Utility Fog

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.

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