhaps Kate Bush comparisons. The smart lyrics are perhaps best embodied by the wistful but slyly humorous "The Love Song of J Alfreda D'Souza", with its references to T.S. Eliot ("Do I dare? Do I dare?"), echoing the paralyzing anxiety of growing old, albeit from a more youthful perspective. As Alves' label name may suggest, these are demos or derive from them, but D'Souza's vocal performances are so rich and confident that one can't pretend these are in any way incomplete. Still, the idea of using demo recordings to capture a particular feeling, a space or a time, is something a lot of creators will connect with.

soccer Committee - No Turn To Harm [morc tapes/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
soccer Committee & machinefabriek - high jacked drone 1 (by andrea belfi) [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
soccer Committee - Reaching [morc tapes/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek - both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you're listening you can't help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek's sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. Her new album ❤️ /Lamb is her most confident and fully-realised yet. On listening to this, I wanted to remind myself of where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers - an album I return to frequently. Tonight, we hear Andrea Belfi overdubbing drums and percussion over "high pitched drone I", magically turning it into a slice of shoegazey postrock. Ugh, so amazing.

Rakhi Singh & Laura Cannell - Zahira [Brawl Records]
Laura Cannell - Nik Colk Void remix - Closer To Now [Brawl Records]
The adjective "restless", often applied to highly productive artists, could not be more fitting for English violinist, flautist, singer & inveterate collaborator Laura Cannell. Her deep connection to country and land (originally from Norfolk, now living in rural East Anglia) pairs with her deep knowledge of folk music and early/medieval music, but improvisation is also key to her work, both solo and in collaboration (e.g. the monthly series of works with cellist Kate Ellis and others throughout 2021). Meanwhile, Cannell also has an electronic project called Hunteress, no less engaged in folk forms for that. All these aspects feed into various collaborative projects, such as 2020's spoken word-and music project THESE FERAL LANDS Volume 1 (of which the year-long EP series was a sequel), and now the collaborative release ECHOLOCATION: Resonate From Here. This time the web of artists reaches even farther afield, from English folk music giant Kathryn Tickell OBE to US veteran rock cellist Lori Goldston, and two women working in the post-industrial electronic field, Gazelle Twin and Nik Colk Void, the latter of whom overlays shudding drum loops and distortion over Cannell's tremolo violin. Cannell and Rakhi Singh (the founder of Manchester Collective who also works with electronic musician & composer Seb Gainsborough/Vessel) create songs of wordless interlocking vocals and violins, which on album closer "Zahira" break into jazz soloing just when you least expect it. It's notable that all the collaborators here are women: Cannell observes that growing up, she couldn't see herself anywhere in the music she saw. ECHOLOCATION presents a non-genre-specific body of work from seven women whose artistry should resonate far and wide.

Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void - Say Why [ALTER/Bandcamp]
Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void - In Voice 1 [ALTER/Bandcamp]
The Nik Colk Void remix above was an irresistible segue into her new duo here with Swedish electronic musician Klara Lewis. Both artists bridge the line between techno and experimental electronics on the one hand, and noise/drone/glitch on the other. What's unexpected about their debut album together on Luke Younger's ALTER label is the playful humour that radiates out of these 17 vignettes. The fun that went into creating this music is evident throughout, even on the more sharply intense tracks and the more tender pieces. Here we have the modulating static of opener "Say Why", which could be placed anywhere from '80s industrial tape experimentation and late '90s glitch work, followed by the second track, one of a few manipulations of small snippets of pop vocals into isolated saccharine sweetness.

Arthur Russell - Picture of Bunny Rabbit (edit) [Audika Records/Rough Trade Records/Bandcamp]
Arthur Russell - A Little Lost [Point Music/Be With Records]
Arthur Russell - In the Light of a Miracle [Audika Records/Rough Trade Records/Bandcamp]
The story of Arthur Russell is one of the saddest in the music business, and a sadly not uncommon one - an artist of immeasurable influence who was broadly unknown in his own lifetime, most of his work released via archival tapes after his tragic death from AIDS-related illness in 1992. (Notably, another such artist, the iconoclastic gay black composer Julius Eastman, now being revived and celebrated decades after his premature death in obscurity in 1990, was a close associate of Russell's.) Russell was a true original - initially known for his disco/house material, often under the pseudonym Dinosaur or Dinosaur L, but simultaneously creating pensive, contemplative works for his scratchy electrified cello and voice plus various effects. Most of his works, including many of his most revered songs, were only released on archival compilations after his death - for instance "A Little Lost", which appears tonight, came out in 1994 on the album Another Thought. So, while it's easy to become cynical about yet another archival Arthur Russell release, each one gives us more insight into an unparalleled talent, even when these songs are ostensibly incomplete demos. The title track of newbie Picture of Bunny Rabbit really is a selection of tape & effects jams, mind you, and yet it's also one of the most riveting tracks on the album. I had to make my own edit tonight for space, playing two of the four segments, but listen to that stretching and pitch-shifting, mangling and editing! I'm reasonably sure all the sounds come from the electric cello, straight into the machines. Meanwhile, the album also sports an unheard version of "In the Light of a Miracle", albeit so different as to be pretty unrecognizable from the 13-minute disco-house classic - although that's usually credited as "In the Light of the Miracle", so maybe it's different? Either way, a grinding, rubbery rhythm that may come from the cello accompanies Russell's usual cello scratches and soft vocals, and a guitar that reveals itself in the mix at points. Revelatory.

Ricardo Dias Gomes - Invernão Astral [Hive Mind Records/Bandcamp]
Ricardo Dias Gomes - Menos [Hive Mind Records/Bandcamp]
It's always great when consummate musicians & songwriters turn their music in experimental directions, and so in the vein of greats like Tom Zé and Arto Lindsay, Brazilian musician Ricardo Dias Gomes (who has worked closely with another Brazilian legend, Caetano Veloso) adds modular synth excursions, electronic beats and dense arrangements to his interpretation of samba. His third album Muito Sol was recorded after moving to London, and dealing with the culture shock. And indeed the references to Brazilian music are brought to the fore due to his distance from home. While the experimentation is at its height in a few shorter interludes, it's an ever-present undercurrent, found in the suspended flat-2 chord that runs through the second half of "Menos", only just resolving in the last bar, or in the cloudy textures underlining the dreamy "Invernão Astral".

Tristan Arp - A Livable Earth [3024/Bandcamp]
Tristan Arp - The Language Change [3024/Bandcamp]
From Brazil to Mexico, where we meet Tristan Arp for some percussion-heavy techno as is his wont. His latest EP, End of a Line, or Part of a Circle? comes courtesy of Martyn's 3024 label, but it's basically vintage Tristan Arp - studio-perfect percussive rhythm play, judicious bass weight, lovely bloopy sounds. It's like micro-house but syncopated and with subs. So, you know: great.

Ekhidna - Trips [Ekhidna Bandcamp]
Here's a new duo that slipped into my in tray this week, hailing from Bristol and London (simultaneously!) and pushing finely titrated trip-hop for a post-dubstep world. Rumbling subs announce the opening bars of their first single, followed by head-nodding beats and high, echo-laden vocals floating over the top. As the song progresses, the bars fill up with bleepy beats and hammering kick drums. It's definitely a trip!

Kilamanzego - Remember Myself [Get Better Records/Bandcamp]
Pronounced "kill a man's ego", Kilamanzego is the alias of a Philadelphia-based artist combining, on this new single, hip-hop with jungle beats and experimental spirit, as is the style right now. She works entirely solo, with all beats, instruments and vocals played & produced by herself. "Remember Myself" comes from the Black Weirdo EP releaesd at the end of this month by Get Better Records.

Trex - Moonshine w/ Benny V [ThirtyOne Recordings]
Now we're in concerted drum'n'bass territory, on the one & only Doc Scott's ThirtyOne Recordings, home to no-nonsense dancefloor-aimed d'n'b, but that doesn't mean it's not creative. Take the One For The Road EP from Trex. Carefully-honed twitchy beats skitter around, anchored by syncopated kicks and wobbling basslines with a lot of soul. I'd equally love to play this loud on a deserted highway or hear it throbbing in a sweaty club.

The Bug - Hunted [Pressure/Bandcamp]
Here's a track from Machine 2, the second in a regular series of EPs Kevin Martin aka The Bug is putting out digitally, basically as DJ tools for playing on his massive, gut-shuddering Pressure soundsystem. And the menacing beats and basslines here would kill on a aystem like that, but they sound just fine with the bass turned up and the volume high wherever you are. Grateful for the unrelenting pace with which Mr Martin puts out music.

Scattered Order - Confirm Humanity - Remix [Scattered Order Bandcamp]
Core Scattered Order member Mitch Jones had the idea about a year ago of going over the material from the band's last two albums and radically reworking the tracks. This project has come to fruition now with the PRANG album. Everything was fair game - changing tempo, highlighting quiet sounds in the original mix, substituting sounds etc - proper remixing. The result is that I can't recognize much of the original tracks here, but it's just what you'd think - a Mitch Jones perspective on Scattered Order, a little more strongly on the electronic sound, on basslines and beats and cut-ups, with his stentorian, processed voice appearing at times like the Metatron.

Speaker Music - Jes' Grew [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Here's the first single from Speaker Music's new album, out in early September from Planet µ. Thematically, Techxodus takes off from where his earlier music left us, with complex electronic drum patterns at the centre of these works, but it also serves as an extension of his recent book Assembling a Black Counterculture, which contectualises the history of techno in the broad history of Black labour in America. This first single expands Brown's busy percussion with interjected brass samples, creating a new vision of future-jazz within this studious-yet-raucous percussive techno.

Purr - Collapse (Vacant Lake Remix) [unreleased]
Purr - Collapse [Purr Bandcamp]
Melbourne-based (although originally from Sydney) Peter Stone aka Purr has been making hazy, grainy guitar-based music since the mid-2000s, and was last heard on this show in 2016. His new EP SHARDS mostly keeps things shoegazey and soothing, but isn't afraid to take things in a more abstract & distorted direction, like on "Collapse". That track has also been given the remix treatment by ex-Sydney musician Beres Jackson, who is now releasing more organic-sounding stuff under the name Orbits, but for this remix (exclusive for now!) appears under his Vacant Lake moniker, gradually coaxing the broken-down sounds of "Collapse" into a more structured direction, eventually adding drum'n'bass breaks to exhilarating effect.

Gregory Paul Mineeff - The Approach [Cosmicleaf/Bandcamp]
Gregory Paul Mineeff - Questioning [Cosmicleaf/Bandcamp]
On his latest album, You Alone, Wollongong-based artist Gregory Paul Mineeff evokes little universes in 3-5 minute compositions, with a palette that adds guitar to his usual vintage synths, piano and effects. On paper, Mineeff's electronics and piano could be just another entry into generic "neo-classical" as people have decided to call it, but this is neither stock ambient nor wanna-be classical. Greg's too good a craftsman for that, tempering the mournful, melodic broken guitar chords on "The Approach" with warbling drones, and repeatedly introducing the major 7th leading note into his minor piano chords on "Questioning", which also is accompanied by smudged synth drones, and half-heard two-note basslines nearer the climax. Close your eyes and float away.

Listen again — ~200MB